today i will risk being true and authentic with you, not that i am not those things on other days, but it’s important to me that you understand that my life is NOT “just another pretty blog”. if you want a happy go-lucky read today, you may want to move along to the next blog. but if you’d like to, go grab a cup of coffee, make yourself comfortable and see if you can relate.

recently my perspective became a bit skewed. i am sure there are numerous things we could blame it on.  but i was feeling a bit purposeless for longer than is comfortable.  reflecting a little too much on the seemingly unfairness of life. this “being still” thing i committed to at the beginning of the year, was beginning to feel stale. wondering if what i do really matters. after all i am not feeding the poor or helping pregnant teens who have no one. i don’t even support a needy child in africa or serve soup to the homeless down the road. i don’t go out of my way to share the gospel with others except by the living of my life. it’s not that i don’t have the desire… i just don’t do it. at times my world seems small, safe, boring. sometimes i can’t even answer the question “what do you do?” without feeling guilt or insignificance.  is my life making a difference? is it worth it all? so there i was finding myself in the sludge at bottom of the glass… {remember i am a glass half empty kind of person}. i know… i can hear you loud and clear, saying the same things i was saying to me, myself and i. i have no case for whining. i know i am blessed beyond measure. but sometimes my mind and my heart do not understand each other.  just as i was starting to beat myself up for my “mood” and lack of spiritual maturity, i remembered the psalms and how david lost his perspective and found himself in the sludge at the bottom of the glass enough times that God inspired an entire book of the bible telling us about it .  i think the key is that david asked the questions. so i braved to speak just a few of mine and it went somthing like this as they fell beside my tears into the sink and my husband wisely… listened.

me ~ “where’s the reward? where’s the reward for dad?… where’s his reward as he sits or lays silent in a place that is not home? where is dad’s reward for what he has and is enduring? and mom? where’s her reward for sacrificing so much in her life… leaving family and friends behind to serve God beside her husband in a remote jungle village… having to let go of me, her only child, and send me off to boarding school… where’s her reward now as she watches the love of her life slowly disappear… where is the reward? the right answer of course is heaven, isn’t it?  our reward is in heaven. but that seems… do i dare say it?… too simple and of course today it seems unfair. we are all imperfect people living in a cruel world in need of the hope that “fighting the good fight” is worth it. so where is the reward and what does it look like?”

my oh-so-wise husband ~ “ask her” (argh! talk about simple)

so i did just that.