I'm Coming Back For You

The disappointment of plans laid but washed away seems like a rising sea today, this week. The truth of James rings true, that if my mind holds plans I should always say "If the Lord wills..." but my heart aches at the changes, at the unexpected, at the uncontrolled.  Losses and gains, I am like a wooden peg and each gain is uncomfortable and requires the hole that runs through me to be expanded just a bit more and each loss feels empty and awkward, as if something that has been part of His filling has poured out and I must wait patiently for my senses to adjust to the loss or until He decides to place something else there, trusting that He is good and faithful and steadfast in His love in spite of my fickle heart.

And while all this losing and gaining happens, the peg must keep rolling.  The daily work is still present, my daily need to be pointed back to the true filling with His love still glaringly obvious.  In the midst of it all, I long to be poured out and spent in experiencing and overflowing with the love of Christ to those all around me [Is this what the pouring out feels like, this gaining and losing?  I think it is]; to my husband, my now and future children- all of them, including ones that I haven't carried in my womb.    Does it matter if they ever call me "mom," or sleep under my roof?  I want my home to be where they "live," that is, where they find life and feel life and are alive.  My sweet daughters, who have my eyes, I long the same thing for them - to know the Life eternal and to be a beacon pointing the way on the long road Home. Gains, losses, growth, sadness, joys; there is a season for everything, but as one of the Lightbearers, it is always the season to reflect His light into the dark corners of this world.

We are using the Jesus Storybook Bible in our home for Advent; I learned that if you start at the beginning on December 1 and read one story a day, it ends with the story of the Magi on Christmas Day.  Because the book is so focused on telling the story of Jesus' coming through all of the Old Testament stories, it is ideal for Advent and has possibly been even more meaningful to me than to either of our daughters.  I was reading it animatedly to Adelaide and Amelia yesterday afternoon at lunch and could hardly finish whispering the promise of God to Adam and Eve aloud, echoing the promise to the children of my heart.  But I'll back up a little:

And though they would forget him, and run from him, deep in their hearts, God's children would miss him always, and long for him - lost children yearning for their home.  

Before they left the garden, God whispered a promise to Adam and Eve:  "It will not always be so!  I will come to rescue you!  And when I do, I'm going to do battle against the snake.  I'll get rid of the sin and the dark and the sadness you let in here.  I'm coming back for you!"

And he would.  One day, God himself would come. 

 Maranatha!  Come, Lord Jesus.