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.

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Ten Blessings Found In Winter Weather

Back a long time ago in the olden days of summer, one could not have imagined the white beauty that sits outside my window this morning.

After living in the frigid north for the better part of my adult life, I assumed that we wouldn't be getting many snow days down here in Knoxville.

Think again.

I don't assume the children will be back to school at all this week seeing as how the power is touch and go at this point.

And you know what? That is fine with me.

I've quickly come to realize there's a great amount of blessing in this trapping in caused by the weather conditions. 

1) Snow days. Because well, who doesn't? I was a kid once, I remember what that's like.

2) Power outages. Yes, you read that right. The blessings of sitting by the fire, telling stories and reading books by flashlight....almost makes me wish we lived in the era before. Almost.

3) Ice. Snow. It can be dangerous and slippery but there's hardly anything more beautiful.

4) Late mornings. No schedule, no rushed breakfast, nobody's going anywhere so eat that cereal as slow as you'd like children.

5) Sledding. Haven't done this yet but yes ma'am it's ON for later today.

6) Appreciation. Sometimes you don't stop to think twice about how nice the common day conveniences like stocked pantries, electricity, warm water and such are until they're missing.

7) Cancelled everything. I like to stack a calendar full just as well as the next person. But sometimes white space is underrated.

8) Books. If you're like me, you love a good book but hardly ever take time to sit down and read. Well friend, there's been a lot of reading going on over here the past few days. Sophie Hudson, Beth Moore, the Holy Bible and I CAN READ by abeka curriculum in Kindergarten. Smile.

9) De-Cluttering. A day inside is a good day to purge. I'm thinking we're going to come away from this snow storm a lot more clean.

10)  (This one is unique to us, but I'm sure it could be applied to any family in a different way.) Rest time for Tanner. I think we pushed him a little too hard to go back to school at the end of the week last week, so this extra break is an added blessing of time to heal. 

Be blessed in the cold sweet friends-it will be spring time soon!

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The Loom

So when you're handed number 18189 on a little business card at the information desk of the O.R. where your son is having surgery, the process goes a bit like this:

1) You take said card and make your way to the fish tank. (Because everyone knows that a glimpse at a bright fish will always distract a mama's eyes and still a fast beating heart just a little.)

2) Find the number on the card and match it with the number on the screen. See what color the number is highlighted by.

3) Take a seat and get busy being still. Get busy being still....just waiting for the green of the O.R. to turn to the blue (recovery) and finally yellow and the little lady that walks over and says you are soon to be connected with that little piece of heart that beats outside of your chest in just a few minutes.

Ahhh, sometimes  oftentimes it's in the stillness, in the quiet, in the sitting while-waiting-it-out that we realize the gravity of our situation.

The realization that God is so very near or we would be so very overcome by the current state of events in our lives is made evident by many a fact at a time like this. I have literally sat and waited for my breath, my very next breath, sitting there in the grip of His grace waiting on number 18189.

Last week, while I was sitting there waiting I joined my littlest little on a project she was working on.

Before we left town and headed for another hopeful chance at a successful procedure on my boy, a friend of mine gave our sweet children some crafts to keep them busy on the long trip ahead.

Little did anyone know, the loom was for mama-and the Lord was about to show his glorious Self through the weaving of the threads on that loom.

As the hour of 4 turned into 5 and 5 into 6-my fidgety heart took the loom that my little Quinley had already created quite a few masterpieces on and got to work.

I would weave a few rows, look up and see where 18189 was, look down to weave again, wipe some tears and realize I'd mis-stitched a few rows.

Frustration would get the best of me and I'd hand the loom to my sweet other half sitting by me on that couch. He'd fix my mistakes and hand me back the loom again. 

That process repeated itself for the better part of the evening until I'd finally finished a potholder or two myself.

When the surgeon walked through the doors to greet us at a little past 7 I was finally able to breathe a little better and felt like Mt. Everest had been lifted off my shoulders.

As we were gathering up our things to head to Tanner's room a few nurses commented on our potholders. 

"Oh how beautiful," they would say. I heard a lot about how many of them used to do the same thing back in the day. 

