gripped.

I'm not sure exactly how to take how HILARIOUS Elisa thinks they idea of us being pregnant is...but since I cannot imagine adding ONE MORE THING to our plate right now, I'll let it slide :)  I'm just thankful Martin didn't take a stab at guessing.

Usually, I use the blog TO process things in my life, but man.  This has been a big process year, and when it's family...whew!  It's been months of processing this post.

Our families have been going through a lot of changes these past six months, which is the same as saying that our families have been going through a lot these past six months without US.

This is incredibly difficult (especially when you are an incredibly invasive, I-will-suffocate-you-with-my-love, no-boundaries-when-it-comes-to-close-friends-and-family kind of person...which one of us is.)

First, Matt's brother and sister-in-law had our adorable baby niece, Lucia.  We Haiti-Ayars call her Luci-Lu.  She is content and knows what she wants...she is so cute and snuggly..she is almost 6 months old...

and we've never met her.

You could know my niece as well as I do, just by Googling their blog.
HEART WRENCHING.

Now, their family is moving from Delaware to Florida, with two little ones, and we are not helping.  In. The. Least.

Then at Christmas, MY baby sister, having just moved from Denver to Philly, (again, without a LICK of our help) tells us that she and Adam are having a baby.  I'm crying happy, I'm crying sad, and I haven't seen her since.  

Lisa has no mom to help her, but she has me.  

And I'm not there.  At all.

And this little miracle is a baby girl.  And she's coming the start of July, and yeah.  I haven't cooked one meal, helped Lee with one thing, gone to any appointment, or even seen a baby bump.

And then there's this.  

That's my daddy.  And that charming, lovely woman he's with?  That is the woman he is marrying.  In May.  THIS May.

Don't they seem happy?  Isn't she cute!?  Isn't it a blessing to see my dad with someone after all of these YEARS?

Yes.  

And I've NEVER MET HER.  

I've never met her.

Here is the girl so anxious to be a part, so hungry to reckless love, so determined to passionately support, and I have NOT EVEN MET or SEEN or BEEN THERE for ANY OF THESE PEOPLE.  MY PEOPLE.

Look at all these happy and rich answers to prayer! 

 that have made me cry at least a dozen times

A beautiful daughter for Matt's family...a new baby in a new city for my baby sister...a wife for my dad's future.

"How do you feel about that?" anyone who has heard the news has asked, and all I know to say is, "About how you'd think!"

My answers to prayer rip my heart out.

I have said so many times that God has given me family here, and OH, how richly He has.

I was snuzzling baby Christie cheeks just today, praising the Lord for family.

But that is NOT the same as "God has replaced my family here."  I still want to be family for our families, too.  And it's awful hard through Skype to be the sister and daughter and aunt and friend that I so deeply desire to be.

And we have prayed, prayed, prayin', and we are right where we are supposed to be.  

So I'm replacing the "How you feeling about all this?" question with Greg's "What is He teaching you through all this?" question.  

'Cause honestly, I don't even CARE how I FEEL.  I'm sick of how I feel.  I need something way more than how I feel.  I can't even keep UP with how I feel (ever been there?).

As I've been preparing to preach in chapel Wednesday (oh yes, again...bweh), so I've been spending all my spare time with Paul,  Jude and with Oswalt Chambers.  They are good men for me to spend time with right now.

I've been studying what it is to DO as we are commanded in Jude 20-21...to KEEP ourselves in the Love of God...to be controlled and compelled, NOT by our own emotions or experience, but gripped--to the exclusion of everything else--in the love of God. 

Gripped like Paul.  Gripped like Jesus.

And it has been balm to my weary, over-emotional, missing out soul.

"In sweat of brain and spirit, work, agonize at times, to keep yourself in the love of God.  It is our wisdom, it is our happiness, it is our security to keep ourselves in the love of God.  

If I wish to keep in the spiritual sphere of the love of God, I must use the great organ of the spiritual realm--faith.

Do not live at a distance from God, MOVE, live near Him, nearer still...delight yourself in Him.  Remove all barriers of selfishness and fear and plunge into the fathomless love of God.  

What ups and downs we experience because we build not on faith but on feeling, on our own work and endeavor and experience and NOT on the finished work of Christ!

We need converting AGAIN.  We have turned our back on the ocean and are looking out over barren colorless hills for the ocean's fulness.  We need turning round, and there basks the ocean's fulness, whose waves sparkle and ripple on fathomless deeps and fulness.  

Drink deep and full of the love of God and you will not demand the impossible from earth's loves...the love of wife/husband and child, of father and friend, but will grow holier and healthier and simpler and grander."  --O. Chambers, The Love of God

Dang it, Luci Lu may not know me.  And I've never felt baby girl kick.  And I have never held the hand of the one who is about to spend the rest of my father's LIFE with him.  

But I can GET CLOSE to Him.  And I can stay there. 

And I can WORK.  I can "build yourself on your  faith, pray in the Holy Spirit and keep yourself in the love of God (Jude 20-21)."  

I can pour out HIS mark even when I can't pour out MINE.

I can trust Him.  

Our family is HIS family, first.  And He KNOWS each one intimately.  I can trust Him.

I can know Him redeemer.  And I can plunge deeply into His fullness...I can accept EVERYTHING that happens as if it were happening to HIM, whether I receive praise or blame, persecution or reward.  I can count it as His grace.  Because it IS.

I can choose, today, to drink deep and full of Him, and grow holier and healthier and simpler and closer.

Man.  It has taken me a few months to get here:

We are here, I am here, and all of this, all of it, is OK and will BE OK and IS OK without me

...simply because I trust Him.

I've got NO other reason.  

And by His grace, He is more than enough.