In my weakness I am strong,
In my weakness I am humble,
In my weakness I am dependent.
Self-sufficiency is gone…physical strength and ability have come to their limit.
God chose me…a small, weak person to lead 5 strong, beautiful children.
God chose Riah (who through the eyes of the world is weak) to lead our family to transformation.
I sang this line “He chose the weak to lead the strong…” in church tonight…it struck me as though I had never heard those words before, even though I’ve sung this song a thousand times. Does that ever happen to you? The ways of God are so backwards and so mysterious that sometimes I have to really stop and think. This line did this for me tonight.
I think these last 2 months have shown me so much about the strength of Jesus. It has also revealed my total need. I love it and it is so incredibly hard all at the same time. I thought heading into this deployment that I would need to endure deployment. Oh, and 5 kids. But, I sort of forgot about LIFE. LIFE has hit pretty hard…it has been strong. And though I’ve thought many times, I don’t think I can do this…Or, I’m not sure I can handle much more…By HIS Strength and through His enabling, I have and I will continue. I am so okay with being a needy person right now and actually feel like even though this is probably the hardest season I’ve walked through, I want it to continue. I see who God is. I see Him Strong. I see Him constant and unchanging. I see HIM never weak and never failing me…so patient and always drawing me back to Him. I see His heart and I know what He is asking of me right now.
I love my church…tonight I was blessed by the worship–the power of God’s presence…how HE speaks through worship. I love my kindred spirited friend who has started an incredible orphan ministry. I love that Ella and Caleb LOVE to go and be in Sunday School. It is work though. Maija, Riah and I made it through about half of the service with only two potty breaks…then they ran through the lobby for the second half. Afterwords, Maija (who really has no concern for where, when or in front of whom she throws her tantrums) did one with total abandon right in the middle of the lobby. We recovered from that, I organized our parade chasing Maija and Caleb outside. Maija fell and hit her head. In response to extreme pain she does “breath holding spells”. Well, tonight the breath holding went a little too far and she passed out. It’s sort of seizure like and TOTALLY FREAKY!! So, she passed out on my shoulder while my other 4 are ????? By God’s grace another sweet family was there, grabbed all my kids, Maija woke up and we loaded up to go home. I felt a bit traumatized, cried a little, took a deep breath and drove home. God is SO strong. He was there. Even Maija said, “I think God’s angels pertected me when I bonked my head.” Amen.
Tonight after church I laid the Littles down and sat down with the 3 big kids to have a snack and Bible time. We were reading about how much God loves us and how HE wants us to be happy. I asked the kids if they had thanked God today…Ella quickly said, “Yeah, mommy, we said a prayer together down here this morning before you came down the stairs…” I looked right at her, suddenly her eyes and mine filled with tears. She is strong in Jesus. I will keep abiding and pressing on….the fruit of this labor is worth everything I have to give.