Being Grown Up

The last few weeks have been interesting.  I feel like this time of year is one were we should be feeling so much joy, hope and peace.  I'm sure the enemy knows that and would love nothing more to have us all feel anxiety, frustration, worry, and ungratefulness.  So that is what he tries to do...and many times succeeds.  This whole Christmas season (even though I think it technically should be all year long...9 months is how long Mary was expeciting the Messiah...shouldn't we do the same?  Anyway...that's a whole other tangent.)  is kind of like Sunday mornings.  Not every Sunday, but if there is a day Stony and I don't get along, Sundays are it.  My perpetual lateness is at an all time high, my frustrations are multiplied by everything, I rarely hold my tongue, and I am extrememly self-centered...at least Christmas is longer than Sunday mornings so things aren't so pronounced.  But I think Satan would love it if we didn't like Christmas.  This season Satan has been trying extra hard to get me off balance and my heart out of focus. 

Its almost worked a couple times, but unlike Sunday mornings, I'm ready and I'm willing to take a little extra time to work it out.  But just this week he almost succeeded.  I laid in bed the other night, bawling...crying like I have not cried in I don't know how long.  I was crying about everything that was not going good...my friends, the Ludlams and their amazing yet hard adoption, my mom, Stony's job, family issues, which all boiled down to me crying about God's perfect will verses His permissive will.  I was crying, crying out to God saying, "It's not supposed to be like this!  I don't want to be grown up anymore.  I don't like this!  We aren't supposed to be living like this!  We are supposed to be in the Garden!"  In that instant I felt God put His hand on my shoulder and cry with me and very quietly say, "I know.  I know it is not supposed to be this way."  Just that He knows that, made me stop being hysterical.  I still cried, but in that instant, it was different.  I cried becuase He knows.  He knows how He planned it.  He knows how it was supposed to be.  But He also knows how it will be.  He knew when He made Adam and Eve that we would not live in the Garden.  He knew then that He would send His Son to save us.  He knew all that...and He knows all there is yet to know.   And its okay that I'm grown up.  Because even though it is harder than being 8, He is still here with me.

I got a Christmas letter in the mail today and I'd like to share the very end of it.  "And yet through the trials of each day, we know with certainty that the Whisperer still speaks, the Light still shines, the peace and hope of this season are present year round, and our visions for our own lives are as fleeting as the snowflakes that grace our yard.  Life is not punitive but rather a gracious sculpting by a master carver whose every move is specific and intentional and as the new cycle begins, we watch hopefully for a glimpse of the progress He is making in each of our lives."