After several days of different houseguests each day, we're wrapping up such a busy week. The girls are at the Friday Program today, Ben is napping, and mom is enjoying an incredibly rare quiet minute, which sometimes is all it takes for the Lord to increase in volume.
This week we sat late into the night with a good friend we taught with in Haiti, with the grown kiddo of acquaintances from Jersey, with a couple from college now in full-time ministry that I'd never met, with a new friend stopping by just to visit. This week the girls found Lady Jane's long missing glasses, I stood with our weaker-by-the-day neighbor battling throat cancer. This week we ate with the family who was on the brink of losing their son to cancer when we moved to Mississippi, and Tuesday night he ran the house with Ben, the pitter-patter of miracles.
I've cooked and cleaned my heart out and drank good coffee with strangers turned friends, we re-battled the battles and victories of homeschool, I've washed and folded all the clothes, again and again, little missing socks.
There have only been two seasons in my life that cause me to shudder when I see the pictures from the days, when I recall a memory. I falter when I recount or am reminded of the season of mom battling leukemia, of the deep darkness that followed her death, and when a picture surfaces from this past March or April or May, no matter how bright our smiles, I have to look away.
When these precious people of the week ask how the transitions been, how things are, now, I don't even want to think about it. I want to plow forward, because back is just painful. March and April and May were unspeakably so.
When Jonas sends me a picture of all our precious first year students, and I see my Christmas wreath--that extravagant gift from Uncle Don and Aunt Brenda that I cherished and hung so lovingly on our front door all those many year--hanging in the chapel behind them, I feel pain I don't even understand and don't want to reflect on. When I wake up to dark skies and biting wind, I hurt for the continual sunshine and fellowship of home. When January 1st comes and goes without dear friends all bringing us 6 am family-recipes of pumpkin soup, it's not a fresh new year...it's a HUNGRY one.
I wouldn't want to do 2020 again if you paid me a million dollars and a lifetime supply of ice cream besides.
There is one place where I find peace, behind and today and ahead, and it's in His Word. Genesis, I read about Abraham leaving home, and his faith inspires my own. I read about Sarah's bitter laughter, and I join her, and yet then comes her HOPE.
Mark, I read about the hurting, huddling ones...stretching out their painful places again and again to Jesus, and He restored. It was not their circumstance that grieved him, for the circumstances He easily changed again and again. "He was grieved at the hardness of their hearts", and so all my hurting places I need not hide. I need not bury the circumstances and million weaknesses that pain me, but I will keep on holding them out there...in being outstretched to Jesus, my heart can't grow hard even if it tries.
I don't know what all you're going through right now, though heavens, if you're anything like those around me right now, your hearts are heavy. So many nations hurting. So many neighbors. So many friends.
I don't have any answers for you...I'm sitting on the ground too. But man, I sure do KNOW the Answer. May we know Him.
May we sit down among the hurting, may we find weakness all within and around us, for it keeps our hearts soft and hungry. And while we may be bearing wounds that are not yet scars, may we keep on reaching out for His hem, for His hand, for even His shadow, to the one who is no stranger to our pain, for He was there. For He is Here.
He is here, friends, healing in His hands-not-short.
Those dark places before, He was there and is still at work there. Keep your heart soft...may He work there, still!
Those dark roads we may be walking NOW, we cannot forget that He is walking too.
May we never mourn as those who have no Hope.
Hold on, friends. Hold on.
We're gonna know when He's finished...and it's not today.
❤️❤️❤️
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