Broken & Blessed

I have been pretty quiet on this blog lately because I have been exhausted. Our baby is still quite sick and after his week-long hospital stay and between sicknesses and around-the-clock meds and daily doctors appointments, we have had little time for much else.

I don't believe God only gives us what we can handle, because then we would never need to reach out to Him for help. This is important for me because I can be quite stubborn and know I need God, but don't always follow through in my life. The more challenging life gets, the more of a reminder I have of all the ways I can still put more of God in my life.

I do believe He gives us the resources and comes to us in people around us though to help us through when we just can't do it on our own.

While we have been overwhelmed with the realm of reality we are dealing with, we have also been overwhelmed (in a good way) with the graciousness of our family, friends and church community.

A ministry at our church I had just begun to get involved with has flooded us with offers to help in all sorts of ways. Many of the families we have never met or are just meeting now.

We have good friends who have been a good listening ear and who do the simple things that don't seem to get done. Thank you doesn't seem to be enough, but I don't think any words really can be.

We also have such a wonderful extended network of friends from the many places we have lived who are praying across the country and world right now, and that brings us the strength to do what we need to do as parents.

I never could have imagined what this year has brought. It has been challenging and a struggle, but we have been so blessed with the kind of community we have longed for and the type we grew up with, it is impossible not to be grateful.

It is humbling to accept help, but when you really need it you have little choice and it is important in our world of always building ourselves up, to be humbled.

One of my favorite praise songs, "Humble thyself in the sight of the Lord," runs through my head. Because without us humbling ourselves, we cannot get closer to God. And if we are not growing closer to God, we are growing further away, which is not the direction I want to be headed.

I read somewhere once when it is too hard to just handle the week, handle the day. When it is too difficult to deal with the day, just deal with the hour. When it is too much to deal with the hour, deal with the minute and if that is too much, deal with the second. It sounds a bit silly, but thinking about that tends to make me smile because even when life is overwhelming, you can at least handle the day, hour, minute or at least second and the rest gets taken care of as it is needed to be addressed.

The greatest graces and gifts tend to come out of the most challenging situations in life - at least this has been my experience in my life - and I pray God will shape me more into the woman, wife and mother He wants me to be.

I am so glad I am a work in progress, because I still need a lot of refining:).