Lately I've found that listening to God is tough. Well, let me rephrase. In listening to God lately I've found that He's requiring me to stretch and grow in ways I'd rather not. Several years ago the "buzz phrase" for this concept was "get out of your comfort zone." I think it's still thrown around occasionally, but truthfully I never really liked that phrase. Maybe if this were several years ago I'd be telling you I think God is calling me way out of my "comfort zone." But thankfully it's not, it's today. And today, freely admitting I never liked the"comfort zone" phrase (probably because I was called "get out of it" so darn frequently that the idea of even having a comfort zone never made sense to me...hmmm), I'm telling you that listening to God can be tough sometimes.
Though I serve a loving and compassionate God, His world, the broken fallen world that I'm part of, doesn't always provide painless, perfect pictures. Reconciling with that is tough. Sometimes, for me, tougher than listening to God. Some days I just want everything to look beautiful and perfect. But that is unrealistic. Listening to God when I know it's gonna hurt - or when it means I'm going to have to watch other people hurt - is hard. That's what's realistic. And I think it's what I've been avoiding lately. I know the heart of my Father, my true and loving Father, is not for His children to experience pain. But as much as I know that I also know that through the experience of and living in truth and breadth of the pain (whatever type) He teaches and trains us in ways we'd never imagine.
To know that sometimes pain - mine or another person's - is necessary for growth is not easy. Frankly, that kind of information seems unecessary. And it makes it harder. Sure isn't easy to listen to God when He "calls you out of your comfort zone", telling you upfront that it's gonna hurt. But you know what helps? Knowing that His love for you waits on the other end...kinda like a pillow to sink into when it all hurts to much to make sense of anymore. Which to me, is so much more comforting than any ambiguous "zone" anyway.
Just pray that I listen well. To His voice. Not to other random noises in my world. And not to lies I hear. And in your prayers also pray that I would boldly act on and obey what I hear. I think in the near future I might be experiencing some growing pains.
Jeremiah 31:3
Back in college, in 2004 when blogging was hardly even a thing yet, I was here. Blogging before blogging meant anything to anyone. You can look in the archives for my past writings, but it was much more like a journal in the past. When we started fundraising, I messed around with the idea of launching something new for this new phase of our journey but actually hated that idea. I am a sum of all of my life and so much of it is here already. So I'm keeping it here. At least for now.
My main focus these days is blogging about our newest journey into the bizarre and wonderful world of gestational surrogacy. Posts dated 2013 and forward will trend heavily toward that journey. I don't promise everything I write will be about though. There might be other things that sneak in occasionally.
Please come along our journey with us. As the saying goes, "The more, the merrier!"
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