Mornings...

This picture was taken in Nicaragua by our missions team last April. This is large compared to the village houses I normally pass by.

I wonder sometimes if I am giving the impression that everything is easy peasy and we are just floating through victoriously. I hope not because I really want to be honest but I also want to be honest while I SPEAK LIFE. I want to be an encouragement not a downer so it's a difficult balance to strike sometimes. 

I often have the thought: What if I was able to wait well, what if I was able to wait with joy, what if I trusted God implicitly through this whole journey, what if we just "did the thing!" That is the goal. I want to set my eyes ahead and walk the path God has for me and do it with joy. I want to pour out everything God has given me at His feet and let Him fill me again so I can pour it again.

I pray constantly to have the right motives, the right intentions and attitudes. I pray to be changed to be more like Christ.

Mornings are my battleground. I wake up in complete anxiety, usually some time between 4 and 5 a.m. This has been the case for my whole journey, starting early in this year when I felt God calling us to adoption and I didn't see how it could happen. I get up and know I'll never make it through the day without God doing serious business in my heart. I have never been so compelled to do anything in my life before this. But in the mornings,  I am completely "in the flesh", completely thinking of everything that needs to change, everything that can't happen apart from God's movement. This whole journey could be marked with the words "helpless" and "hopeful". We are helpless, but we hope in the One who called us that He will do it. 

So every morning I am crying out to God for Him to fill me with hope and courage to walk in faith. I have to listen to songs of praise and worship, I have to read my Bible, I have to cry out to God in prayer. I HAVE to...it is no longer a discipline to try to remember...I can't do otherwise or I will crash and burn.

Oh God, let me journey well. God is GOING to bring us through it. I can journey well or not well. It's about how much I trust God through it. 

Some days I am plugging along, some days I am emailing friends and family to ask for prayer. Some days I have to cry out to God again by noon and again by evening. Some days I ride through in joy, some days I struggle through in sadness. Some days I picture the end, some days it looks impossible. But every day I am walking behind Jesus, every day I am laying down what I want and what my kids want and we are taking the next step and the next...

I am learning to live in the moment. I cannot afford to look ahead or behind. I am here and God is with me. I am learning to pursue Jesus to get...Jesus. I am learning to let Him be enough.

"Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but you. And earth has nothing I desire but you." Psalm 73:23-26