Expect Beauty

Today had moments in it I wish I didn't have to go through or recall...

Very similar to walking out on a crumbling moss covered log.  You know you shouldn't look down to the 1000 foot drop, but you can't help it. You look down and you nearly die taking in the horrors.  How did you get out on this log, why are you wearing high heels, why is there a patch over one eye?  Could it be any more difficult to get through to your destination? As if the walk to the other side wasn't hard enough but now you recognize your hurdles and handicaps....No one can do it for you...This could get ugly, this is ugly.  I am capable of much ugly.

If I am not crashing from fatigue I am being tossed to and fro emotionally, irrationally.  I went to visit the mother of all mothers today; a rare beauty.  I should have known I was overdone when I felt such heightened reactions to her stories.  She has overcome many obstacles..death and the like.  In the middle of one such obstacle she was getting up at 4AM to feed her kids before taking them to work at the Horse  track. On the way home she delivered newspapers.  She then came home to care for her husband who was dying of cancer and she was off again to pick the kids up by eleven.  I tried to imagine how she managed it all.  I felt mad that she had extra stuff to do while already in crisis mode and then by way of contrast I felt mad that I can't seem to do anything!
  
She had grace for the situation God had allowed in her life.  My view of her situation was cloaked with vain imagination.  I couldn't imagine accomplishing all that in the body I currently have.  My perspective these days seems colored by fatigue and a multitude of sensitivities.  I can barely imagine health.  I am too tired to imagine having responsibilities beyond breathing in and out and loving my husband and children.

I often feel easily irritated and struggle with bitter responses at every turn.  Aside from the "I love you even though you can occasionally irritate me and I you" relationship we all have with our closest relationships.  What I experience today comes from within me.  It is mostly my problem and yet no problem at all.  It vanishes, dissolves and I can no longer remember anything to be angry over but there it is none the less.  unwarranted anger...It's ugly.  It is the reason I need Jesus as my life!

All morning I have felt like my insides were revved up but my shell could hardly sustain it.  I talk fast, think faster than I can talk, and can't stay on topic.  I keep reminding myself to breathe deep and slow.  I try to sleep but am too revved up.  My temperature drops and my lovely, darling husband lays with me to breathe for me, with me.  I slept all of ten minutes and dreamed weird things I can't remember.  I cry because my man has to go out to work.  I only sometimes fear him leaving.  It's getting better.  I am hoping to feel better by the time the after school needs demand my attention, love, energy, direction and tenderness.  I hate that I want to bury deep into the covers and hide.

I have to remind myself it is not always like this, I am not always like this...My man reminds me too! I hate feeling like this is me!  I hate feeling so out of control.  Its like no matter how consistently I walk with God there is this raging battle.  Aside from being a "normal"sinful woman, this health thing intensifies and adds fuel to the fire.  God has chosen to not take away the symptoms but He has promised to go with me through it ALL to the other side.
It can be hard to express this to people.  It is hopeful, but it is often not the hope people are looking for.  We mostly look for the removal of the thorn!  Sometimes God heals us that way and other times He heals us by leaving it in.

  What I am looking for is more than the healing that removes my suffering.  It's not that I don't wish for health but I do not place my hope there.    My expectation and hope is for beauty.  Beauty; an internal change of rest, love, peace, that attracts others and glorifies God.  I am not nor will I ever be beauty on my own but Jesus is!  I am in Him, He is in me, and He is my provision of beauty.
Let's face it when we ask for healing we have a 50% shot of getting what we are asking for.  We will either be healed or not, but when we trust Him to make His beauty manifest in us we are assured that we are asking for His will.  It is His will that we be conformed into His image and He will work all things together for the good of that.

He is giving me what I ask for; Himself.
but the purification  is so ugly,
                                   so shameful,
and pulling of the dross so painful,
                                      so humbling.

The outcome, a vessel of honor for His glory.  The cracks I am so conscious of are redeemable  opportunities for His life to spill fourth from.  As is all difficulties.

May His hope, His comfort, His promises, His joy, His love flow from me.