Today marks the end of a long journey or perhaps it's really only the beginning. This very weary soul is looking heavenward this morning, groping for the Rock, hoping my hand is secure on it. I wonder if I really ever know how firm the grip is until the testing comes. So, this morning I am waiting. Waiting for Your answer. Waiting for you to reveal the path you have chosen and decided with all authority and sovereignty. The path that is the highest and best for me...for this family.

I am carried back through this long journey and am left in awe of the refining and teaching you graced me with. Knowing now in this culminating moment, I would go through it all again just to be this close to You. The chance to question and search my thoughts of You, to seek Your meaning in it all. To love Your Word. To deeply understand the condition of my heart and it's desires. All I want is You. I say that with whole conviction and fresh passion, standing firm on these new understandings I have of Your ways. Less of me, more of You. Much less of me....

I don't know where today will take me in Your kingdom. The comfort comes in Your leading, not mine. Years past saw this immature, desperate heart crying out for something You simply did not give. The desire still lays deep there, but the grasping of Your sovereignty blankets it all.

This morning we praise You. In the early hours he and I steal moments to praise, laugh and hold each other up. I teach the three in toe to praise You. We sit together and lift our raw thoughts, fears and emotions to You. We end knowing our future is secure and purposed for Your kingdom. I am secure in Your will. Praise will permeate this morning, it will flood into this afternoon and give it's encore in the evening hours. It gives peace. It gently tends to my mind.

Lord you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.

Psalm 16:5-6

There have been many tears here today, not all mine though. Today my heart, the mother's heart, was wounded and stretched fresh. All three little ones took turn today, emotion pouring out, raw and hurting. I call them all little, although they are not. As day begins, first born stops me at the top of the stairs. He lifts his eyes to mine and I am met with wide, glossed over, brimming eyes, begging for a release, a word, a comfort. We retreat together to solitude and the flood pours hard, proving pain knows every age and this growing son needs confidence giving words to sooth and build up. I can hardly bare his pain, I am so intimately familiar with it. I swallow hard to hold back my own flood. Father help me know how to encourage him. Help him find himself in You.

Hours pass and the chaos of the day has taken over. I am worn low and third born tests to the brink. I deliver harsh words. They sting and do their job. Tears flood, but beyond them I hear the crushing question from the littlest, "what did I do?"

He is genuinely confused. It is my turn now to crumble in tears. How gentle a word he needed, how far from that he received. I embrace him, quietly tear and pour out broken, imperfect love.

Father forgive me. Give me patience and unconditional love for this child.

Dark has finally blanketed. Stars are in their full glory and second born slips into bed beside me. He reveals fears that come at night, trapped deep in the mind. He frets down deep. I comfort and begin to pray aloud over him. One single tear streams down his perfect face the moment I call on Your name. I realize the depth of this fear in him and I weep, understanding what it is to release all emotion at just the mention of Your name. Understanding what it is to need You to rescue down to the very core.

Father protect his young mind from the evil that seeks to devour. Bring comfort to his tender heart.

Our tears reveal our desperate need Lord. This journey is impossible apart from you. Come quickly to us. Grant us Your wisdom and Your settling peace. These children belong to You. Hold them, protect them and sanctify them for Your glory while we wait...

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. Revelation 21:4

Great Expectation.

I find myself thinking long on this lately...thinking deep. He moves through my days doing a work of redefining. The kind that alters mind and changes heart. I have such great expectations of Him. I am not alone. What passionate child of the King wouldn't when all life unfolds in her midst every day?He is worthy of such great expectation. I am waiting. I am looking for Him. I am watching for His hand to move in my life and the expectation of greatness brims over. I sense the check though and hear the whisper. There is learning to be done and so he begins to redefine my simple minded thoughts of His greatness. He asks me softly, isn't everything I do in your life great? Isn't every way in which I choose to move, a display of my greatness? Yes, my spirit begins to nod in understanding. My thoughts begin running and now I ask the questions...is it great only when it has met all my invented expectations? Is it great when it doesn't feel good? Is it great when it simply doesn't look that way to me or to anyone on the outside? In this moment I realize I have put limits on something which is absolutely limitless. A shallow heart and shallow emotions have written this definition of greatness, clothed in feel good experiences and trouble free outcomes. Unwilling to call it great, when in truth, greatness stems from it's very core. I want to look to You with great expectation every moment of my life. I want to look with the kind of expectation that is worthy of the Sovereign LORD of everything. The kind of expectation that this passionate child of the King is privileged to have.

You are redefining what your greatness really is...and I am listening. Boundless and limitless, it is You. It is both Your Being and Your grace poured out on me. I will recognize it all as great, every move of your hand, every loving provision, every pruning and shaping of my life. Every last thing.

I will lift up my eyes to you and I will have great expectation because it is who You are.

Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is Yours.

Yours, O Lord, is the kingdom; You are exalted as head over all. 1 Chronicles 29:11