Very Present

The Lord is allowing a challenging season in my life right now. I have two sweet babes, one that is 18 months old and one that is almost three months old. I’ve struggled a lot with even saying that this season is hard because I find myself feeling a lot of guilt for that. These boys are true gifts from God. There are people with their hearts just aching for babies and here I am with two. I also have many friends that have more babies than me and deal with so much more on a daily basis and so saying this is hard makes me feel like, quite frankly, just a wimp.

I honestly am right in the middle of these feelings and I don’t know what to do with them all. Many of my prayers lately have consisted of statements like “God will you just make sense of everything going on in my head because I’m too tired to even verbalize it all to you.”

One thing I know, however, is that my feelings just cannot be trusted. I’ve never been more aware of that as I see the highs and lows in any given day. It’s interesting to me, as I sit here and write this out how clear that is and yet in the middle of both boys screaming wanting mommy for hours on end, the feelings seem to be so much more real and present than God is. I read today in Lesson Four of Jesus I Need You, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1). God is very present.

As I’ve gone through Jesus I Need You so far I’ve been made aware of how I think my relationship with Jesus is supposed to look, when in reality, I think it’s supposed to be entirely different. God is very present. This particular season I find myself in is not a “trial” that can be “fixed.” It’s not something I need healing from, it’s not something I need provision of. It’s just life as I know it, life as it was given. While I want and love comfort and things to be easy, that would mean not having life as it is right now and I don’t want that, I want my sweet babes, I’m so thankful for them. I’m beginning to ask God what it means to really have a relationship with Him. God is very present. How clear that is as I sit here during quiet nap time and write and think, but what does it look like to have this mind set in the screaming too?

When I sit here, when I stop and really think. Think on this scripture, that God is very present. I get out of my own head. I get out of trying to figure things out, make sense of everything. There’s one focus—this scripture telling me that God is very present. I step out of my world and think on things of God. I think on the unseen.

“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).

“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:1-3).

I see right now that I have a choice, I can choose to believe that God is very present in the hard things or I can feel the despair when my schedule isn’t going the way I think it needs to, I can feel the hopelessness when he just won’t stop crying, I can feel the guilt at the end of the day when I process the impatience and frustration that I lashed out on my babies, I can feel the pain of comparison when I look at the temporary earthly “hards” of others and think I’m just a wimp I need to suck it up. God is very present. I’m beginning to see how it is possible to “Count it all joy” like James says when hard things happen. I’ve been asking God to help me feel His love for me. I’ve felt guilty even asking Him that question because I know that Jesus on the cross should be plenty evidence, and truly, it is, but in the despair of my earthly mind over this past month it’s been hard to see, but it’s truly in this hard, this difficulty that God is revealing He is in fact very present and right now as I write to you and process through this all for the first time in this way, I do feel His love for me.

Everything still doesn’t make sense, I’ve been asking God a lot of questions lately trying to discern through all my feelings, but one thing I know for sure, God is very present. That’s true, that’s constant, and that’s everything. He is everything.

Life is hard and you may be experiencing something much more challenging in a worldly sense of the word, but the truth doesn’t change. Do you see that God is very present in your hard?

Planted for His Glory