Coming Up for Air

Today the gray skies turned blue, the air was crisp with the feeling of Fall and the leaves are beginning their annual transformation to gold. The day beckoned us to come join in and our beloved lab, River, demanded it! This is the time of year that speaks deep into my soul and right now, to be honest, I could really use a fresh wind.

It is a strange thing to begin writing a blog. I have decided to write because it helps me think and process what is going on in my heart and also because I love to share life with my friends and family. I desire to be connected, but I so often fall short. Moments turn into days and days to weeks before I realize how out of touch I am with myself or my friends or my journey with God. This blog is my attempt to pay more attention to the moments in my days, to the things I believe Jesus is showing and teaching me, and to be more intentional about sharing this journey of life with you.

Hiking through aspen groves we drank in the beauty and breathed in Fall and I realized I was coming up for air. The past year and a half as we have walked through a deep season of grief and loss I have been suffocated by the weight of it all. There have been many days where I thought I would drown in despair, some where I did not even have a voice to cry out for help. Days when I felt forgotten by God and days when I gave up hope. I used to think these emotions were avoidable, that if I just focused hard enough and did the work, I could keep myself afloat. Reality is, this life is filled with both sunshine and rain. Sometimes it rains so hard, you lose your ability to see and hear what is true. And that is ok.
It is ok because there is a God who holds us in the palm of His hand. He never grows tired or weary and He promises never to leave us or forsake us. He holds us through our fights and our fears, not because we deserve it or do what is right, but because He is the Faithful One who loves His children and longs for us to know Him deeply, intimately. This is not a performance, this is a relationship. He will use both the sunshine and the rain in our lives to reveal His heart. I want to learn to embrace both and rest, even in the rain.

As I have come up for air today, I realize I have not done much of anything during this season.
I have been carried.
I have been carried by the love and care of my friends and family, but most of all by my Savior, Jesus Christ. Even when I was believing lies, confused and hopeless, His arms carried me. Looking back I see now, that He wanted me to rely on Him, not on myself. To rely on my Savior.

"We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us..." 2Cor. 1:8b-10

So my friends, rest in the freedom.
The freedom to be weak and frail and afraid.
The freedom to faint into the loving arms of Jesus,
to feel His strength and know His deliverance.

"and underneath are the everlasting arms."
Deut. 33:27

Always.