I have trusted in Your lovingkindness
It came up unexpectedly against my unspoken heart. It is so easy with young kids, with older kids, with no kids, with your husband away, with your husband close, with no husband...it is so easy on good days and bad days and fine days for a question to permeate our souls.
are we truly loved?
A few good disappointments or hurts, especially from those we love the most, or from those whom we are sure should love us, and you start to adjust your reality around the lie that you may not be as loved as you thought...or maybe that you're not loved at all.
And you know what? Maybe we're not. Maybe those we love are going to let us down, love us not, love us short. Maybe they're even going to stop altogether.
But we can trust in His lovingkindness. We can trust in His unfailing love.
And HIS love, never ending, never slowing, never disappointing, never half-hearted, never absent, never conditional...that's a love we can trust in. Count on. Experience.
Being faithfully and intimately loved by the Almighty God is truth. And enough. I'm so thankful!
After marveling through a few Psalms, we went to visit some good friends yesterday afternoon...because with NO visitors for dinner and NO French lessons for school, one of the things we love about summer is extra time with friends.
Both girls voted for Shayla's house, and every time we're there I'm REMINDED of His unfailing love.
Because the Joseph family loves Him, and He cares for them, and through His love they love us well...never treating us like visitors or foreigners, but loving us for us, secure as they are in who they are in Christ.
When we got there, Florina was pouring over rice Jean-Sius just brought in the from the fields...sifting out chaff, picking out tiny rocks, and struggling with her failing eyesight to do so.
Lily was thrilled to jump in, and the best part was listening to the two of them chatting away about school and the gardens and the pets while they worked.
Eventually Sofie and Nora got in, too..at which point we weren't as helpful :)
Finally, Nora got put on can to watch away from touching distance, and she did so quite happily for over an hour!
While Florina worked and chattered with the girls, I sat with Jean and Shayla and Naomi, catching up on their lives at school and in the garden and at church, them asking all about my family members by name, joking about all the cultural differences with how everyday life is dealt, talking about boys for the girls and how the weather's been affecting the rice and struggles the church is up against.
Jean Sius, showing the girls his rice fields.
They of course weren't content with the shoulder version for long, and after a bit he pulled on his boots and off the three of them went, the girls coming back a long while later, chattering a million miles a minute about all they saw, and Lily begging to do an "internship" with Jean-Sius this summer :) They were totally caked in thick mud, and as Florina showed them how to draw water from their well and started washing their feet...I was so brokenly loved.
With lovingkindness and joy, Florina washed my beloveds feet as Mary once lovingly washed our Lord's feet, loving us well and practical.
This is what Jesus does, as we trust in His lovingkindness.
He loves us in places we are foreign, meets us patiently in places of need, happily teaches us and uses us when it would be far easier to do it Himself, sends those who owe us nothing to love us underserving...which is true love.
We've very happy to sit on our rusty cans by His feet and experience His lovingkindness today.
have a seat
You are my Lord; I have no good besides You
You are my portion and my cup, you support me
I have set the Lord continually before me
Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
Therefore, my heart is glad
my glory rejoices
my flesh dwells securely.
For You will not abandon my soul,
and You will make known to me the path of life;
In Your presence is fullness of joy;
In Your right hand there are pleasures forever
psalm 16
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