He Made All Things Beautiful In His Time

We're back.  Thankfully, we walked into a quiet clean house.  We only picked up our daughter tonight and left the boys where they were.  I'll see them at school tomorrow.  We're back to the cold...brrr...

Back to picking up the pieces and going on with life.  There is homework, work, Christmas, paperwork, stuff to deal with.  It was a good trip.  It really was.  Crazy busy, but good.

Oh, and thanks to finding a good resturant, I got to eat some of my favorite food.  Stuffed myself on it - twice.  Ahh... mmmm....  My poor husband was shocked with how much I can eat!  I'm this odd mix as an MK, having grown up in two countries and served in three... I have widely different  tastes in food, and rarely get to have some of them.  Now... I am a little frightened to step on the scale.... but it was worth it!

I have to pick up a situation tomorrow that baffles me.  I stand back and watch it and scratch my head puzzled.  I can't figure it out.  But tomorrow, I will again walk into this situation and pick up pieces.  What I will have to say is not what I wanted to have to say for it.  I wanted a different solution, a better choice, but it is not going to work.  So I need to be very careful now not to offend, not to hurt, while sharing the solution that now stares us in the face.  I guess, too, I am disappointed in people's responses, and would love to change it... but I can't.  A part of peace comes when we realize that we can not change people's responses.  We can try to influence, but we can not change others.  We can only make our own choices.  So tomorrow, we begin to talk about our own choices, and sometimes that can sound very harsh.  And yet, I am not harsh... I feel... deeply... but I also know this path.

Yes, work hits tomorrow morning... but tonight the memories still linger... beautiful memories, actually.  I feel a sense of completeness.  Maybe what Alece talks about when she talks about shalom.  Complete, whole.

I'll still sit down and write - maybe tomorrow, maybe later.  I stood there and faced the wall, and many of you stood with me.  And I think the wall has crumbled.  I feel a sense of deep peace.  No longer the shadowy questions.  No longer the frightening dreams.  Substance to nightmares, and they crumble.  They are past, not now.  A deep peace replaces the questions I had about God.  I still have no answers, but a peace.  Isn't there a verse somewhere that talks about when we finally see the one who has terrorized the nations, we will shake our heads and say, "that's it?!  That scrawny, puny, miserable excuse for a person frightened us so badly?!"  I feel like that now in a small way.

"That's it?!"  I don't have to live my whole life in fear of that, in reaction to that... That is it.  And I have been made whole... given peace.

I think when I first talked about it, I drew boundaries around the nightmare.  "This is what happened."  It then changed my feelings to "This is what happened and only this."  The big made small.  Defined like black coloring lines.  Now, when I've been there and walked away, I defined myself.  "I am not just this.  It is a part of me, leaving a scar, but I am so much more than this."  I am.  More than this.  Even this that is part of me is not carrying shame... it is not awful... it is not devaluing me.  It is part of me, and God has made me beautiful - even this.  He has made all things beautiful in His time.

Now was His time.

And I feel whole, happy, content, like Cinderella walking into the ball - the ashes have been washed off, the tears wiped away, and I am dressed in beauty.  Except, unlike Cinderella, when the clock strikes, this dim beauty will fall off and even more unbelievable will be given to me - to us all.  Until then....

Until then... until then, I'll go diving back into that muck at a moment's notice because, unlike Cinderella, I do not want to be the only one chosen.  I want a whole contingent of us washed, whole, and delighted in being loved so deeply.