Saturday, May 31, 2014

Thankful and Content

It's been a great few days!  After spending an evening with a group of friends and acquaintances at a celebration and looking back over the past few days, I just smiled to myself.  It is often hard for me to trust people.  I think that might be true of many in ministry.  For me I think it is one of the ways that I try to maintain control and to prevent myself from getting let down by relationships.  Due to some recent hurts, I have been trying to figure out what to do with that because I have been feeling even more skeptical, and I truly don't want that.  I spent today with five of David's friends over playing and celebrating the start of summer while I baked and prepared for a party for a friend tonight.  At the party I sat and enjoyed the company of other friends and my family.  I looked around at one point and just realized how blessed I am.  It's a blessing that someone needed me to help throw a party and trusted me enough to pull it off.  It's a blessing that I had a friend who was willing to jump in and help me do it because I'm not sure I'm trustworthy enough to pull it off by myself.  It's a blessing that I was able to sit down and just enjoy the presence of others.

Then I got home and I was looking at Facebook.  I somehow missed an amazing post that James put up a couple days ago, or at least I didn't read it when I was not distracted because tonight it had a huge impact on me.  It's interesting how God is working on similar things in James's life as He is in mine.  Because of that James posted the following, something I desperately need to hear and remember:

"A huge struggle lately has been getting caught up in the responsibilities and difficulties of life in Haiti. Everything has seemed to leave me entirely spent lately. But God has been hammering me with 2 reminders over the past two days to lift me up. 1) I've got to lean into Him! I'm not pulling off anything good on my own, His will is perfect I only need to allow him to use me and trust him! and 2) I'm extremely blessed, I have a great life, I'm surrounded by great people, the extent of my job is sharing smiles with amazing kids and the God of the universe gave me the greatest gift ever! Focusing on the trials is ungrateful, selfish and frankly exhausting. My God is great and He pours out endless blessings when my eyes are fixed on that fact and my heart has faith in what He is doing no trial can even earn a second glance. Love my Lord and where he has me in life!"

My issue of trying to control things is a problem.  I know that.  I can't tell you that I am going to be able to change that, but I need to continue leaning into God and remembering that I am His tool and nothing more.  And I need to remember that I am abundantly blessed.  I am surrounded by great people!!!  And to top it off, I have an incredible husband and pretty amazing kids as well.  I cannot thank God enough for the many blessings He has bestowed on me!

1 comment:

Gaut4kidz said...

Isn't that just like God to use a chld (even an 18 year old one) to show us truth! I love it!!