our Comforter

I'm a planner.  Not only for the details, but also for the experinece.

So I had it all planned out that this time out was going to be restful, relaxing, joyful, and that there would be NO stress, NO worry, no frustration, just rest and retreat.

My God is also a planner.

And He often has plans and purposes I have no real understanding of.

And for a few minutes last night, I was feeling pretty frustrated with this reality.

Because we came a long way, and have been in great need of retreat, and instead we are all sniffing and hacking and stuffy and fevering and foggy.  It wasn't supposed to be like this, and this isn't what I need.

And don't you worry, I have told Him.

He has listened.

But while I held a coughing and weepy baby last night, I bounced her behind Janine as she shared her life story, a woman who grew up in a violent day in Columbia, an elderly woman now, pouring out His all and all among murderers and rapists and drug lords in the prisons of Columbia.  And as she spoke on her upbringing, her life as a missionary kid, I was encouraged like I'm not sure I've ever been as a missionary kid mom...listening to Lily and Sofie cough and laugh and giggle in the back room with a group of stranger-women loving on them and painting with them and listening to them.

Janine shakes her finger in our direction and says that our attitudes and lives at home with our children in Haiti will be what drives them for Jesus, what keeps them in the many days they will feel on the outside, not Americans, not Haitians, and as I listen to her, I hope, I hope, I am raising women for Jesus like Janine, for the prisons, if He so calls them, for the sickest, for the broken, for His glory.

As we struggle to get three hacking girls to sleep way past bed time, knowing morning sessions come early, I feel alone and sad and frustrated...we're supposed to be resting and enjoying, not comforting and wiping up snotty noses.

And then I open my phone and see get a ridiculous text from Shelley, complete with a picture of she and Emily jumping up and down, literally, ON our bed at home, and I bust out laughing, because it's a messy life and a stuffy day, and there are still the dorkiest of friends who love us, who love me, who have no boundaries, and their goofy grins bless my heart.  I'm not alone, we're not alone.  There are people in our bedroom.

And as we spend a few hours on a bus yesterday with rolls of tissue paper, I listen to Lily and Sofie giggle and chatter with Elaina and Sophia, their MK buddies from Ecuador, and they are NOT strange and they are NOT TCK (third culture kids), they are buddies who understand and who are randomly woofing down cotton candy and full of BLISS because they are gotten and then GET.

And as they talk I talk with their dear mama, this family God keeps on bringing into our lives, she asks good questions and shares good struggles and speaks into my hurting burdens and lets me speak into hers, because we're all in different places but we've been there and will be.  And we're in countries far and wide apart, in cutlures same and different, but we're the same family for the same purpose with the same Father.

And even now...as Matt is out with the guys for man day to drive fast cars on smooth roads, my littlest finally sleeping in her borrowed crib, Lily and Sofie joyfully in the care of those same beautiful and sacrificial women with their buddies, I take more cold medication and clean up kleenexes from all around the apartment, go to settle down finally with my Bible on the couch...and realize that sometime in the night after I was long in bed, the missions pastor of this mega church, whose wife faithfully cares for their 6 children at home and could no doubt ALSO use a retreat, had slipped out in the night to get us cold medication, and also put two pints of Ben and Jerry's in our freezer.

I know that's a dumb thing to cry over (to you), but it's not.

Because THIS, this passage God has brought me to even now:

"Grace to you 
and peace from God, our Father and the Lord, Jesus Christ.
Blessed be God, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort
who comfots us in all our afflictions
so that we will be able to comfort those
who are in any affliction
with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance,
so also our comfort is abundant throuh Christ.
If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation;
or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, 
which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer;
and our hope for you is firmly grounded
knowing that as you are sharers of our suffering,
so also are you sharers of our comfort."
2 Cor. 1

I daily allow Him to be my stregnth.  But rarely do I allow Him to be my comforter.

I am the one who comforts others, and by today, I'm quite literally at the end of myself...lots of hurting things and places, lots of unknowns, lots of beyond my controls, and even now, even my body has failed me completely.

But frustrated He. Is. NOT. by my insufficiences.  Let down He. Is. NOT. by my weakness.  Incapable He. Is. NOT. rendered by my hurts and sufferings.  

He's simply greater still, full of grace and mercy, knowing the sufferings of my heart and body, and meeting me, my Comforter.  Sending me little miracles, a pint of real ice cream, a few days without dishes, beautiful women and friends for my children, several strangers sharing stories, insights and wisdom that are meeting me and inspiring me and encouraging me literally RIGHT where I am, RIGHT with our struggles.

The places of pain I've been struggling over, He is the sharer of suffering I wasn't letting Him be.

The end place, the weak place, the sick place I find myself in today, I've found Him, too, my comfort.

This may not be where you thought you needed to be, or how...but I promise you He's. right. there.  Right there in the middle, on the edges, before and behind, hemming us in.

So I guess this is just where we need to be, isn't it.