God's Pursuit of Me
To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love. - A.W. Tozer
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this morning’s struggle.
Have you ever just woken up under? Feeling somehow less than ready? Not just for what the day demands, but for what life demands? For me, that’s today. That’s this morning. A combination of bad mojo stacked against me. A coughing, weird-breathing London crawled into bed beside me and I was still wide awake at one o’clock in the morning, sleeping on about six inches of bed and having to fight to recover my share of the blankets. Already dressed in my running gear, I had to bail out on my 6 a.m. running date with my group because I knew my fatigue was too great . Crawled back into my…
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letting go . . .
There are moments when I feel as if I have somehow missed my children’s entire infancies. Like I can’t remember them crawling or nursing or being seven pounds little. When I see that wee baby in her mother’s arms at church and I cannot call to mind London that minuscule. What Piper Finn looked like at three months old feels like a mystery or how Hawkeye smelled after a bath when I held him in my arms wrapped in a towel. I can’t remember. And I think sometimes that I lean to bitterness, to regret, to shame. And I know I cannot give these thoughts a foothold, a place. Because…
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the steady.
This weekend Kevin and the kids worked on creating a compost pile. And I worked nearby re-painting an old pair of homemade shutters. My mother crafted them decades ago. (How can I be so old that I can accurately use the word “decades” to describe my own life?) And for some reason those two things made me miss our moms. Mine and Kevin’s. The mothers we can no longer call on the phone to share the story of simple Saturday projects outside with the family. I still have a long list of “why’s?” for God. And when it hits me, when it trips me in the middle of…
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it takes a little convincing
Our church has recently begun an event for women called Refresh. It was held a few weeks ago. I had to be convinced to attend the meeting. Not really because I didn’t want to go. That wasn’t it. I’d had it on my calendar for the last three months. I did want to go. However. The day hadn’t gone as planned. I didn’t think school would take quite as long as it did that day. I wanted to finish a project I’d been trying to finish for two months – the bed skirt. (Still not really completed correctly, in fact.) Then life handed me an excuse because Kevin was returning…
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Love
Love. It just isn’t the one big thing. That giant gift with the fat price tag doesn’t earn you a free pass. I can’t buy my children a really cool game for the Wii one Saturday night and then not speak to them all week. And when they wonder where dinner is on Tuesday evening I just point to the Wii game. That’s ludicrous. I can’t read Piper six chapters of a novel when she’s four and then never pick up another book until she’s eight. “What? Another reading of ‘Guess How Much I love You?’ Nah. I read you six chapters last year.” That’s crazy talk. I’m learning that…
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pointing at myself.
I have sixty-eight drafts resting in the unknown regions of my blog’s set-up pages. There are so many ideas I want to write about, explore and share but sometimes I just type out the words but never press “publish”. I am finding it more and more difficult every day to balance the type of mother to a teenage daughter that I wish I could be with the type of mother to a teenage daughter that I actually am being. This is unbelievably hard work. We have been in the beginning stages of forming a new Shepherding Group with some fellow church-attenders. It’s been a desire of mine and Kevin’s for…
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down for the count
Thursday Piper Finn got sick. In her bunk bed. In the middle of the night. Which is never good. Hair. Bedsheets. Eagle. All altered. The sound of bath water running at two a.m. has never been a welcomed sound. Friday morning Riley had all four of her wisdom teeth removed. She came home looking swollen and feeling dazed and in pain. Friday afternoon I started sharing Piper’s illness. It was a long weekend. (Understatement intended.) Kevin was stellar. I was unendingly grateful for his care and provision the past several days. This ship would have undoubtedly sunk without the careful navigating of Kevin as captain this weekend. I also realized…
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the simple beautiful
I don’t know if the phrase “the simple beautiful” makes any sense. But I’d like it to. This recent move of ours, the recent job change, all of it – it’s been a risk. A risk we’ve willingly chosen. A risk we feel is worth the . . . well . . . worth the risk. And we have been awed, amazed, overwhelmed and humbled at the various ways God has allowed our needs to be met during this season of our lives. Watching the way God provides. That’s the simple beautiful. And it’s been abundant. The labors of love from our friends who painted and cleaned our home before…
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I can’t explain why.
It’s been a good weekend. Warm weather. Birthday celebrations. Work completed. My little corner of the world has been feeling a-okay. But I know that’s not a universal feeling. And I know it hasn’t always been true for me. And I’m sure it hasn’t always been true for you either. I sort of feel like a Southern Baptist minister right now, standing behind a wooden pulpit on a red-carpeted stage. But I’m going to type this anyway. There’s a post I wrote more than a year ago. And for some reason, I think I need to repost it today. Here’s the link. And below is the post itself cut and…
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still the truth
Lord, you have assigned me my cup and my portion, and have made my lot secure. (Psalm 16:5) This is still true. Even when there are tears and tantrums from either a two-year-old or a thirty-eight-year old.
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for all the world to see.
Lately at the start of each weekly Sunday morning service, our church has been airing a series of short, simple video clips. One or two people speaking to the camera. White background. Subtle music under the voices. The people in the videos aren’t strangers. They aren’t actors. They aren’t promoting any agenda or urging me to try anything new. It’s just people who attend our church. The guy who sits in front of me, two rows over. The lady I know attended the same Bible study I attended. Regular souls. (Like me.) Lots of people that I know by sight but not by story. And each week I find that…
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you look great today.
This woman has no idea how her words affected me. She’s basically a stranger to me. Monday mornings are the busiest mornings of our week. It’s our home school co-op day and that means a substantial shift in the morning routine for us. Six kids need to be out the door and in the car by 8:15. (And in a non-home school world, 8:15 is no biggie. I hear you. But in our world – it is.) Prior to the departure of all six children there are lunches to be packed, shoes to locate, homework to be accounted for, breakfast to be served, children to be clothed and some surprise…
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home bound days.
I spend the majority of my days with six people, all younger and smaller than me by varying degrees. (And as we’ve been a one-car family for thirteen days or more, it seems I have been spending lots of days at home, with no transportation at my disposal.) There have been moments in these recent days that I have felt thrilled to spend my mornings knee deep in tropospheres and the ozone layer, pleased to read novels and eat snacks with such pleasant companions. And there have also been moments in the recent days that I have felt the desperate need for fresh air, to finish a project without interruption…
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