But The Lord

He's gone away again for a while now, only heaven knows when I will see him again.

It's been that way for some time now. A few months here, a few there, never settled for too long.

The way of the wanderer is hard. Unsure and unsettling, it's lonely and it's cold.

Time makes accepting the way that things are now easier, yes. Yes it does. It doesn't however, make the reality of the situation less hard.

Cold hard facts are just that; cold and hard.  While you can get used to some things as time passes, I tend to think you never fully recover from the loss of peace that comes through the disconnection of a loved one. You simply re-adjust.

Here's something you don't learn in Wandering 101 of Real Life University: it's very hard on families. Because we all know that everybody's got to find their self sometime, right?

But when you have to leave your intact group of core human beings to do so? That's hard. That's a good amount of sleepless nights and tears shed right there times the number of left said human beings.

So while he wanders, while he drifts, I wait.

Wait on the Lord and be of good courage, wait I say on the Lord (Psalm 27:14)

One can learn a lot in a decade or so of desperately waiting. Actually there are some life lessons that can only be learned in a period of time like this.

Hope is learned while waiting.

You can go to church all of your life, go to Sunday School faithfully and be a part of the best small group ever. You can read all the verses and do the curriculum....but hope just doesn't come fully alive in your bones until it's the only thing you've got left in them.

Hope let's you see sentences like "But the Lord," and go for days and weeks at a time just from the beauty of those three small words.

But the Lord. That's it. Nothing fancy or earth shattering here. But such profoundly truer words have never been spoken.

The fact that I never even prayed about the man that I would marry? And that I married one of the best men, THE BEST MAN that God had just for me?

But the Lord.

The eldest of my littles was born with a VSD (that's a hole in the heart otherwise known as a ventral septal defect) and at three days old we didn't know if we were facing open heart surgery or if this was a minor issue? Thankfully, over the period of about six months time the Lord closed that little hole in his heart and that very same child has since brought me to my knees more than once or twice with a few other health issues that haven't been terrifying but bothersome enough to keep a mama close in touch with Jesus.

But the Lord.

That time I was sinking further into depression with every single day and felt like I had somehow missed out on how exactly I was supposed to be happy and carefree-especially since I'd just recently brought two little people into the world?

But the Lord.

When Tim and I lived in Ohio and were having one or three or four hard years figuring out where we were supposed to be and what we were supposed to be doing and at times it all got oh so desperate and confusing?

But the Lord.

The mountain I'd love to see God move right now is not another hurdle we've stumbled upon, but in fact is the oldest request of my life. It is to see the wanderer come back to Jesus. To live in the gloriously full and abundantly rich life that our Savior offers.

And when David Crowder sings "Come as you are, wanderer come home" and my heart feels like it might break right in two?

But the Lord.

I know that the hope that I've held onto for years is just as real now as it ever was. It never dies, it never fails and it never gives up on that one lost sheep even when, ESPECIALLY when the ninety nine are safe with the fold.

But the Lord....thank you Lord, thank you Lord.