ENCOURAGE - EQUIP - EMPOWER
IT STARTS HERE.
How do you respond in a crisis? I have always been one of those people who just puts her head down and does what needs to be done. I push through the difficulties, often not stopping to check what I am thinking and feeling. I just do the next thing until the crisis is over! Then when I come out on the other side, I look back and see how God worked in the situation. This tactic is not working too well right now because the length of the “crisis” is so long. It’s been six months of unprecedented craziness. That’s a long time to keep your head down!
I’m about desperate for a visit. No one has come over to my house in what feels like forever. If you came over to my house, I’d let you choose one of my special teas, and I’d steep it in my glass teapot over my tea warmer and pour us each a cup. Then I’d tell you this story of what God did for me during the pandemic.
If you’ve been around church or Christians for any length of time, you may have heard someone say, “Just lay your burdens at the feet of Jesus.” Have you ever really thought about that? The concept sounds great, freeing even. But in reality, what does that truly look like? How do we lay down our burdens and troubles?
A few years ago when I got pregnant with twins, I was so excited at the thought of having not one, but two little ones to love. I thought God was fulfilling my dream of a big family. My two older children are wonderful, but the Lord gave me a desire to grow our family. After seven years of praying for more children, God finally answered me.
In the six weeks following Christmas, all three of my kids have birthdays, which means they receive a lot of presents in a short period of time. After the first awkward incident when my son looked at his grandmother and said, "But that's not what I wanted," we learned to prep them before parties and family gatherings when we knew they would be receiving gifts.
I keep hearing people say “new year, new you!” The problem is, I don’t feel new. The year is barely a week old and I feel overwhelmed and overburdened. I feel like I can’t do even one more thing, that the tasks ahead of me are too many. Work. Home. Friends. Family. Laundry. Dinner. Cleaning. I feel pulled in so many directions that I can’t possibly do it all, like I am not enough. I feel like the needs of those around me are too great. I just can’t do it.
Lately I’ve been asking God for a miracle. Nothing big, nothing particularly life-changing, but one I’m yearning for nonetheless. It’s one of those things that would be against all odds. I’m boldly asking, but then just as soon as I ask, I tend to dismiss the possibility that He will actually do this thing...
I was reading in 1 John earlier and got pricked by, “whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked” (1 John 2:6). This verse has many lessons to glean about living a life like His, but what got me was a literal question. Do I walk “in the same way in which he walked?”
Over the past two years, many events in my life have been unexpected experiences. We were pregnant with twins only to lose them far into the pregnancy. Started a new job to further my career only to realize it wasn’t a good fit. I got pregnant again and miscarried that baby. We started fostering children, and found it to be its own journey down the unexpected.
