wishes.

If I haven't told you the blog is therapy, the blog is therapy.  You've been warned.

I feel like I'm wishing a lot tonight.

I wish my dad still lived here (this house is one of my happiest places in the world, but I'm realizing that this it partially very true because my dad was here). 

I wish Matt was done doctoring now and was here (I always say 2 weeks is about our limit and it's TRUE.  I'm very ready to be done now.  I MISS YOU!).

I wish we could be in Haiti helping out our team with a huge team from Delaware visiting and working at the Seminary right now (I have serious HMO Syndrome, Hate to Miss Out, especially when it's on our homefront!)

 I wish that every church would start a single mom's ministry, and just take the dear precious children away for 3 hours once a week to let their incredible mothers sit in a dark quiet room.  Or go to coffee without chasing or spilling or 10 bathroom escorts.  Or ANYTHING.  I wish that they would then start with me, overlooking the technicality that I am not actually a single mom, and let me sleep past 6, or let me go anywhere in a car-seat-less car.  I love these darling darling girls.  They just never stop!

I wish I could be 95 places at once.  We had SUCH SUCH a good time with our New Bedford family on Thursday night...just hanging out and catching up and enjoying awesome food and talking about the past year and next year.  I wanted to spend like a whole week with them.  What a huge encouragement and BALM their friendship and love is.  AND I miss Adam and Lisa like crazy!  And we went to Carl's 60th party, and it REALLY made me want to go camping with he and his awesome family again! And we spent good time with Grandma and Grandpa, and I didn't at all feel ready to leave them...and we're off again tomorrow though I want to spend the week with Dad and Cindy.  And I want to see SO MANY DEAR FRIENDS.  

I wish our few weeks home had 25 Sundays so that we could come and worship with SO MANY of the churches YOU represent that we aren't going to get to.  Corporate worship, in our own heart language, is such a dear, dear privilege.  

I wish I didn't need sleep.   

I wish nothing cost any money.

I wish I had time to scrapbook.  Write a book!  Read a book.   

Anything to do with a book not written for the 3-6 year old category.

I wish the girls would stop. growing.

I wish ice cream was a miracle food with all the world's vitamins and minerals and power boosters.

And of course, the list goes on.

But I wished to spend Father's Day with my father, and I did.  Canoeing.  So sweet and full of laughter.  He is one of my very best friends.  We miss out on a lot being in Haiti, and there are many of you who could not spend today with your dear dads, and I do not take today's wish-come-true for granted. 

And I wish to spend a few precious days with my BF and roomie, Bex.  And tomorrow, we're making the drive to Tennessee to do just that.  Bex is a deep well...

and a spring of joy.  

Our walks with God have led us down many similar pathways, and time with her is so full of understanding, grace, wisdom and laughter.  I'm so thankful.  

And I wish to spend a few days with my other two BFs in Atlanta.  And we're on the way to do that, too.

They make me stop feeling so old all the time.  

They make me laugh and remember more carefree times and try to make me understand 2014 in America :)  They introduce us to all the things "kids are doing these days", are such fun aunties for the girls, and both want in on my life and share theirs.  They are real, and let me be, too.  

I wish to be spending deliberate and sweet discipleship time with my dear girls, and I am.  

I wish to be enjoying each day with Him, and I am.  

I wish to be making the most of this short time home, and I am.

And I wish to be deliberate in TRUSTING GOD in this very unstable season.  

Just in the last week that I have had the aforementioned GPS, He's put a very practical object lesson of trust on my heart, and here's where it hems in:  The very things that were so difficult and bothered me a few days ago have become sweet.

I didn't LIKE not being able to rely on myself.

I do not LIKE that my brain doesn't do direction.

I didn't LIKE not being told the next 10 steps. 

I didn't LIKE letting go of so much control.

But now that I know from experience I can trust the silly little thing, I feel a freedom that I haven't felt behind the wheel in years.  Like, NO WORRY about what will happen if I get lost.  NO CONCERN about how to get the next place.  NO FRUSTRATION over how easily I get turned around and how I can't find my way out.

Listen.  I KNOW from experience, from the Red Sea crossing to today, that I can TRUST HIM.

To guide and provide for and orchestrate my life. AND for OTHER'S lives (even harder for me, at times).  

 And if I can push myself, painfully, to LET GO--to accept that I am fully His for His glory and that HE HAS GOT THIS, that He is in it, that HE is STILL GOD--then I can actually ENJOY the journey.

Just as stressful trips have suddenly turned joyfully invincible for me, 

unable to get lost and entirely NON-dependent on myself and my shortcomings,

My life journey can be as well, if I would STOP working through ME and my understanding and START working through HIM and HIS.  

Because 

WHERE, Oh Death, is your victory?  Where O death is your sting? (1 Cor. 15:55)

Because

God doesn't see as man sees (1 Sam. 16:7)

Because

Whoever loses his life for Me will find it  (Matt 16:25)

Because

Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? (Job 38:4)

Because

How much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts?  (Matt. 7:11)

Because

I know the plans I have for you (Jer. 29:11)

I no longer have any reason to be worried, I no longer have any reason to fear, I no longer have any reason to rely on myself and my strength.  

What a gift.  

What freedom.  

What joy.

I wish for perfect trust in GPS...God's Powerful Sovereignty. 

Trust in the Lord with all of your heart

and lean not on your own understanding.  

Prov. 3:5