Admiring Grace

Life is about learning, and I love to learn. But I don’t always love life. That’s not to say I’m looking to the grave. No, rather I’m looking at Heaven. Days go by and more people I love now call it home. My paternal grandmother used to say she was lonesome for Heaven – she isn’t anymore. I am though. Not heaven, but Chris Tomlin did a great job leading worship at CHIC 2012 Heaven is something I love to think about, yet try to avoid. I could easily, have easily, spent hours daydreaming about what eternity will be like. How it will feel to sing praises to God as He sits on His throne. Imagine what a picnic with Ruth and Esther would be like. Tried to envision my heroes of the faith gathered around a campfire telling stories of how great our God is. Of just watching Jesus interact with the Father. What I picture is to me so filled with beauty there are tears blocking my vision and a cry choking my throat after having taken five seconds to write about them. “For now we see in a ...

There’s a country song that talks about thanking God for unanswered prayers. I’ve always enjoyed it and looking back on my life I realize so many of my prayers were selfish and I am so thankful they did not come about as I had wished. But that’s not what I’m looking at in this point of my life. Today, well this season, I am looking at the prayers I fervently prayed that have been answered. Beyond just being answered, I even ‘got’ what I preferred. Now comes the second guessing. Should I have fought harder for option A even though I liked option B so much more? Was it because I wanted B that I let A slide by without actually attempting? Gah! This is a fun stage of life. So many choices lie before me like an endless hallway of open doors yet I know that walking through one shuts seven others. What if I don’t like the door I go through? I’ll never know if another door would have been better – not after it’s closed. I did mean it when I said I thought this was a fun stage, terrifyi...

I have learned these past years – well, mostly months – that contentment is not what we ought to seek. To be set exactly as we are is not a helpful venture. We ought to be continuously growing, seeking out what God has for us. They say that change happens to everyone, I am quite sure I have said the exact thing; yet, when it happens to you…it does not seem to matter what others say. The terror is intense. Sometimes, it takes a slap to the face to make a change, other times it takes a cross country move [I got both – within a very short period of time. To be fair, the move has been planned for a few months and it is something I have wanted to do and am enjoying fully; the slap in the face, however, wasn’t picked up by my peripheral vision and did leave a significant welt…]. The past few weeks have been packed with changes. I went from two jobs to zero, the frozen tundra to a town with “Beach” in the name, my family is halfway across the country, and my friend count has significantly...