The Season of Just Living It Out

When I pick up my pen to write it doesn't always transfer to the keyboard, which then doesn't always transfer to this blog, as the date of my last posting suggests!  But that is okay.  Although I love to encourage others (the main reason I have this account), public view is not the entire point of writing my thoughts down.  "You" reading what God has taught me should really just be the postscript—you know, that which comes only after my act of applying what I am being taught!

I treasure the time I can have in the morning after Kevan leaves for work and before the kids wake up (the latter being especially important)—the sun just rising, coffee in my mug, a warm fuzzy blanket, and me on the couch with the word of God on my lap. I have a little journal that fits in the pocket of my Bible cover that I can pull out and jot down those precious promises or words of exhortation that God speaks directly to my heart.  I write to make His word part of my thoughts.  It helps me ponder it in my heart. It is a discipline that teaches me to treasure the truth!  And I love being able to go back and reference what I have learned.  

But honestly...those kind of cozy mornings are not always a reality.  "Alone time" is a luxury when you have little ones in the house!  I have to be intentional if it's going to happen (earlier bed time for me, breakfast for the littles already thought out, house tidied up the night before, etc), but even when I work hard to plan a quiet hour with the Savior, it only takes a mili-second for it all to fall to pieces. 

My children wake up earlier than normal and just like that, 4 hours later, my coffee (warmed up for the 4th time) is cold and I'm still in my pj's!  And my incredible devotional experience is chalked up to a verse or two!  

These days of parenting, making a happy and orderly home for my darling husband, engaging in the ministry outside of the abortion mill, playing secretary for our ministry, and keeping up with correspondence fills the minutes I used to use filling up the pages of my journal with my pen!  It is the season of actually (and often, only) living out what the Lord is teaching me, not having the pleasure of teaching it to others or writing it down in a cohesive thought.

It is a season that must be embraced with complete acceptance as to its limitations and boundaries.  It is a season the Lord desires for me to live joyfully and with content before my children.

That last paragraph sounds vaguely familiar to my heart—like what I heard back in the lonely hours of my single years.  Yes, those years I felt were plagued with limitations and boundaries. Those days I had to fully accept my situation and joyfully live it out in contentment.  Those years.  Wow, life really just continues to teach me the same things over and over...as if the Lord desires I learn what it means to follow after Him alone.  How thankful I am for His patience and love as I fail to trust Him in my day to day living (the day to day small and sometimes wretched details).  C. H. Spurgeon's wife wisely writes, "Comparatively few Christians put God's keeping power fully to the test.  If we would trust Him for the keeping, as we do for the saving, our lives would be far holier and happier than they are."  

I love having the time to write—I greatly miss all the time I was able to give to preparation and teaching others.  And I look forward to my life re-entering a season that will include these realities once again, if the Lord so wills it.  But that is not what encourages spiritual growth, nor a happier and holier life.  It is the application of those things I learn while sitting at the feet of Jesus—not the expounding upon them.  Whether I have had the richness of leisure before the Throne of Grace or just a few minutes to spend in His word, may God find me living out what I am learning—taking the truth I glean and diligently applying it to my life.  Day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute—from crying baby to getting lunch on the table.  Warming up my cuppa one more time, and displaying what joy and complete surrender looks like to my watching children.