It's been a while...

Well, it has been a while and it wasn't because I have been busy, out of town, or anything like that. The Lord has been doing His work in my life and daily I have been under His moment by moment prodding in my heart. We've been walking and talking together about the last few verses of the book of John.

I hadn't planned on leaving this book so soon. It took me a year to go through Luke...and here I am at the end of John and the close of the Gospels. I've been walking with the God in flesh for over 3 years now through His Word. I don't want to leave and yet how perfectly Acts wants to welcome me. I felt this way after 5 years in the Old Testament. I was actually anxious about walking with the Man I had only been reading and looking for in the lines of prophesy and shadows and portraits. I was like a girl on her wedding day...about to take hands with her Beloved...whom she had known so deeply and yet taking his hand in a whole new way that day.

So, I have been relishing every single word of the last chapter of John. Making it last. Licking my finger to make sure I taste every last bit of goodness...before I meet my Comforter and Counselor afresh. I know it's time...but I feel like the disciples standing on the mountain as Jesus ascends...gazing up into the heavenlies not quite sure of what is to come. But, I DO know what is to come...

These past few days I have been thinking about blogs...about my blog...and blog reading. As I saw Peter and Jesus and John all together for one of their last times, while Jesus lovingly forgives and embraces Peter. Jesus begins to tell Peter the hard truth about what glorifying God would look like in Peter's life. What road he would walk, the death he would die...how he would GLORIFY God.

And without realizing it, Peter's eyes drift over to the "disciple Jesus loved." What about him? Peter wonders out loud. In the very midst of Jesus reincarnated standing before his very eyes and sharing the depths of God glorified...Peter shifts his eyes and his thoughts to John. What about HIM?

I have done that. I still do that. I see my own journey and the hard, yet wonderful, ways Jesus has allowed me to glorify God...and my eyes drift. They look across the Internet into the home of a family whose adoption seemed to work out smoothly. They see a mother whose creativity flares and her children gleam...and I wonder about HER. I know in my head all the ways God is using this long, windy, and dusty road- life of mine to work all things to good...but my heart wonders about HER. What about her?

Have you been there? Have you taken quiet moments to quickly hear beautiful, God-centered, God-glorifying language from your Savior through His Word and prayers...only to shift your gaze across cyber space to her? To the one whose family seems to ooze with perfection. To the girl who is gifted like you...yet seems to be able to do it better. To the woman whose marriage seems full of kisses, roses, notes, and hand holding...while yours struggles moment to moment just hanging on. What about her, Lord?

Perhaps your gaze is so fixed on her, that the quiet moments spent hearing the woo of your Beloved have stopped all together. Perhaps your heart is so tired of the HERS getting to recline at the table with Jesus basking in the glow of their journey...while you wonder if you ever heard Him at all. While you doubt. While you struggle. While you walk a lonely and difficult road...day, after day, after day.

Days filled with diapers, baby food, nursing sick children, working long hours, crying yourself to sleep...what about her, Lord?

I've been there...still am in some places of my journey. I have gazed far too many days at our long adoption hallway of closed doors wondering if we were just crazy...maybe deaf...maybe both? I have breathed in the glorious moments with Jesus only to flip on my computer to read of another family united. What about her, my heart asks the Lord. What about her?

I find muck and mire in the oddest of places in my heart, do you? How I can rejoice and envy all at the same time...or can I? How I can speak Truth and believe a lie all at the same time...or can I? Odd, isn't it?

These past 10 days, He and I, we've been talking about that very question. We've been walking together in the cool each morning...talking about HER...talking about ME. Talking about my heart's gaze leaving my Savior to fall on a mortal every bit as finite as myself. He's had stout words in response...just as He did to Peter.

What is that to you? YOU FOLLOW ME!

Truth that drives out the lies. Joy driving out envy. Leaving me with a satisfied soul...again.

Isn't it funny that on this Saturday I will join a few other women and sit upon a panel to speak to women's leaders throughout the state of Georgia? My question? What will we say to women when they seek to find their satisfaction somewhere other than God's Word, and find that it won't?

Yes, I am smiling at the perfect timing of my Savior. He speaks to my heart right on time. He makes sure that I remember the muck and the mire in my own heart...before I step up to say anything about theirs. He wants to remind me that I one of  "those women" who have sought after broken cistern to quench my thirsty soul. Yet, He draws my wandering eyes back to His face again...ready to speak Truth. About glorifying God in the long journey. About closed doors that are love letters from the Beloved. About loving others. About drinking deep from the Living Water.

 He wants my eyes fixed on Him, the Author and Perfector of my faith and theirs. To stop looking at her and start LOVING her. Loving her by looking deep into the eyes of my Beloved and see her reflection there instead of mine. Loving her by following Jesus every single moment of each day. By hanging on every breath escaping His lips...as it falls open in my lap each day.

I may visit here again tomorrow with the other side of this verse. More conviction was waiting...but so was restoration, forgiveness, and a journey of glorifying my Savior. Peter...we got a lot in common...praise God!

(If you would like to read a much better blog on these verses please visit this Girltalk pdf. I read this many months before I got to these verses myself...and I have been blessed again recently by studying them on my own...and alongside these godly women. Enjoy... Snare of Compare)