I’m another year older today. And with each year that passes, my birthday becomes less of a holiday and more of a day to reflect and give thanks for all God has done in the past year and years of my life. I’m only just starting year 24…but I could write volumes on all God has done in me in the past year, let alone the past 24 years. So instead today I’m listing the things I’m finding myself grateful for as I reflect on the life God has woven together for me.
Today I’m grateful…
Grateful for family: my parents and siblings, my married-into family, my church family, and my precious little family of my husband, me, and our sweet baby boy.
Grateful for sunshine and palm trees and cool breezes and the time to rest and take care of myself and our house.
Grateful for God digging into the hard places of my heart and making them soft again.
Grateful for truth that keeps me balanced and at peace even when everything around me seems off-balance.
Grateful for milestones (like birthdays) to reflect on all God has done and all the blessings that I so often overlook.
Grateful for an easy stage of pregnancy and the ability to feel more precious baby kicks every day.
Grateful for the ability to fight for discipline and growth in my life, even though many days it feels like I’m loosing the fight.
Grateful for wisdom of godly men and women who speak into my life regularly, either in person or through the blessings of technology.
Grateful for the ability to do work that I love (tutoring) with a steady set of families who I love.
Grateful for the ability to serve and love our community as part of Redemption Church.
…and I’m grateful beyond all else for the blessing of being married to and starting a family with the man of my dreams. When we started dating just eight years ago, I could never have dreamed how many blessings God was bringing into my life by bringing me Travis. And I’m so, so grateful.
Although there is lots of unknown coming up for us, I’m finding that more than ever before, now is the time to be grateful…to be thankful. Now is the time to name the blessings God has given and to trust that He will continue to bless even when we can’t see how.
So today I’m reminding myself that while planning and seeking God’s will are good, so is taking the time to simply see the blessings He’s given right now in the midst.
And as I count the ways I’m grateful, I’m seeing myself as blessed…
{As we enter into a brand new year, I want to share why I think you need to write…or draw or paint or create art of any kind. So I’ll be posting this series over the next week to encourage you to share your story.}
I want to tell you that your story matters…
But not because it’s your story. Your story matters because your story is a part of His story.
Our God is a story teller. Since the beginning of creation, God has been writing the story of the world. It’s a story of love. And like every good love story, it’s filled with rejection, redemption, renewal, sacrifice, pain, beauty, and glory.
It’s a story of God creating life because He wanted to love us. And He has continued to love us even when we’ve rejected Him, scorned Him, ignored Him, fought against Him, and claimed He doesn’t exist.
He loved us so much that He sent His Son to earth to die, to pay the price of our sin and rebellion, so that we could be restored into relationship with Him. He pursued us relentlessly, and He still pursues us today.
And your story…your story is a piece of that story. It’s like one thread in a massive and intricate piece of embroidery. You won’t fully see the role that your thread, your specific color and sheen and thickness and placement of thread, is playing until the end, until you can see the masterpiece from the perspective of the Artist.
Your story is not needed because your words are special or your wisdom is special or you are special.
Your story is needed because it is part of His story and His story shows His power and His love and His glory. And when you share your story with that in mind, we can catch a greater glimpse of Him and the story He’s writing.
He’s writing a million micro stories into one macro narrative that will be revealed in heaven. Each tiny piece of the story, each of our little lives, is a piece of that story meant to bring Him glory.
There will never be enough stories and enough songs and enough art and enough words to express the fullness of God’s glory, so let’s just keep sharing our stories and get as close as we can.
I watched her face carefully as we talked. Watched for tears. Watched for tenderness. She hid the hurt well. I can’t blame her.…her parents’ separation. …the bad test grade. …the insecurities piling on her little, tan forehead.
I never expected this tutoring thing to break me open like this. It’s spilling me out in a dirty mess…showing me the mess of my own heart. It’s breaking my heart over little people and the people that brought them into this world and the pains that fill the broken world we share.
After an hour of pouring out encouragement and lessons and multiplication tables and vocabulary words into her brain, I found myself staring again at her little blond head. And my heart ached.
My heart ached because of the pain she was going through. My heart ached that I had seen only the dysfunction and not the people to love. My heart ached because I had withheld my own heart.
I wanted to cry. To cry for her and with her and over her and over my own brokenness.
And missed opportunities to love sprang to my mind. And the more I sat there in the afternoon breeze and let my heart love her the more it hurt. I hurt for her and hurt for my own hard heart that had failed to hurt before.
Because love hurts. Because love can turn a paycheck into a mission field. Because love shows the beauty in the broken. Because love breaks you open and makes your heart tender. Because love makes an easy job a painful job…a heart-wrenching, tear-enducing, prayer-dependent mission.
Love breaks you open for others, for their pains, for their sins. Because True Love broke His heart and His body for you…for your pains, for your sins.
You can never truly love without breaking open. And you’re never more like Him than when you’re broken open for others.
But as painful as this breaking open is, I wouldn’t trade it. Because somehow this little girl, with all her flaws and quirks, that is breaking my heart is making me whole. Because when my heart is breaking for a person or a situation I can’t fix, there’s nowhere else to turn than to the One who broke His body open for me on a cross.
And He doesn’t fix the pain or show me the answer but He promises me that He’s good. And He points me to ways to love and He holds me tight in those painful, beautiful, helpless moments.
And somehow, the breaking is beautiful. And somehow, as my heart aches and I choke back the tears of this precious, broken little life, I feel broken and whole at the same time, as if in the brokenness, I’ve found my purpose.
My tiny corner of the world doesn’t need me to be a smarter, more professional tutor, it needs me to a broken tutor. It needs me to be a tutor willing to let my heart break over and over and over again for those God has put in my life.
Sister, the world doesn’t need you to be a better, stronger, more confident woman. The world, your bit of it, needs you to be a more broken woman. Willing to be heart broken over the people God’s heart breaks for.
I like to wait for the big moments. The big moment of clarity. The big moment of healing. The big moment of peace…of restoration…of grace.
Because in the hours or days or even months after a big moment, I feel free and whole. But feelings fade even when feelings are based on truth.
And I’m learning there’s a daily part. A part of faith that requires you to take a stand every day, every hour, to live from what you know is true, not what you feel.
And it’s not just faith. And I didn’t realize it till later, but Adam Leviene said it a few weeks ago…“We are all nervous all the time. You know…It’s like part of the job! But to kinda never make anyone believe you are is part of the performance.”
And if a star like the lead singer of Maroon 5 still gets nervous when he preforms for a living, why would any performer think that they hit a point where they are beyond it and above it and good enough to stop working hard? And why would I think that I’ll hit a moment where my faith becomes strong enough that I’ll never have to battle my sinful heart to trust God again?
So often I live for the big moments, holding my breath until they come and I can release and rest. But the moment of great faith or great trust or great peace never lasts.
And I’m left wandering in the moment, wondering how long I’ll have to wait for the next big moment, the next big revelation. But I’m wandering and wondering when I should be running to Jesus. Running to His Word. Because I know and I am promised that there I will find comfort and strength.
Because it is a battle. A battle in my heart. A battle I will literally fight every day…but in the fighting I’ll become stronger because I will realize the greatness of His strength. It’s a daily battle to wrestle my heart to a place of resting in Him.
