Do you know that sometimes it scares me to think that soon Trent's pictures are all going to start getting outdated? The other kids will all outgrow him and he will still be twelve years old. Do you know that it scares me that we have already gone through so many firsts~ and one day there won't be any more firsts without him? Do you know that it scares me that if I stop working and writing that one day I just might not be able to go on? That it would mean that I have to come out of my little bubble and face reality.
And then this morning, as I was reading in John 5 (specifically verses 30 and 44) I had to ask myself this question: "Who am I doing this for {grieving, living, obeying}?" Jesus said : "By myself I can do nothing;.... for I seek not to please myself but Him who sent me." "How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God?" Am I living to please God, others, myself?
And then these quotes hit home:
"Before we can be clean and ready for Him to control, self-seeking, self-glory, self-interest, self-pity, self-righteousness, self-importance, self promotion, self-satisfaction, ~ and whatsoever else there be of self~ must die." Leonard Ravenhill
"By nature the throne-place, our heart, is quite fully occupied with self. And self does not want God to rule as king, but only to serve as slave-servant." Rex Andrews
Ouch.
Cole read me the story of Naamen the other day while I was weeding in the garden (see~ science, reading, working all in one!). It stopped me in my tracks in the middle of the beans and made me realize how, like Naamen, I grumble at God's ways. I realized how I had been questioning God and asking (really, down deep in my heart, telling Him that he must have made a mistake, that He could have done it better, that He didn't know what He was doing, just in a very polite self satisfying way) "Couldn't this have been done differently, God? Couldn't salvation have been shown to so many others without taking Trent? Why did it have to be this way?"
But then I realized that it is this way. This was God's way. It is four months later. My whining won't change that, just like Naamen's whining wouldn't change the fact that he had to dunk seven times in that mucky water to be cleansed. That was how God chose to do it. This is how God chose to do this. And like Naamen, I can chose to trust God or not trust God. Who am I to tell the potter how to make His vessels whole?
