Midnight Reflections From the Yard

I arrived home late tonight to a lot of housework that really needed to be done. As I was scrubbing out and re-organizing the pantry that had dissolved into a messy pile of cans and leaking rice bags and dusty jars of home-canned tomatoes, I needed to carry several bags of trash outside as the clock neared midnight. I just had to pause in the quiet, dark yard.

It's gorgeous out tonight -- the moon is huge and luminescent, shimmering off the pond where Canadian geese will soon be making their home for winter. A few of the tallest trees have lost most of their leaves in the wind of today and yesterday, and their branches stood bare and starkly contrasted against the glowing sky. A breeze whipped my hair around my face, and I stood alive, well, and yes... happy, on the brink of another birthday. Because beyond that glowing sky is the Creator of it all. He's also the Lover of my Soul, the Pursuer of my heart, and His very Presence lives with and within me. He is good, and even when life holds pain and disappointment and often times empty aches, He is drawing my heart to Him - the most valuable thing in all the world and in this life and in the one to come. He is good. Unconditionally. Because I know that, I face another year with joy and peace, knowing that a Good God sees and does all things well.

Yesterday, God was very gracious to me; tomorrow he will be very gracious to me; and the same will be true the next day, and the next day, and the next day, until there shall be no more days, and time shall be swallowed up in eternity. - Unknown, from an old book clipping

Late Night Internet

I rarely get online anymore. It's sad and it's wonderful. After 5 years of spending 2-6 hours a night frantically replying to emails, my life is very different to say the least.

I used to have days at home more frequently when I could spend the whole morning and/or afternoon working through my crammed inboxes, and even squeezing in a bit of "fun stuff" (blogging and Facebooking). And when I didn't have time to catch up online during the day, I'd just miss part of my night of sleep "because things needed to get done" and emails desperately needed replies!

All of those possibilities changed when my family decided to go without internet for awhile as an experiment. That meant my only chances to get online were to run into our little town while the library was open between 9 and 5. (It's not like we live near a town big enough for places like Panera Bread... ) But I'm usually gone doing prenatal and postpartum visits and other work-related stuff from 8 am all the way til.... well, often late in the evening.

Thankfully, I had switched from a cell phone to a Blackberry at the beginning of this year, so checking messages, updating my Facebook status and basic tasks are possible, even when other internet doesn't exist. But, typing long messages is laborious and takes a long, long time on that poor little key pad. And blogging is definitely not possible. I could tether my Blackberry to my laptop, but the cellular service at our place happens to be so poor that it would take forever to load a page.

All this to say, internet is scarce and so is my time to get online. So emails pile up and don't get answered. People re-send them and ask if I received them. Sometimes the length of time it takes me to reply to a client or send them the forms or documents they've asked for is really unprofessional. Blogging certainly doesn't happen. Sigh. Every time I look at my inbox at the hundreds and hundreds of flagged emails and the hundreds and hundreds of unread emails that I DO need to read, I feel despondency welling up in me. I used to wonder how I would ever catch up answering the really important ones? Now I know that will never happen. Perhaps, I dream to myself, I can just keep up with the important ones that are coming in. Well, that doesn't come close to happening, either.

So... I look unprofessional, and important things never receive replies and I miss lots of good opportunities because I didn't even have time to read the email. Blogging doesn't happen.

But life goes on. I keep paddling and paddling, trying to keep my head above water as I catch babies. I love my life. It's just a little too much sometimes!

I was hoping that being offline for the most part would mean more time to spend in quiet, in reading God's Word, and just listening to His Voice. Unfortunately, my midwifery life has become so busy that my time with God has suffered greatly in recent months. I am determined to find a way to make that possible.... quantity, quality time with Jesus.

So, I may be blogging less, because I'm spending my time in the Word when I find a few moments to sneak away into quiet. Or maybe I'll blog a couple of good posts a month because I've actually sat with my journal and Bible for hours and I have stuff that I just have to share. I don't know. But whatever the case, Jesus is what I want and need. And I am pursuing Him, even if the emails pile up worse than ever, and this blog doesn't get touched til next year!

His Loving Heart

Jesus, I am resting, resting

In the joy of what Thou art.

I am finding out the greatness

Of Thy loving Heart...

It's true... when the heart is most broken and bitterly disappointed,
the Goodness and Tenderness of God's loving Heart becomes all the more precious.

Gone Too Soon, Loved So Much....

"Safe in the arms of Jesus,
Safe from corroding care,
Safe from the world's temptations,
Sin cannot harm me there."

I hadn't even announced on my blog that my sister was pregnant.... and now she isn't any more... My first little niece was born on Sunday morning, August 15th, quite suddenly and unexpectedly.

23 1/2 weeks
15 ounces
almost 11 inches

She lived for 9 hours.

Her mommy and daddy (Josh and Jemima) named her Christine Hope as they gave her back to the One Who had made her so perfectly.

The tears have been flowing freely but we're okay somehow, knowing that the purpose of her life was to glorify God. She has done that, and her little self will continue to do that before the Throne of God eternally.

Could we ask anything else of her life?

Faith Does Not Know Why

"Faith does not know why in terms of the immediate,

but it knows why it trusts God Who knows why in terms of the ultimate."

- Os Guiness

Not Called You Say?

" 'Not called!' did you say? 'Not heard the call,' I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity; listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father's house and bid their brothers and sisters and servants and masters not to come there. And then look Christ in the face, whose mercy you have professed to obey, and tell Him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to the world."

- William Booth

The Ultimate Good of the Gospel

The ultimate good of the gospel is seeing and savoring the beauty and value of God. God’s wrath and our sin obstruct that vision and that pleasure. You can’t see and savor God as supremely satisfying while you are full of rebellion against Him and He is full of wrath against you. The removal of this wrath and this rebellion is what the gospel is for. The ultimate aim of the gospel is the display of God’s glory and the removal of every obstacle to our seeing it and savoring it as our highest treasure. “Behold Your God!” is the most gracious command and the best gift of the gospel. If we do not see Him and savor Him as our greatest fortune, we have not obeyed or believed the gospel."
-John Piper

In the Image of God

"God created us for this:
to live our lives in a way that makes Him look more like
the greatness and the beauty and the infinite worth that He really is.
This is what it means to be created in the image of God."
-- John Piper

On Accusing God...

I came across this quote the other day while reading "The Pursuit of Holiness" and found it so thought-provoking that I had to text it to several of my friends who have been living through many of the same things I have been.
It's one thing to say God is right. It's yet another to really feel in the depths of your heart that He IS right, no matter what He chooses to do with your life.

"To complain against God is in effect to deny His holiness and to say that He is somehow not fair and just. It is less injury to Him to deny His being than to deny the purity of it; the one makes Him no God, the other a deformed, unlovely, and a detestable God...He that saith God is not holy and right speaks much worse than he that saith there is no God at all."
~ Stephen Churnock, 17th century

The Real Meaning of Forgiveness

"Forgiveness is me giving up my right

to hurt you for hurting me."

Author Unknown