Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Time to Write

When the weather turns super cold, the pay check is spent, and the kids are between sports seasons, it must be time to write.  Or maybe it's Lent.  Or maybe it's both.  It is shocking to me how much time gets freed up when the money runs and out and life gets super simple.

Simple life is not interchangeable with easy life.  I'm simply sitting inside, loving the moments when the sun breaks through and makes warm spots on my floor.  I'm wrestling with God over things I should have anticipated, but somehow thought wouldn't happen to me.  Family relationships are insanely complicated, even when they are good.  I love my family.  I wish I could spend more time annoying them with my presence, but they all live too spread out and I'm the farthest from the center.  I'm a quality time and service person so expressing my love languages to my family is extra challenging.  I'm also super sarcastic, which they are too, but that hinders truly expressing love for one another it turns out.  Soren decided to give up sarcasm for Lent.  We are all making this a really joyful season for him as you can imagine.  The struggle is real.  Loving real people and giving them freedom to be who God has made them to be, which is human, and broken is definitely not easy.  Watching them make decisions that you know are going to be painful, if not now, definitely later is really hard.  My Mom instincts kick in and I want to control, fix, fight, protect, anything but give them freedom.  God's ways are so contrary to my ways, and yet He tells us His way is love and His way is peace.  Mind blown.

A friend was telling a story of finding God in the midst of sticky situation with her very young one.  She had the wisdom to speak truth to him and wait on God, and what do you know, He showed up.  Thank You God that she shared that story with me.  How much more should I speak truth to my nearly adult to adult children and then wait on the Lord, who loves them more than I do to show up?  Why do I always get impatient and assume God doesn't work?  He has been faithful over and over when I have been willing to sit and wait on Him.  I'm not a person who naturally sits and waits on anything.  I never finish a piece of toast because those seconds in the toaster are too much.  So God gives me February.

I'm so ready for spring.  I'm ready to sweat outside instead of at the gym.  I'm ready to get a halter on those steers and start leading them.  I'm ready for track to start.  I'm ready to ditch the wool garb and let some sickly white skin see the sun.  Not yet my friend.  It's still time to sit.  My bank account is still reeling from the after shocks of a great Christmas season.  It isn't ready to let any funds go to an extra vehicle or travel to destinations warm and sunny.  Keep sitting with the Lord and with my kiddos.  We are here, waiting for Easter.  It's still winter, it's still a lean season.  Be patient, wait.  I am thankful for sun in the midst of the cold.  I am thankful for friends who walk around with tans from lands far away.  I am thankful for friends who share their stories of children who wandered and returned.  I am thankful that there is hope.  I know that by the end of track season there will be tank tops.  I know the steers will wait until it warms up and will still be show worthy by fair.  I know that I will be able to walk outside and still be warm eventually.  Most of all I know that I am not alone.  God is here.  He has given me people to sit with.  Our community is embracing Lent and what it means to let go of the dead to make way for the new life.  I have time to write, which I love.

I am thankful for:
50.  Dazzling sunsets on snowy mountain peaks
51.  Kids who traveled safely and returned home
52.  Time to read
53.  Care group stories of resurrection
54.  Kids who make mistakes
55. God who teaches us how to forgive by forgiving us
56. God using the unlikeliest of people in our lives to point us to Him
57. A gym to sweat in
58. Great cars from old friends
59. Spring skiing for my Dad

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