Hope is sewing dress-up clothes for Virginia. Most nights, our family meanders through the nature preserve next to our house while dinner warms on the stove. Eden fills journal pages with new song lyrics, and Bo is learning to read in my lap.
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These are the best of times, tucked inside the worst of times. I’m laughing … a lot. And crying, more than usual. Some days I feel like a teenager again, the rush of emotion leading me, conducting my days.
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And then I remember these emotions are from Him … and for Him. Both. The God who wept made me in His image. And my “unkempt” emotions are my inroad to conversation with Him. If I squelch them, I lose that potential connection … where I come, raw, and … He holds me. If I let them conduct me (believe me, I have), I lose the security of being led by One who sees into me (Psalm 139).
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These are bright and wretched days that hold comparable emotions. (Better named: invitations.) What if at the end of these days we said “oh, then …. spring of 2020 … that’s when I collapsed into the arms of God and, for maybe the first time, felt seen … and held. That’s when I fell in love with God.”