This mothering business sometimes makes me feel like I am in a fog... Some days I just push on to bed time... others I feel completely in control and love just being with my kids. The days really are long, but the years are short... so I don't want to stay in the fog, just putting one foot in front of the other. I wanted to pull myself out of it, so I started making more to do lists and strict schedule, and I found that helped some, but something was just not quite right. Then the Lord shocked us with a big thing that requires full trust in him. I found that instead of my normal, ready for change self, I was {slightly} freaking out and felt like the bottom of my world fell out from under me. It required me to see that my trust had not been on the Lord, but on my plans and abilities. I thought I could schedule my life so well that He would be pleased and bless me because my children were well behaved (most of the time) or my house is finally organized and clean (for the most part) and I was sharing stories of truth with people (when it was convenient). Without me even noticing, I had scheduled faith right out my life. Then when the earth shook, I saw my lack of faith when the walls of my own efforts fell like sand castles on the shore and I felt alone and empty. What a loving God we serve that he does not grade us by our lack of faith and let us sit there alone in our failings, but he teaches us to walk by faith and gives us what we lack in our trust.
I feel like I toddle between wanting to give my children the stability that I had growing up and wanting to be willing to go at any point where ever He leads us. I loved (and hated) living in the same town most all my life, and I knew Daddy would be home at the same time everyday, and we would go on a vacation in the car once a summer and drive to grandma's for holidays. With a big backyard, there were endless hours of playing and I never once knew if my parents struggled with anything. Fast forward to my life today, and my kids already have lived in several places, some days Daddy is home all day and some days he is out working til past their bed time. We fly and travel often, but rarely get to see family. Our "backyard" is a garden shared by everyone in our building, but it is closed most of the afternoon. I worry that I show my struggles to my kids by not being in control of my emotions in front of them (i.e. crying when I miss family back home or getting frustrated at my lack of understanding a foreign system of 'such and such') But this is the Life to which we were called. To be willing to go, or to stay, whenever he calls. And trust each day, not just in the ones that trust becomes my every breath...
So here I stand in one of the moments that I am hanging on desperately to nothing but my faith in Him. He sometimes needs to shake our little comfortable life to remind us what is most important, and the best thing is that He refills us with more faith and peace than we had before. I write this to remind myself to not get settled in my comfortable life without walking by faith. And to ask you to pray that as many others are walking a road that is completely unknown and scary that we will trust in Him. That we will be willing to do whatever it is that the Lord has for us. That we will know that we are not alone, but that he is listening, and even if he does not move the mountain standing in our way or part the seas we want to walk through, He is in control and the only thing we can cling to. This song speaks exactly what my heart cries out today... leaving my dreams for what I wanted my life to be down at His feet. He knows what our tomorrows hold, and I want what He wants and nothing less. He is the rock on which I stand, and no place I'll go He's not already stood. I will trust, I will trust, I will trust in you!
