Waiting.....

Waiting... such a small word with such weight.
I personally am not the most patient person ever, so waiting doesn't come easy for me. Waiting in a doctor's office, waiting on the day to take that next pregnancy test, waiting on dinner to cook, waiting on the next payday, waiting for marriage or to graduate college, waiting on high school to end, waiting to become an adult, waiting on the next thing in life....it seems most of the time we are waiting. Recently I've tried to pray for God to open my eyes to the things/lessons I'm supposed to learn while waiting. I need to take this waiting time to be renewed. I came to the realization that I must be needing to learn something during this waiting time in my life. Like I said, I'm not a real patient person so sometimes I allow myself to get irritated at waiting so I don't see that person next to me in the waiting room (literally and figuratively) who may just need me to offer them a smile or just say a prayer for them, after all they may have just learned they have cancer or some other scary disease. Maybe I could have said a prayer for everyone in there instead of focusing on myself. Maybe I could be just spending time with Landon or Billy while I'm waiting on dinner to cook....I'm supposed to just spend time in God's glory and soak up all I can while I'm waiting. In the small moments of waiting and the big moments of waiting for something to change in our life, I must let God renew my strength.

But those who WAIT on the Lord will renew their strength, they will mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not grow faint. Isaiah 40:31
See, what we do if everything just came exactly when we wanted it and exactly how we wanted it. Life, we think, would just be peachy. But not really, we may get things that would hurt us in the long run. What we think looks good in the moment may not be all we hoped for when we actually achieve it. Ever heard the saying, "thank God for unanswered prayers". I don't think there are unanswered prayers but He does choose how He answers them. Just because you think its going unanswered may mean He is working it out in another way. In the waiting maybe God is trying to give you a new perspective and we have to look beyond ourselves to see it. With Lawson, I was waiting for God to heal him because I just knew there was no other way for it to be okay. But he did heal him, just not the way I was envisioning. He healed him by taking him to Heaven for the ultimate healing.

 Have you ever doubted in the waiting and couldn't see past your own hurt/impatience? In the book of Luke (Luke 24:13-35), after Jesus rose from the dead two of his disciples were debating the happenings and talking about their doubt and Jesus caught up with them. But he did not yet reveal himself as Christ. He let them debate and offered insight, they asked him to stay with them as they reached where they were going. He then broke bread with them and revealed Himself to them. 
And it happened that, while he was with them at table,
he took bread, said the blessing,
broke it, and gave it to them.
With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him,
but he vanished from their sight.
Luke 24:30-31

He knew their doubt and he chose that moment to show them he had been there all along. Isn't it crazy to think of a Savior who does nothing but try and save us from ourselves and yet we still doubt and turn away?
Then they said to each other,
“Were not our hearts burning within us
while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?”
Luke 24:32
Its in those moments that we realize those little tugs to do something you're scared of doing, or while you're waiting and aren't sure what's ahead, that Jesus was there all along. Those small signs that He's waiting with you to renew you and prepare your heart for what's to come. Miracles, happenings that we cannot understand or even see occur constantly around us, both good and evil. He may not ever fully reveal the workings or He may let us see how He worked all along in every tiny detail. I believe God  hides certain things from our eyes because we can not fully comprehend His ways.
Even in the waiting and hoping, He will renew us. Sure, I still don't like waiting but hopefully when I look back on this waiting I will be glad that I sought God and that I will see at least some of His work along the way.
That He will reveal himself and I'll be able to say, My Lord, My God was with me all the time.

Remove the thorn in my side

So I have recently finished a book by Laura Story and its called "When God Doesn't Fix It"(She also sings "Blessings", look it up if you haven't heard it). It really opened my eyes to a lot of the things we face all through our lives that we tend to push to the bottom and try to just not look at. Our trials, our pain, our hurt....its all something we have, but sometimes its just that...too painful to bring up. We have to learn to look at those trials as blessings that draw us closer to God. I know with me I focus on just coasting through life without soaking up God like I should as long as things are going great and then WHAM, something stops me in my tracks and I'm left to do nothing but fall back on my knees at God's feet. I'm not saying that I don't kneel to God during good times, but I don't tend to cry out for his guidance quite as loud as when I'm hurting. This passage (2 Corinthians 12:6-9) is what I read last night and it 'stuck' with me.
 Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. ⁸ Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.

⁹ But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.   God tells Paul that he will not remove the thorn in Paul's side because His power is made great in weakness. WHAT?! Yep, think about telling all these people about Christ when you've had no trials.
All of us can relate more to pain than we do to everything being in good working order all the time. God takes our pain and makes it GREAT! He brings glory to Himself, yes, but he also heals us along the way if we lay it all at his feet. We seem to want everyone to think we have it all together but sometimes (most of the time), you can really help others by putting your story out there because somehow/somewhere, even if you never know it, someone will hear it that needed it. I have never felt closer to people that have seen/been through the trials that I have. No one's story is exactly like another person's but there is beauty in that also.  I don't know about ya'll but that makes me feel all warm inside when I read/hear something that makes me feel like I'm not alone in this thing we call life.
God wants us to love one another and one of those ways is helping one another even if we think its still painful in the process. In all the times I've gotten the opportunity to share about Lawson or our fertility struggles, I have felt some of that load lifted and hopefully someone else was helped also. I may never know the amount of people that my story has reached, and I don't have to. Because God does, and if it brought him glory, then my job was worth it. If you had told me three years ago that Lawson's death would be a story for me to tell about God's glory, I would have been so mad. God changed those feelings and if He can do it for stubborn old me then He can for you too. I know there are people everywhere who have walked through much worse things than the things I have to lay at His feet, but it doesn't make my story less significant.
I am weak and I have never been more proud to be weak because He is made strong!