Everyone in our home, except Goober has been sick over the past 3 weeks too.... 3 doctors visits, 2 stomach bugs, 2 viruses, 1 bronchitis and a sinus infection makes our cabinet look like a pharmacy. Juggling all that with two working parents is exhausting and makes me thankful for the time that we had with one parent working and one on stand by for life's interruptions.
I've also been dealing with some awful things and finding myself begging and interceding for our friends lately. We know of several couples who have either a)lost their children--one at 37 weeks gestation b) are losing them to cancer--calling in hospice for your 19 month old seems like a crazy nightmare or c)have just given birth to their 2nd child with a rare genetic disease. Therefore every other little thing that goes "wrong" in our lives seems miniscule in comparison and I find myself weepy when one of my three, very alive, very active, mostly healthy children curls up in my lap for another day.
We discussed this question " why does God allow bad things to happen" in Sunday school a couple of weeks ago and it has been constantly on my mind. I've always been taught that God is big enough to handle my doubt and questioning....as long as I bring it before Him and allow Him to grow me through it. BUT, seeing our friends bury their children and BEG God to heal their child of this rare cancer really makes me think long and hard about why He would allow such things. Some words that comes to mind are " interruption" or "defeated". God chooses to interrupt our life so that we will completely lean on Him and choose His ways. He may interrupt it so that we stop and and really analyze our lives and see whether or not we are living "abundantly and full" in Him. He may want us to feel defeated so that we realize He is only one who can and has defeated "evil, sin, satan, death" and run to His arms.
Sometimes I use both of these words (defeat, interrupt) when I pray for people who need The Savior...for some people I see no other way for them to realize their need for Him unless their lives become interrupted, unless their ways and thoughts are defeated or unless they are broken as low as possible before Him. I can remember feeling all 3 of these things after our 3rd adoption. Everyone expects you to welcome this new child in and be nothing but SUPER HAPPY AND SMITTEN with this new baby...and we were. But we were also scared to death of what the birth mom may do (due to our prior experience and knowledge), scared that we could not raise a baby (our first two were 18 months and 6 when we adopted them) and exhausted. We were worried about keeping up with paperwork, how to afford another child, how to introduce this child to our two children without anyone feeling neglected, dealing with the questions and emotions of Goober...in other words our lives were completely interrupted, our plans of being a family of 4 and being perfect active parents were defeated and we were broken (ugly, full of sin and unable to fix ourselves). I remember laying hands on Baby Boy after another sleepless night and begging God to KNOCK THIS CHILD OUT WITH HOLY BENADRYL!!!! I prayed that He would make me joyful in my situation and to see only the blessing....and do you know what? I did...I started singing worship music to him every night as he went to bed and loved that time with him. I started recognizing God's work, not the fears that I had. SO I guess another reason that God allows bad or tough things to happen is also change our perspective...to recognize life's gifts and His blessings.
Anyways, I've had that on my heart and bouncing around in my head for a long long time and it feels good to write it down.
Check out our old lady on the 100th day of school!
No comments:
Post a Comment