weaknesses

Our main man has been sleeping in Lady Jane's easy chair she let us borrow when Emma was born for months now, and after a MRI yesterday the doctor sees no route around posterior labral surgery on Matt's shoulder. Somehow it is scheduled rapidly for Monday, so we are getting ready for him to be one-non-dominate-handed for a 12-week recovery.  Praying this will give him back all the use of his shoulder he has lost these months and a relief from all the pain he's been pushing through!

Last week he moved from his borrowed church office (the man who owned the office building sold it) to Emma's room/now office for the next months, and when the new church build-out is done, he should be almost recovered and ready to move again! 

All the kiddos are busy with school, theater for Lily, horses for Sofie, and gymnastics for Nora and Ben (we told them each one thing plus school plus friends plus church, and we have stuck with it!) There are neighbor kiddos in our house and yard...always...and so friends and creative games (this week Roman soldiers living in the jungle-back-yard trading golden acorns and raising pine-cone chickens) fill all the quiet moments. 

It's a happy house even if not a quiet one, and the Lord has really helped me this season to discern our no's and yes's for the best pace. I'm not saying it's calm, but we are not running ragged, we are having dinner together almost every night, Monday night Family Dinner is sweet, our Saturdays have become a true Sabbath as Sundays are full of beautiful work, and Matt continues to be busy, but HOME every night and present. 

We are in the lengthy process of renewing our fostering license (I cannot believe we've been licensed for two years!) and continue to have our bonus girlies in our lives several times a week. I am incredibly thankful for this, and while nothing has been easy about this ministry, the kiddos are EASY to love, and love is something we have in abundance. 

Matt knew he had the teaching part of pastoring down, but it's been true joy walking together in the pastoral parts. Praying with people, visiting people, having people for dinner...all the life-on-life stuff is so good and rich. I'm thankful for a ministry season I can do with Matt, and he leads the way so well.

The Lord is on the throne. Mighty is His hand.  

I'm more and more convinced that our focus on hiding or overcoming our weaknesses is not HIS. He identified with us in His weakness. We can identify with Him in ours. 

Instead of battling with our weaknesses or resenting them or hiding them, perhaps embracing His grace in them and learning, as Paul did, to be content is His greater work.  Content in our weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities (2 Cor. 12)...sharing them openly with one another...the broken woman blessing Jesus by pouring her broken-self out with abandon upon His about-to-be-pierced feet. 

Perhaps the places where His grace is desperately needed and sufficient for us are the places in our lives that are most fragrant unto Him.  Not the most comfortable places. But the most fragrant. Perhaps our weaknesses are what He can actually USE. Perhaps those are the places He wants us to STOP shielding from one another and instead share. 

That is the Ayars season, this pastoring season, this recovery season. His power poured out in our weakness. Where are you this season? And how can we be praying?

staceyhaiti@gmail.com

Where you are weak, today, may He be strong!