Hello again dear friends

I can't believe that its been 4 months of silence from me!

How did that happen?  Where was I?

As I wonder on those words, I realize that its been "quite a year".  Not a year of busyness, commitments, events.  Rather a year of stepping back, sitting quiet, wondering what's next, waiting.  Waiting.

I've always thought of waiting as an active waiting.  I've heard it compared to waiting for a long unseen relative to arrive.  You know, that anxiousness of trying to focus on my quilting as I check the driveway every second or 2.

But my waiting this past school year has been a quiet, "be still and know that I am Lord" kind of waiting.

I'll let you in on a secret.  I'm not good with that kind of waiting.

The be still waiting does not seem to have a purpose to it.  There is no goal.  No promise of finding treasure in the end.

I know.  I was missing something in the verse.  Something important.

(Oops.  How did those cuties get in there?  My youngest four grandbabies.  I know, so cute!)

And God, in His infinite wisdom, said I needed to be still.  I needed to set aside all the strivings of good things to focus--on Him.  For the verse does say, "and know that I am God".

At first I wasn't ready for it.  It took Him 5 months of preparation before my heart could accept the quiet.  I had ignored His leading and prayed, "but what about this, Lord?"  Each time He countered with a quiet, even a longing for me, "Am I not enough?"

Am I not enough?  The great I AM, is He not enough?  Was I crazy! Did He need to ask?  I guess so.

I have always felt that loving my Lord was an agape love, an active love, an I-will-go-to-the-ends-of-the-world-or-die-trying kind of love.

Instead, He has been teaching me that it is a "I-will-go-to-the-ends-of...ME love".  A give it up, give me up, empty me of me, so He could find room in my heart.

I long to jump in and begin banging the keyboard with all the ways God has been moving in my life in the past year.

But not yet. Some of it is still a little raw, painful, tear-jerking. Right now as I remember this year it seems to be about me and not Him.  And I want it to be all about Him.

Thus, I will wait.  Waiting produces patience--eventually.   Perhaps in future blogs I can slowly, bit by bit, explain how He quieted me and prepared me for a season of just Him.  Perhaps.

But coming soon, in this blog near you, a recounting of death, death, life, death, and a love story.  So stay tuned.