giving thanks \ thanks giving

Thank you SO much, my dear friends (and you random anonymous readers from Taiwan and Ireland who, according to my blog stats tracker, visit this blog eerily often) for your prayers for me and my family.

As this week comes to a close, I find myself juggling intense joy with brokenness. Joy for myself and my family. Joy for my love of and relationship with the Lord that so sustains and nourishes me when the path I thought I was walking in life takes a sharp detour. Joy that translates into courage: if this surgery is meant for me again, by faith I will navigate it on borrowed strength. This is off-the-chart joy, even for me. I am ELATED that the Lord stepped in to become my strength in the face of a rather daunting series of events. I am joyful that the well I drink from is never empty and that my faith does not depend on me.

But brokeness and fresh bewilderment are also jockeying for position in my soul. Sadness for those loved and cherished ones in my life who do not know the Lord. Who do not know what it is to rest. Who have never tasted of this rich and lasting peace and grace I know. Who do not know what it feels like to reach out in darkness and to feel the grip of the Lord so powerfully yank them into the light. Who seek solace in humanity's hollow answers that pretend to address powerful questions which can never be satisfied by our own limited understanding of the universe and the God who created it. Whose diluted version of "truth" is entirely a fabrication of their own psyche and does not exist beyond themselves. Who do not realize that the very ground they stand upon is quicksand, so deceptively enticing, but - in the end - so dangerously, devoid of substantive truth.

I hurt inside for my inability to share enough with others the real truth, the lasting nourishment, the peace I know. I ache for my own failure and for the barrage of barren belief that exists out there, masquerading as truth. Pretending to be peace. A corrupt, cheap mirage of "faith".

It is a familiar brokenness, I believe, shared by most who love Jesus. I believe with all my heart that we are meant to be transparent - to shine light for a purpose beyond our own. And I yearn to honor that - to fulfill that - to BE that. So why do I instead find myself in tears of inertia, crying for all those I love whose peace and wisdom is as finite and fragile as their own heartbeats? Whose reality exists only unto itself?It is for all those precious people with whom I share this planet that I find myself so keening tonight. I stridently seek to share this gift I have been given with everyone whose heart is open to receive it. To share the source of this peace that passes all understanding. To demonstrate love in it's purest agape form. To point my life's arrow squarely in the direction of Jesus.

I praise God for keeping His promises - again - for never leaving me and for allowing me to dwell in a deeper sense of peace and grace than I could have imagined in this time of scary medical struggle. I pray that everyone could know this hallowed place of grace. I am sure dang thankful I am here. And grateful for every person who continues to keep me and my family in your prayers as we face an unclear path which will involve at least one additional heart surgery. Even my random Irish and Taiwanese blog stalkers...

THANK YOU!