Ugly Beautiful

Conference weekend can be full of excitement, but also disappointment. I watched, stunned, as Matt exited early from the pole vault competition - when he could have had a record and a medal - and instead barely placed. I stood rubbing Sara's back as she threw up over and over again after her race, crying tears of frustration and pain and embarrassment. I moved slowly, eager for the ice that would ease the sore achilles, tired and weary and sore, so very sore. I sat with Maddie in her room as her eyes brimmed full about her stress with her boyfriend that had haunted her while we were gone. 

"You would be very ashamed if you knew what the experiences you call setbacks, upheavals, pointless disturbances, and tedious annoyances really are. You would realize that your complaints about them are nothing more nor less than blasphemies - though that never occurs to you. Nothing happens to you except by the will of God, and yet God's beloved children curse it because they do not know what it is" Jean-Pierre de Caussade

This is a hard truth.

Setbacks

Upheavals

Pointless disturbances

Tedious annoyances

I complain about those things. About people not being on time. People not understanding my needs. Poor communication. Lack of organization. Kinks in the schedules. Wrenches in my plans. People intruding on my time, disrupting me, just generally bothering me.

Caussade's quote turns bitter as I turn it over in my mouth.

Blasphemy

I, as God's child, curse His will because I do not recognize it.

I am Job's wife, a foolish woman who only wants gifts from God that I like and that seem pleasant to me, and not ones that I cannot understand. I don't want to thank the Lord for crazy head coaches and track meets running late and uncomfortable buses and horrible movies I can't avoid and loud people I don't agree with and friends who are far away.

But His ways are higher (Isaiah 55:8-9). His ways are higher, and His plans are to prosper (Jeremiah 29:11) and He is making all things work together for my good (Romans 8:28). All things, all good, all the time.

And again, I remember Job. The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be His name.

Can that really be true?

Can I live like it is?

"That Serpent, he's slithered with the lie that God doesn't give good but gives rocks in the mouth, leaves us to starve empty in the wilderness and we'll just have to take lessons from Satan on how to take the stones of the careless God and make them into bread to feed our own hungry souls...{But the Son of God says} there is only one way to live full and it is 'by every word that comes from the mouth of God' ...And it's the Word of God that turns the rocks in the mouth to loaves on the tongue. That fills our emptiness with the true and real good, that makes the eyes see, the body full of light" Ann Voskamp

The promises of God are what turn our ugly chaos into a display of perfect peace and beautiful sovereignty.

God's will is for the ultimate good, and as I learn to love His will, I can be thankful for all things at all times. I can thank God in everything, no matter what the circumstances may be, I can be thankful and give thanks, for this is the will of God for me in Christ Jesus, the revealer and Mediator of that will (my take on 1 Thessalonians 5:18, AMP).

O Lord, let me love Your will. Let me recognize all of Your gifts, even the ones I am least inclined to like. Let me sing praise just as loudly when You take away as when You give. Blessed be Your name.

"One act of thanksgiving, when things go wrong with us, is worth a thousand thanks when things are agreeable to our inclinations" Saint John of Avila

Amen