Ready to receive

Sometimes, when we stop fighting for what we think life owes us, it comes to us. Quietly. Wrapped in plain paper. But it’s exactly what we’ve been needing and everything we didn’t know we wanted.

I feel like I might have just been handed one of those packages from The Gift Giver. For over eight months now, I’ve been in a less than ideal situation. I don’t really want to go into all the negative, self-pitying details. As my wise friend Denny says, “if I threw myself a pity party right now, even I wouldn’t want to come to it.” And his other phrase I’ve grown to love and live by: “whine later.”

For the past eight months, I’ve been doing my best to whine later. That is, focus on what I have to be grateful for NOW. Live one day at a time. Do my best and leave the rest up to God. Pray for God’s will and believe that at whatever point He deems suitable, He’ll provide a way out of this hell hole. And in the mean time, find ways to serve the people He puts in my path.

It hasn’t all been bad. And if I stay where I am, I’ll continue to whine later, write my daily gratitude list, and do all the things I’ve been doing to stay afloat and refuse to give into the tide of negativity threatening to pull me under.

However, the package that fell into my lap this week sure does seem to be a God deal. I’m incredibly grateful for the way He orchestrates tiny moments… and how, when I look back and step back and look at the past eight years, I can see how He has tied together all of those years (some of the hardest ones) into what was inside of that box that he placed into my lap this week.

Regardless of how this all turns out, I’ve got to say that what fell into my lap this week has increased my faith already.

And how much more, I wonder, will I be amazed someday when I go Home and see everything He’s put together for me there, and how He’s strung together every second and made sense of every single wretched thing?