::arms length::

i don't know how many of you have ever felt hurt by God...

in all honesty, my time in the Word and my prayer life has been severely lacking lately. its not that i'm angry at God, and really i cant remember the last time i was truly sad about our struggle with infertility... so why has my time spent with the Lord been so absent lately? i wake up longing for quiet time with the Lord, but as my morning progresses, i set aside my Bible and my journal and go along with my day. and trust me, i am reaping the consequences of my lack of time in the Word... i hate being in that place where you know if you spent more time with Christ your heart would look drastically different, but your walk is so dry, and so then you don't have motivation to make effort. its a sick cycle really... and its exactly where the enemy wants you to be.

as we were driving to church the other day i was reflecting on why i was keeping the Lord at an arms length. lately i have loved to pray for others in my life, but have not wanted to trust the Lord for requests in my life. i feel like i've been down that road before, and it is "safer" for me to not open my heart to hope. (by the way, how skewed is that perspective?? :)) a few months ago when i finally hit my anger stage with this whole journey, i was so broken with the Lord. being a person who doesn't really tend toward the emotion of anger, i did not know how to handle myself. so trust me when i say i praise God that he quickly brought me out of that stage in this whole process because i really don't know what i would've done had he left me there for long. but i think it was a stage that i definitely needed to experience. it showed me how quickly i can think i've been given something i don't deserve, right? life isn't fair! why does a meth addict who doesn't even care about her child get to have multiple babies but dave and i can't even have one. listen to that thought... as if i deserve a child any more than she does. in all honesty, we deserve nothing. in fact, we deserve eternal condemnation and hell. that is what we deserve. and the fact that God has given us anything more than that is nothing short of a miracle. we take so much for granted.

but even though i understand all of this to the small degree my brain will allow me to, it still didn't explain the reason why i wasn't letting God in. and as we were driving i realized that i feel hurt by God. as if he were a peer to peer relationship, i feel like he hurt me. now obviously this statement is not true. a wise friend once told me, "the Lord allows for our hearts to break, but he never intentionally breaks our hearts." in the process of our molding, and our journey with God, we will always encounter hardship. the Bible promises us this. but God also promises to always sustain, always provide, always be a shelter we can run into and find strength. always. we so easily allow our thoughts of God's character be based on our surrounding circumstances. and that is the enemy at work. God is always good. He is always faithful. His love never fails. ever. isn't that a sweet promise? let your heart truly soak that in today and forever. believe the best about our Heavenly King! he deserves nothing less.

i'm lovin this song right now. it really speaks to my heart. i pray it blesses yours as well.