As they talked I looked down and I saw the missed stitches. I saw one orange row where three lines in a row were missed. 

One was tightly woven in the middle and so loose on the edges.

I thought about my mistakes and the fact that my potholders weren't perfect.

I didn't care. 

Because to me, the grace in the fixing was worth more than my perfection ever would have been. 

No one looked at my little piece of art and said, "Oh that's cute but it would have been so much better if you wouldn't have messed up here."

No-when the world looks at our lives friends let me tell you a little nugget of truth here: they aren't looking for perfection. We all know that perfection is unattainable anyway and the strife to get there can drive one to misery in the process.

What they are looking for someone who is real. Someone living in the trenches and doing their best along the way with a joy that marks the life of a believer.

That is what makes the web of our lives so beautiful. And that is when Christ really shines through. What is the meaning of our salvation if we're so put together on our own that we don't need the blood of our Savior anyway?

It isn't the beautiful perfect rows so much as the redeeming ones with more than a missed stitch or two or three-caught and woven together by the surrounding support of a web that catches all.

It catches all our good days and bad days and the good thing is that even the bad days are worth something!

We don't just throw them away never to be remembered again, we redeem them and weave them into our story. Our story for His glory.

That's how the Saviors love makes us known. As His broken but beautifully pieced together and  brightly shining masterpiece.

Isn't that so much better than perfect?!

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Deep Calls to Deep

I'm no bible scholar, that much is for sure.

I'm not a preacher or even a teacher for that matter.

I'm just a woman who's trying to live life. I have a lot of good days and some bad days too.  But it's on those nasty old unfortunate bad days that almost always, the Light of God shines the brightest.

I had one of those bad, unfortunate, messed up days not too long ago. You know the kind where you hit snooze more than once and are therefore behind even before you get started. You burn the oatmeal. You're out of creamer for your morning cup of MUST HAVE coffee. Yeah, it was one of those days.

So all day long I was in a hurry. If there's one thing I've learned about time in my span of thirty two years-it's that rushing it never works. It just never works.

Nevertheless I was rushing it. Because in my head maybe, just maybe I could squeeze an extra minute or two out of that day if I tried hard enough. Or so I thought to myself. I had a couple jobs to do, a grocery run to make and had to pick up my littlest from pre-K before getting into the pick up line for my big Kindergartner at three.

And all along the way I was so busy focusing on the list of things I had to do that I missed what I should have done.

I had a chance to share the good news and I missed it. The gospel of Jesus Christ that I so desperately chase after without abandon was reaching, beckoning to be shared and I missed it.

All because of busy schedules and pick up lines and fear of missed appointments.

There's a passage in Psalms 42 that says, "Deep calls to deep." And as I mentioned before, I'm no bible scholar but in my mind I think theres a deep calling from the Holy Spirit living inside of us to the deep things of God that we can not even understand ourselves. That deep calling makes intercession for us when we do not even know what we have need of ourselves.

But on that day? On that day I was a bit too shallow and I missed it. I didn't even realize it until it was late in the evening, too late to go back and make a change. It was too late to recover the lost opportunity.

Deeply saddened as I told a friend about this I said, "What if she missed her chance at hearing the good news because I was too busy?"

"Oh no. She wouldn't. That's not how Go works." She was animated and fervent about her point (which is one of the many reasons that I love her). "Don't be too hard on yourself. If you missed it," she told me, "then God will send someone else to do the work."

I came home and thought about it and flipped through my bible. There had to be some scripture to back that up somewhere right?

Because I don't know about you, but sometimes I cant just take somebody's word for it. I have to read that truth, lay a finger on it in the sacred pages of scripture and speak it out loud before I can digest the truth of it fully.

Here's what I found.

2 Timothy 2:13 says that if we are faithless, He remains faithful. For He an not deny HIMSELF.

Relief flooded over my soul as I realized that God will always, always accomplish His will. Even if I do not.

That was a hard lesson learned. I'm so grateful that unbeknownst to me-somewhere someone fulfilled God's calling in my place.

The next time, my ears and my heart will be listening for the Deep.

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