the Gospel is in the details of life

:: My children participated in Christian Fellowship Academy's annual Grandparents' Day celebration this morning. They did beautifully and-- more importantly-- learned some valuable lessons in the process. I'll be brutally honest about my reaction at times to the attitudes and plain old sin that can rise up when we ask them to step outside the box and do things that are hard for [some of] them: I just want to walk away.

I could do that, you know. Throw my hands up. Say the kids aren't my problem. Decide that whatever it is that's bringing these issues to the surface isn't worth it.

The problem with that is that even if I cushion life for or pass off my children so that I don't have to deal with their sin, the sin is still there.

What a blessing when the junk inside is brought to the surface and I can say with tears in my own eyes as we work through it all, "See? Right there! That's why you need Jesus! That's why we all need Jesus! He came so we don't have to be slaves to that!"

Hallelujah!

:: In our studies at home and with a small literature group that we meet with once a week, we've moved on from our 6 week study of World War I and are beginning a study on the 1920s. I so appreciated studying WWI as it's a time and event in history that I honestly knew only the vaguest things about. That said, I am so glad to be crawling out of the study of war.

War is really awful.

And it's had me thinking a lot since January about how when we make friends with sin, we are at war with God (James 4:4).

Oh! That we would run from sin and turn to Jesus! We can be at peace with God through the Cross.

:: We had the privilege of hosting a guest minister in our home for 6 days last week. We had oodles of meetings, tons of laughs, little sleep, and lots of edifying conversation.

At the end of the visit, he looked me in the eye and said, "Brietta, you are doing amazing."

I knew what he meant, and because I knew what he meant, I felt Jesus in those words.

Because sometimes I wonder, you know?

I mean, I'm doing my best. I love Jesus and I sincerely want to honor and bless Him. But I mess up a lot (just take my word for it) and I often feel like I'm slugging it out day after day, working as hard as I know how to work and wondering if it amounts to anything much as I drop the balls I'm supposed to be juggling and am certain I'm letting people down left and right and consistently realize my priorities are wonky.

His saying that didn't make me feel puffed up. Far from it. Rather, in that moment I almost tangibly felt the Lord's hands under and around and over me. I am doing my best and, yes, it falls so short. But He is strong in my weakness! When I cook that dinner and I feel like a lousy cook and bad budgeter and I'm running so late my poor husband doesn't even have time to eat before he has to head out to another meeting but I do it with a sincere heart that truly wants to glorify God, the Lord is honored.

That is so humbling. And so strengthening. And so what this walking with Jesus thing is all about.

And if right now you're feeling in over your head and barely able to whisper a prayer that somehow the Lord would be lifted up in your life, know this: you keep trusting and loving Jesus, and putting one foot in front of the other in obedience to Him, and He is causing you to be amazing. Not perfect, not altogether together, but a wonderful testimony of His undeserved love and mercy.

After all, that's what amazing is.

:: Elliot is nearing a year old. My baby is growing up. He plays now. He thinks he's funny. His favorite games are peek-a-boo and wrestling with Daddy. He was recently introduced to an old white whiffle ball and it has provided hours of entertainment since.

What a gift he is.

The truth is that before he came, I seriously questioned the wisdom of God in entrusting another child to me. I felt I had just about all I could handle with the five I already had. My brain was getting ever mushier, my energies were spread about as thin as they seemed to be able to go, and my stomach muscles would surely never be the same-- just to name a few areas of me that seemed completely used up.

But I was forgetting God.

I've spent much of the past year holding this little man-child who cries for and wants and needs me-- holding him far more than I did any of my other babies.

And with tears in my eyes, I have on more than one occasion thought, "I wish I'd held the others this much."

Elliot is such a gift to me. In so many ways.

He has helped me see life more clearly: what's important and what's not. He has been a physical expression of a God who knows better than I what I need.

And he has been a beautiful tool the Lord has used to continue teaching me that this motherhood thing has pretty much nothing to do with me and my resources and everything to do with Him and His endless provision.

Thanks, God, for Elliot and for this past year. I am so humbled by Your wisdom and grace in my life.

:: Winter is hanging on with fierce tenacity this year. Twelve months ago at this time we'd already busted out the flip-flops and sunscreen, taken long walks in unusually hot temperatures, plotted vegetable and flower garden work, washed and waxed the vehicle. This March we're hunkering down even deeper into our down comforters and wondering if the pocket-book might be able to handle bumping the furnace up just a teensy bit more?

I am a four seasons kind of girl. I adore and tire of each one in its own right: spring with its promise and mud, summer with its spontaneity and humidity, autumn with its fresh start and ever-darkening evenings, winter with its coziness and bleakness.

Right now?

Yeah... we're living the "bleakness" part.

But my soul is so stirred by the bleakness this year.

Because I know spring is coming.

And there are some things in my life that are far weightier than snow on the ground and freezing temperatures on the thermometer outside-- some things that feel bleak and unending and tenaciously unchanging.

But spring is coming.