a love story today

"O God, grant me a faith to be healed, and a faith to be delivered but above all a FAITH TO TRUST. You are not only good but you know nothing else but goodness. I will never taste death because of the life you have given me, hidden in the cross and saturated with your blood. I will only know ABUNDANT life, here and now and later in heaven with you."

This is an excerpt from my prayer journal from about a week ago. Can you believe my dad has already been with Jesus for over a month? It is crazy how quickly sand in this glass timer seeps out while we are living this life, that is but a breath. I am so tired. I mean so tired. I wasn't having serious trouble sleepling until this week. I can't go to sleep at night and I wake up after about three hours. My jaw hurts, abnormally and I feel like I am biting a stick when I sleep and I catch myself clenching my teeth throughout the day. I started praying about all of these things thinking maybe they were symptoms to a greater problem stirring in my heart, and well I just don't know. I think this is just hard. Nothing fancy or poetic, but certainly real...Real pain and sleepless nights that are ever before me. The Lord has been so gentle and caring with my heart. I was thinking about great love stories like Romeo and Juliet and how he would deny everything just to be with his Juliet, for her to really know his affection and loyalty to her. Jesus has been courting me for some time now, pursuing me, not pushing me. He doesn't want my love or tenderness to be demanded and taken captive, or out of obligation in the context of a relationship or contract. I am kind of funny in that I like to do things on my own, submitting to the love of my life, when I am walking in my pride, proves to be a difficult task. The Lord lets me wallow in my sick pride long enough for me to realize that I don't want me and I really just want him. All this to say in a very roundabout way, my heart has become so tender to Christ's sweet love and longing for me to feel safe, comforted, renewed and a strong sense of hope. When I think about all of the complilcated things going on in my life I get overwhelmed, I do not and cannot look at the cover of the box of the puzzle that is my life AND he is putting one small piece in front of me at a time. He has spaced my test out, giving my teacher's patient hearts, and is comforting me in the most specific and subtle ways throughout my day. He is speaking to me through his word, and it is more than just keeping me alive but giving me energy that I know biologically I do not have and my body cannot create. He has been so patient with me... waiting for me, loving me more than his own life, and he believes in me. He believes that I can make it and will be better for it, for that is my sanctification. I love my Jesus and He loves me. I want to share with you the word he gave me this morning, a familiiar verse that blessed me this morning in a whole new way...

Philippians 3: 12-14 "Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. (13) Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, (14) I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."

I pray that we would just LOVE our God and let him deal with the details, submitting to his craft as he writes the details of our life. I pray for an authentic sense of freedom, joy, hope, protection, and peace today that can only come from a pure unadulterous love, the love of our heavenly Father.

I love you all and can't wait until we are all seated at the same banqueting table, I miss you all... blessings