Grateful

“Can there be a God? A God who graces with good gifts when a crib lies empty through long nights, and bugs burrow through coffins?  Where is God, really?  How can He be good when babies die, and marriages implode and dreams blow away, dust in the wind?   Where is grace bestowed when cancer gnaws and loneliness aches and nameless places in us soundlessly die, break off without reason, erode away.  Where hides this joy of the Lord, This God who fills the earth with good things, and how do I fully live when life is full of hurt?  How do I wake up to joy and grace and beauty and all that is the fullest life when I must stay numb to losses and crushed dreams and all that empties me out?
-Ann Voskamp A Thousand Gifts

It’s a rare quiet morning.  I am up before everyone else, this doesn’t typically happen.  Most mornings we hear our door swing open and Max will be standing there holding something up triumphantly.  A book he would like us to read or a toy he is ready for us to play with. I usually roll over and hope he will go in his room and play.  I am not a morning person.  I love to sleep.  I haven’t been sleeping lately as my mind won’t shut off.  I can’t stop thinking about Moses.  I have been so focused on wanting him home.  

I wake up out of a dream where we are in Africa just minutes from him but no one will let us see him.  I write this:

To know would be rest for my soul,
To know would be bliss
To know would be as sweet and as soft as a kiss from your lips
To know, oh just to know
But to know would mean
That we wouldn’t need
That we wouldn’t lean
On the All Knowing One
Who brought us here
Who brought us thru
The days of not knowing
And without Him we wouldn’t know you
So we’ll stay in the unknown
Until He makes it known
Or until we have grown
To know Him more
To trust Him more
To let go of our grip
And give up what is His
We’ll stay in the midst
And know His love
It’s more than enough
To get us to
When we hold you

Then as I read the words I wrote, illegibly through sleepy eyes, I realize, He will be enough.  He has always been enough.  If we lose our son, He will be enough.  When we lose jobs, and family members, and dreams.  He is enough.  What a hard lesson to learn.  But what peace it gives.  Grateful. 

Every long hard day has a sunset.  Even the longest winter will melt into spring.

When Max swings that door open and holds up his books to read, and all I can focus on is my sadness and my exhaustion...  inward.  The past week, as God has given me His grace and peace, He has been telling me “The life I have given you now, is enough.”  I heard someone say last week, “Gratitude turns what we have into enough.”   Ok ok Lord, you got me.  My heart could be broken, but I know who’s holding the pieces, and you have still blessed me far more than I deserve. Outward.

  I vow to never forget the peace of knowing He is enough, and maybe that’s all He wanted.  Gratefulness.  This week, as we gather around the table, as we look around at the faces of those He has blessed us with, I will know deep down, that if we lost it all, I would still be grateful.   Because He is truly all I need.