I have to share this song again (below). Tonight, I had dinner with a friend. We spent the evening encouraging each other and swapping our struggles and victories in motherhood and homeschooling, and I poured out my feelings about Sunley’s upcoming Fontan surgery, and my concerns with OUR BACK DOORS LEAKING (another story for another time). I’m in the car afterward, driving home by myself (one of my favorite things to do), listening to worship radio, and this song came on. It has recently become a favorite, and will likely forever be an anthem pointing to this time in my life. The lyrics are perfection, and it so clearly says what I’ve been feeling.

I ended up with tears streaming down my face, as I often do lately. But I find myself frequently crying not because of worry over Sunley or because I have too much on my plate — I keep crying because of this very full (overflowing) sense of joy and gratitude, and a deep frustration that this shell of a body won’t allow me to praise the way I really want to. If I worshipped outwardly the way I feel inwardly, people would look at me like I’m crazy. Unless, of course, they have been there too. We are made to worship — just like the rest of creation, except in a much more connected way. I live in this constantly thin place with Jesus, and I feel so ready to leave all of this behind, if He would just call us home already. The only word to describe this feeling I get when I worship is a yearning for Jesus. And this shell I am in, this world I am in, can only allow so much closeness.

I don’t want to make my 3 year old have another heart surgery. I don’t want to deal with petty issues, like leaky doors and health insurance and LAUNDRY. But God sustains me, and Jesus walks through it all with me. When I dread handing my beautiful girl over to doctors again, to go into an OR again, without me physically there with her, I’m weirdly overcome with peace and a feeling of smallness that allows me to give over control. I will definitely cry when she goes back — I always do — but not just because it’s hard; Because doing something like that feels so close to seeing Jesus actually hold me in His arms.

All of that joy creates this fire in me to serve Him. And I stumble through service, failing a lot, sinning a lot, but I plan to keep trying. When I see something broken, I can’t turn away from it. That’s the whole point of starting the nonprofit that we did. I want to be completely exhausted when I’m old and dying, from all of the, just, trying. The world will still be broken when I’m done with it. But I’ll be deaf from listening to worship music too loudly. Blind from standing in the sunshine without sunglasses (they mute the colors, you know). My back will be hunched over from picking up my babies day after day, and ignoring my scoliosis pain. My face will be totally wrinkled from smiling too much (and the aforementioned sun, of course). My brain will be forgetful from all of the ideas I tried to make work, the memories that were too huge and too many to keep to myself. I plan to be totally spent and exhausted from looking for ways to serve. Lofty goal, and completely unattainable without Jesus. The more I get to know Him, the more I am unafraid to ask Him to make me nothing. More of You, less of me.

Current Goal: Raising money for Texas Children’s hospital — click here to help.