Coffee Break

Let's have a coffee break and chat about the weather and life.  It's fall in Maryland...well, the beginning of it.  It's feeling a little more like fall in Florida right now, very humid but the daylight time is getting shorter.  I'm sitting here listing to Christmas music (The Israel and New Breed Timeless Christmas, one of my favs) and I have a great cup of coffee to my left in my favorite purple bedazzled coffee cup.  My heart is very content at the moment.  My situation is far from ideal, but my heart is content.  Things have happened in the past few months to shake the safety and comfort of my little life.  I can see God asking me will I still follow the call even if it's not easy, even if I don't get my Norman Rockwell Christmas picture life.  You see, it's easy to stay in ministry when you have the safety net of a regular cleaning lady, plans of new furniture and paint, visions of a new mantle built and crown molding installed before Christmas for the family photo...sigh, losing weight and on my way to getting everything I have ever wanted...

Then the first tremor of not getting something you banked on, but it's okay...we can still manage, move into a smaller but newer place, it will all be fine, it will be smaller but at least this time we will live somewhere with a pool, right?

Then the quake of a super drastic change coupled with a constant messages about denying your cross daily...ouch.  The temptation of changing careers to make more money to maintain is high, but I can't do it.  It was so much easier to release everything to God as a single person or even as a married couple with no children, who cares where I live...I'm doing the work of the Lord.  It's not as easy when there is a little one attached to our life that is not our own.  It was always easy to surrender any material dream for myself, but to surrender my mental pictures of the endless cute outfits and shoes for her, new furniture for her room, to surrender the thought of private school and setting her up with tons of resources to be successful in whatever she desires to put her little mind to...that's where it really hurts me.  To see the most hardworking man I know be put through the ringer and there is nothing I can do about it just about kills my heart.  God, you can press me on every side...but I can't stand to see the ones I love the most go through it and there is nothing I can do to fix it, because it has to happen this way.  Is this how you felt watching Jesus get crucified?  I know what we are experiencing is nothing in comparison to that, but can my man get a break?

Nevertheless...sigh...*sipping my coffee*.  I may in a uncomfortable place in my life, but my heart is at peace in this moment.  It may be uncomfortable, but I know it is where we are supposed to be right now and that gives me peace.  I know God is at work in our lives...and on that note, let me get back to work.