Content

There is just something special about holding a newborn baby. Friends of ours delivered their first baby over the weekend and I've been lucky enough to have held her twice this week. It's special because they are so fragile and new, so innocent and sweet, so small and helpless. A newborn is only a newborn for a few short, sleepless weeks. A newborn is meant to be held.

God has been attempting to teach me a thing or two over the past year. I have been slow to listen and slow to learn. From the point of deciding we wanted to have children, "more than two" seemed to be the goal. For the better part of a year, this desire for "more than two" has turned into an emotional and spiritual struggle. Mid-winter my soul finally heard God's calling to me: Be Content. That was it. No further instruction.

God intended this to be a comprehensive reform, starting with our desire for more children. Content with our finances. Content with my husband. Content in my job. Content with my children. Content in His provision, His blessing, His calling on my life. Whatever it may be. It doesn't matter what anyone else has or has been through. It's as if God said to me, "I AM the Alpha and the Omega. I AM all you need."

The learning process is tough. I see hope, humility and answered prayer in the good days. I see pride and stress in my failures. What's next is unknown, except that God is Sovereign and Jesus is Lord. So I'll go snuggle my babies, clip some coupons and greet my husband warmly, knowing that God's mercies are new every day.

Very Full

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day with both sides of my family. I still dream about the mashed potatoes... Today I had a very "full" feeling. "The fullness of life" came into being through three avenues:

1 - Even though is hasn't been easy nor always fun, looking back over the past year has showed me how I've become closer to God by allowing him to change what needed to be changed in me.
2 - A man from our church gave me "a little gift" from he and his wife as a way to show their thanks and support for my husband's ministry. I believe this is the second largest "little gift" I have received in my life.
3 - I was reflecting on the previous two items while driving home from grocery shopping. Every branch, twig, leaf, blade, roof, rock and particle was coated with fresh, white show. It was a breath-taking sight.

All I could do was just be filled with a sense of care, contentment and revelation that this is what God wants for me - to stand in awe of him and to constantly give up who I am for who he wants me to be. He made me. He knows me better than I know myself, so who better to entrust with this 'self'?

A friend recently wrote a Facebook note about this idea from a different perspective. He and his wife are in the midst of a difficult time in their lives and at a deep point of brokenness, he wrote: "...what if God gives me such a heart for this lost and broken world that I no longer accept the normal paradigms of pastor but instead become the man that He has created me to be, then what..."

How does this look when I take my head out of the clouds and put my feet back on the dog-hair-covered carpet? Over the past two years, I've been taught about faith and true belief in God, I've been taught some about my role as a wife. So now I'm motivated and encouraged to take yet another step towards releasing who I am to who I am intended to be. But it's still hard to take that first step. Does it ever get easier to say, "I'll change"?