if the vision seems slow

No sooner do the kids and I get over the crud that Matt is burning and chills, ending in flu and pneumonia. I cannot remember the last time mama slept through the night! It's been a freezy week of orange juice, clinic/pharmacy runs and Lily getting her driver's license...whew. It's right about now that sick-life feels like it's gonna be always-life :) 

And it's not. 

One of the ways Satan has messed with me most in my life has been suggesting that how it is is always how it's gonna be. Hard places in my marriage...it's always gonna be like this. Deep loneliness, you're gonna be, from now on. Dominating grief and mourning, this is your life. Doubts and failures, injustices and loss that feel a life-time sentence, times of suffering, times of confusion, times I thought I was on His path and suddenly it took a sharp turn...you are alone now.

And I'm not. 

Even in the sufferings and losses and pains that will endure this lifetime will NOT endure, and though we're living in the drop in the bucket, Satan sure convinces us that now is where we'll always be, and now is where we should wallow, throwing in some self-pity to marinate. 

It's not. 

If we're standing today in the living water that is flowing from His throne, eyes on Him with all the saints, then where we are is a moment. These present pains, a minute.  If that water is always renewing, always flowing...if He is doing a work in our days that we would not believe if told (Habakkuk 1:5)...if He is making all things new, then the lie that we're stuck is just that. 

A lie.

If the vision seems slow, WAIT for it, the Lord says to Habakkuk. If you feel stuck, He is not. Be stuck only to Him, and as He moves, so do we. If cycles of grief, of homesickness, of mourning, of shame, of loneliness, or of doubt come, do not lose heart. In Him, we are just never back where we started.  

Psalm 149 uncovered a new challenge for me a few weeks ago and I'm sharing it...Let the high praises of God be in our throats, and 2-edged swords in our hands! (Psalm 149) As we battle where we are right now, it is where we are right now. He is there, too, and we will not be here always. 

Combat those lies with high praise and swords drawn.  It's a fight to believe that how God says it is is how it IS.  And He says the night will be no more...that we will reign with Him forever and ever, that He will be our light. 

Whatever we are facing today...Is He not in it? Is He not in the work of redeeming it? Has He not overcome it? Can He not change it? Is His hand short?

So fight with me.