Sometimes you just want to curl up in bed and cry. And sometimes you are so numb tears won't even come.

Tonight I stood alone in my kitchen washing 4 of my china bowls. China that my grandma gave to me. My grandma who was very much like my mother in law, who got along great with my mother in law. My grandma who my mother in law prayed for. My grandma and my mother in law, both women who taught me so much about being a mom, wife and housekeeper. Who were like moms to me in so many ways.

Both women who I've lost.

I washed the china, that I had served apple crisp drizzled with salted caramel sauce to my father in laws new girlfriend to and waited for the tears to come.

But there are none today.

Today I feel almost numb to the pain. Numb and bewildered by the pain and brokeness in the world.

I know God is loving and merciful and full of grace. I know He has a plan. I scream to myself I KNOW YOU HAVE A PLAN! Just show me....help me to understand. Help me to understand why you would take two women who meant so much to me away. Help me to understand how in the midst of grief we now have to deal with a new pain and confusion and hurt and divisions in our family. I DON'T UNDERSTAND.

How can you ask us to give our whole being to our spouse, to be spiritually, emotionally and physically united, completely devoted...loving as You have loved and yet in an instant You can take them away? I DON'T UNDERSTAND.

Now the tears come.

Pain. Fear. Grief. Loneliness. Confusion.

And yet I must stay strong. For my husband who is emotionally drained and is about ready to walk back in the door after hard conversations. For my kids who still miss their GaGa and are confused.

I keep going, and I remember. I remember how in the darkness that was Ukraine when I felt as though no good could come...you brought life from ashes. How after months of praying, when almost all hope was lost...you answered with a crazy plan. How when I though things were irreparable you made beautiful things out of dust. How when you were in the garden, you weren't grieving the loss of life, you were grieving the separation you would experience. That you would experience so through you we would never have to have separation, from You or our loved ones who trust in You.

You can do the impossible and unthinkable and you make all things new. So I wait.

PLEASE come.

There are moments in our lives where God seems to briefly open our eyes to the stench that is the wickedness evil and sin that dwells in our hearts. It seems like we only get a glimpse and then remaining memory of the repulsiveness haunts us for a time. Just the memory alone is enough to prompt us to repentance and further indwelling in His Spirit. Then before we know it the memory fades.

I'm sure if we had our eyes fully opened we would be overwhelmed with despair at the state of our own hearts and sink into a great depression, so only a glimpse is given.

I hate that the memory fades. While I have had many glances of my depravity (and happening to be getting a pretty good look at it currently) I want the repulsiveness of sin to affect me more permanently. I want to be more desperate for Him and His grace constantly, not just a quick pick me up until I can handle it again.

Maybe the problem is less my memory but more my lack of right viewing. The closer we are to the Lord and His glory the more we see ourselves and our hearts as they truly are. Maybe the problem is that I'm not dwelling close enough to his glory.

Either way today I am getting a painful glimpse into my hearts sinful nature. A tendency towards bitterness and jealousy, insecurity and pride. It's not a pretty picture. The most frustrating part is several of these areas are ones that I am continuously struggling with. The enemy is unrelenting in His ploys ton keep me beaten down in these areas as well. yet I haven't figured out his tricks and find myself in similar situations over and over and over again.

I'm so tired and discouraged by it all. I hate the sin in my life and yet honestly it doesn't seem like the Lord is going to get anywhere with me. Sometimes I feel like a hopeless case and one of His difficult children that makes Him want to bang His head against the wall.

Thankfully I find verse like this that give me some hope:

"Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. You will show faithfulness to Jacob and steadfast love to Abraham, as you have sworn to our fathers from the days of old."

Micah 7:18-20

I love the honesty that a relationship and not a religion allows you.

Sometimes I feel a bit smothered in the South. Well, let's be honest...I felt smothered in the Midwest and the North as well. I just put myself out there and apparently that's pretty strange. I don't believe in pretension. Being pretentious isn't going to help me or anyone else.

Choosing to put myself, who I am, what I've been through, what I've struggle with out there will not only build real relationships quicker, it will also benefit those who are in and/or struggling with the same things.

That's pretty rare down here. Thankfully I've found a few people who are willing to make that leap but it's much more common to keep your mouth shut and always be "good" or "fine". To always be polite and act happy even if you feel like your world is falling apart. To never fight with your husband, struggle with your children, or be frustrated with your circumstances. But that's not life, nor is it me.

For instance right now is just a hard period. There has been a lot of loss and death change and frustration in the last year plus. I know mentally that in everything God is working for my good. I know that in my head, but right now it feels awful hard to communicate that to my heart.

I love that when a sermon just rocks me and I start being really honest with God that I CAN. That I can tell Him that right now, all of this...it doesn't feel like love. Loosing my grandma and my MIL in one year, two of the only women in my life that encouraged as a mom, and a believer and in staying at home, that would just let me call and clear my head and be there and listen and give wise counsel....having them gone doesn't feel like love.

Feeling called to place and then to have nothing but frustration and hurt and confusion while trying to serve....that doesn't feel like love.

And then after pouring your heart out about how right now His love doesn't feel very loving and knowing He hears you, being able to fall on Him in trust and faith that every time before you've felt like this He has walked you through it and shown you how it was His love. Trusting that someday it will all make sense and be worth it. Trusting that He's heartbroken watching my tears. Trusting.

Because He who has begun a good work in me will bring it to completion.

Back

Well, I'm back. Not that there is anyone that still reads this...but I think that's kind of why I'm back. And among other circumstances that have changed and are going to change.

It's been just over a year and a lot has changed in that time. You can catch up on some of that if you like by checking out our family blog.

I am not about the business of catching up, or maintaining here. This was, and always has been a place for me to come and mentally vomit all over a page and clear my head.

So let's get on with it.

I think I've been reading Ecclesiastes too much. Life is feeling very much as though there is nothing that hasn't been done. Some days, weeks, months or even years we are painfully aware of the fact that we don't belong here, and life on this earth is just not quite right. Ever. And even in those glorious moments where everything falls in to place and you breathe deeply and try to imprint it in your memory, we aren't experiencing greatness in this life, we are getting a breath of heaven and it's glory.

A relationship doesn't make life right, school doesn't make life right, a marriage doesn't make life right, kids don't make life right, friends don't make life right, and the perfect church (which doesn't exist) does not make life right. We are supposed to ache and long for something more and so God allows us to experience the imperfection in this world leaving us yearning for Him and heaven.

Sometimes I beg for more wisdom and insight to understand and the only answer I get is not here. You can't and won't understand here, but soon my child it will all make sense. I wish I had the faith to leave it at that at stop seeking sense from it all.

How I long for the day when everything falls into place and I get it. No more being in my head trying to solve the unsolvable. It will just all click, and He will be creator, perfector and all knowing. Just as He always has been, only I couldn't see it clearly through the cloud of sin we live in.