What am I going to call this disaster of a post??

I am drinking out of my husband's cup this morning because I miss him. Al's Breakfast. I miss that, too.

If I'd never known the joy of him, I wouldn't miss him. If it weren't for the clouds, would I ever notice the sun?

I nearly dropped my book last night when I read these words, the words that echo straight from my soul and describe my paralysis as God's saint and matron of my household:

I think I can brave this Beauty? Not an empty, tinny beauty but a Fierce Beauty, Flaming Fire who burns through the thick masks and leaves the soul disrobed. I am naked and ashamed. I know how monstrously inhumane I can be. Raging at children for minor wrongdoings while I'm the one defiling the moment with sinful anger. Hoarding possessions while others die of starvation. Entertaining the mind with trivial pretties when I haven't bowed the head and heart in prayer longer than 5 minutes in a week. My tongue has a razor edge and my eyes have rolled haughty and my neck has been stiff and graceless and I have lived the filth ugly, an idolater, a glutton, and a grace thief who hasn't had time for thanks. What am I doing here? I am filthy rags. Is sight possible? I've only got one pure thing to wear and it's got Made by Jesus on the tag and the purity of Jesus lies over a heart and His transparency burns the cataracts off the soul. The only way to see God manifested in the world around is with the eyes of Jesus within. Is that why joy hurts - God stretching us open to receive more of Himself? ~from Ann Voskamp's chapter, What do you want? the Place of seeing God, from One Thousand Gifts, available for purchase here, e-book download here, or audio version here

The verses, the Scriptures that I cannot...cannot...bury or ignore or turn away from or pretend are not True, they echo off her pages and I shudder in fear because I do not want this to be True. I want to be joy-filled and I don't want it to be a matter of contrast, a matter of knowing sorrow to understand joy, or sharing in Christ's sufferings to understand that just in the presence of God, and in a thousand ways in our darkest nights, HE is enough. I want only good, yet I am almost all only bad, and how can those two things live in the same sentence??

Surely, just as I have intended, so it has happened, and just as I have planned so it will stand. (Isaiah 14:24)

Does disaster come to a city unless the LORD has planned it? (Amos 3:6)

See now that I, I am He, and there is no god besides Me; it is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who will heal. (Deuteronomy 32:39)

"Your eye is the lamp that provides light for your body," Jesus said. "When your eye is good, your whole body is filled with light. But when your eye is bad, your whole body is filled with darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is!" (Matthew 6:22-23)

Oh, Father, forgive...Should I accept good from you, and not trouble? (Job 2:10)

I've said it before: cancer loosed the hands that have been tight gripped on everything - joy, sorrow - I wanted control of it all. Cancer teaches you in a way that no pure joy could that you have no control over this life. Do you really think God hands down your blessings and then turns His back when the suffering begins? That this is not also from His sovereign hand?

Instead of closing my fists around my blessings, and closing my heart to the opening of suffering, I have got to get this lesson learned: I am simply a channel for God's glory and I have got to keep the floodgates from slamming shut. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. (Matthew 26:41)

So easy in the newborn glow, the click of the camera stealing moments of joy and storing them for future reference on a dark day.

So difficult when the children scream in the hospital room and their souls are all crazy wild (like children's souls are, like maybe even they are supposed to be??) and I want control of this, too. I just want them to be quiet, serene, and in control.

I don't want the flip side.

I am still flailing, two and a half years into cancer. Thirty-one - almost thirty-two - years into my life. Nine years into my marriage. Eight years into mothering.

I need to learn to be quiet, serene, and in control myself.