His pace

We are safely, sandily home from the beach...none of us ready to leave!  I love that the kids enjoy the beach as much as I do, and that Matt enjoyed the cold beach far more than he enjoys the hot beach. 

Something about the vast, steady, breathtaking ocean makes me feel real and seen and loved and small. For though the Lord is high, He regards the lowly. Psalm 138.  The moment we got there, from the first crashing, chilly walk, I knew it was going to be ok. 

"Of course it's going to be ok," you and I are both thinking. But I didn't realize until then that it really hasn't felt so.

Days of walking the beach and watching the kids play and listening to steady waves and making the space for His voice, this is what He helped me realize: 

When I look at our story and compare it to the perspective I have of the stories around us, it feels like I'm moving backwards while everyone else is moving forward. Like the loads of others are lightening and our loads are piling. Like I should be moving forward but I've got weights on my ankles. When I saw Sofie's crutches sitting in the sand, when I walked miles of beach and step across broken shells and fragments of shells and remnants of shells, it feels like us. Broken foot. Crutches. Hobbling. Fragmented. Not keeping up the way we should be. Not sprinting the way we should be. Moving backwards. Fragmented.

And yet as I walk and pick up buried shell after shell that I thought might be perfect and then never was, He helped me realize that our pace...waiting for a tumbling toddler to catch up and calling to a moody teen to stay together, helping a girl with her crutches and stopping to towel off a dripping kiddo...is His good pace.

Our pace is our pace. Our story is our story. Our story and our pace are HIS story and HIS pace and HIS good.  They are NOT backwards. And if picking up broken people along the way and waiting for broken people to come alongside makes it feel like we're moving in the wrong direction, it's my cultural perspective telling me that, not His.

Walking with broken pieces, clinging to the hem of His robe, I'm walking His pace. He is walking close beside me. 

If I am grieving through grief, if my heart is heavy laden, if I'm hobbling heavy beside him, God is patiently walking with me, not asking me why I can't keep up, not bounding ahead. He is not rushing me to put on my shoes and get in the car. Not pushing me to hurry up and get on with it. He is not asking me why I am not over it by now, nor is He unaware or uncaring of the sheep I'm slowly shepherding. 

He delights in me and sees my broken and heavy places and walks close by me, littering my life still with sunrises and sunsets and broken shells. I can trust in the slow work of God and release the quick and glamorous work of the world. I can stop trying to keep up with the world I think I'm supposed to be keeping up with and just be in step with my Savior, just be deeply rooted in His love.

You can stop trying to keep up with the world it feels like you're supposed to be keeping up with and just be in step with the Savior, deeply rooted in His love.

I am not moving backwards. 

I am walking with Him. And while I am far from a perfect shell, I AM grieving, shepherding, and seeking Him faithfully. 

The lacey lines left in the sand where wave upon wave has reached are etched into my life beautifully. I am not a whole shell. They don't come like that...years of being beaten against the shore. I am just a beautiful one in His hand, one that He is carrying, His pace, His purposes.

Nobody thinks that the mighty ocean should instead be a stream, going somewhere.  Nobody gets frustrated that the waves are coming in and out or moving as much backwards as they are forwards. Instead, we inhale them in, and release them out, seeing HIs rhythm and His power and His beauty and His faithfulness.  

Why do I think that I should be both walking alongside the hurting and broken, both stopping to put my hand on the shoulder of the weary... and also jogging and keeping up with the the world? Why do I think my home and myself and my work and my days and my pieces should somehow both keep up with the world and stay close to Him?

His Word tells us...impossible. 

I guess I was kindof forgetting. 

So grateful to step back, assess, and bring Him all that I have....just a hallelujah...and find it enough.