Time To Learn A Lesson

Oddly enough, I'm not loving the blessing that God is giving me.

Here's how it goes. God is blessing me with the opportunity to learn about dependence. Complete and total dependence on Him, that is.

So today as I'm driving home with The Little's from our appointment, I'm wallowing in my own pity party and I'm listening to the radio. People from all across the bottom of the country are calling in and remarking how happy they are to be able to hear the radio station again. They have no power, no water, some are even short of food, but each call was full of praise.

God gets your attention like that.

So I'm praising. I'm praising Him for this next stretch of months that will give me endless opportunity to be dependent fully on Him.

To get to this level of dependence, all my little life security blankets and comforts are being stripped away. Some were slowly being stripped from the time we moved, but I think I wasn't really paying attention.

I know, shocking, me not fully tuned in to the world around me?

Yeah, anyway.

The Mr. will enter a season of work that will include much more travel. Not necessarily a bad thing, but a challenge to be sure. In spite of a great marriage, being apart makes me have to be a bit more around here. We're still fully technology connected, but it's different. Unless you've lived the life with a spouse who travels for work, I can't explain it.

When Little Miss came to us about 20 months ago, she was 6 months old. Quickly, we got a picture of how things were going to go in her case and we started to joke that she'd still be in the system and with us on her first day of kindergarten. Off and on we've had different pictures given to us of what would or could happen in regards to her. Today I was given yet another picture. This one has her being a part of the system for at least 12 more months.

Can I tell you that just for a moment, I was standing in a dark tunnel.

One of the boys will have a long season of hard medical stuff in the next year or more. I was not ready to go there again yet. I wanted a longer period of "health" to recharge before going back to that role.

My nieces and nephews seem to have a never ending list of medical and other things piling up on them. Most obvious is Andrew and his cancer battle. We are beyond willing to be anything and everything to them in these years, but it changes things too. My lovely Missy Sissy has for years and years been one of my most solid, stand by, go to sort of people. We live similar lives and she has always been one of the very few that I can call in any state, say anything, be myself fully and still be wholly loved. It is my turn to answer the phone to her calls. I'm selfish. It's hard to be on this side.

My sweet mama isn't who she used to be. Life and age and health and whatever else change a person. I'm old enough and aware enough to realize just how much I have to be standing on my own. But it is still hard and in a way I can hardly make sense of I grieve for something that is lost and I know is not going to come back.

The special ladies I love are still close and still pray on my behalf, but time and distance have again changed things. It's not what it once was. And they are taxed by their own life issues too.

There are always more things, but I don't want to linger in this place. I need to give it words to let it go, but I don't want to stay.

What I'm seeing is that God is taking things and people and comforts and securities from my life to bring me closer to him.

We all have seasons on our knees as Christians. We all have seasons deep in the word. It's just the difference between being in that season because you know it's the right thing to do and being there in pure desperation .

So that's where I'll be, should you be looking for me, down on my knees, praising Him.