*dusts off personal blog*
Hello, dear friends!
I’m home for Tennessee’s first snowfall of the year, and though much of it has melted away already, the rooftops are still snow-covered, the sky is still grey, and it’s that time of afternoon where the sun is golden, peeking through the clouds and shining on snow-dusted grass.
I’m sitting here at the kitchen island with a cup of dark-hot-chocolate (highly recommended, y’all), and it just seems like the perfect time to do some writing that isn’t 1.) for school 2.) for my corner of The Odyssey or 3.) a story (which is currently something of a struggle for me to set my mind to, this writing-fiction thing).
Therefore, the blog, which has been quite shamefully neglected over this break in light of the holidays and moving houses and seeing friends and Netflix and reading fiction again.
So… hello again.
Y’know, sometimes I feel that lately, I only ever write on here when I’m disgruntled about something.
Well, disgruntled may not be the right word here– unsettled, perhaps? Yes. My heart is rather unsettled.
And perhaps that’s true, that I only ever share my writings when they spring from unsettledness, but that’s because that disquiet prompts me to think deep thoughts and ask big questions that don’t come up when life is rosy or too busy for much reflection.
So here I am, drinking dark-hot-chocolate and thinking of things.
Like the way that God sometimes says wait, even when we thought we’d been given the go-ahead and the plans were progressing smoothly.
That’s perhaps the hardest kind of waiting. It’s one thing to wait when you’re on board with it and your heart is contented in that waiting (such as the purity-waiting that He has called me to), but it’s an entirely different situation when you’re dancing through life and then suddenly– you’re brought to a screeching halt that you didn’t see coming.
And it’s not even that the thing you’ve been waiting and planning for isn’t happening at all– it’s just that certain circumstances are out of your control, and suddenly you’re transported (by evil spiders, probably) from Making Progress™ to Back To Square One™.
Initially, it’s very frustrating and upsetting, to say the least.
But after tears are shed, God reminds me that His timing is better than my own.
I’m not the most patient human on the planet (I know this is very shocking news to all of you), and perhaps this is one way of Him reminding me that I am not the one who’s writing this story.
The heroine doesn’t write her own story, after all. That’s the Author’s job. Hers is to live out the life He’s writing for her.
I say that quite often.
I also have to remind myself of that quite often, notably when Important Plans™ don’t go my way.
Everything is going to be okay, even if it doesn’t feel like it initially. Even if resolution doesn’t come as quickly as I’d prefer. Even if I have unanswered questions, even if the fair and just solution isn’t what happens, even if I’ve simply got to let go and endure a bit longer.
One of my favorite verses:
Light. Momentary. That’s all that this affliction is, really. Perspective helps, especially if it’s an eternal one.
And this affliction, this season of waiting that’s going to be longer than planned, it’s preparing me for the weight of eternal glory. If more waiting is part of God’s plan for me, then so be it.
The situation itself is by no means resolved, and at the moment I don’t know what the necessarily-revised plan is yet (which, yes, is unsettling for my Type-A-ish self), but even so… Even so, it is well with my soul.
Because God is still very much on His throne, and life is still so good, and circumstances cannot and should not determine my joy or peace.
“Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.”
{love always, Em}
(Here’s hoping I come back to write some more before I head back to Liberty next weekend. xx)
{A Portrait of Grace} 