Like a Child

"In my weakness I find that Your strength knows no bounds
and in my loneliness I find that the everlasting arms surround me.
And even with this fragile heart I find a place to rest here, safe where You are...

And I am falling into grace again and I am running where mercy never ends;
Lord, I'm learning that Your love can cover me,
You are teaching me what a child is meant to be."
(Kathryn Scott)

"Faith like a child..."  This week has been emotional, to say the least.  I have been tired, which always adds fuel to the abundance of emotions that always runs in my heart and in my head.  I am in Yakima ironing out the final details of our house sale, prepping for the move, etc. and I am emotional.  Just when I feel that my legs are finding a steady place to stand, one more thing comes and knocks me down again.  One thing after another.  Surprise after surprise- and these aren't the fun, wrapped-in-pretty-pink-paper-make-you-smile kind of surprise.  These are the-world-is-tumbling-down-around-me-yet-again!!! kind of surprise.  "Just a season," I remind myself.  "You can endure anything for a season."  Maybe not.  Just kidding.  :-)

I am learning, every day, what this "faith like a child" business is all about.  Learning that everything I need is found in Him.  So, Child, run to Him.  Run like your life depended on it because it does.  He is my oxygen, my steady ground, my hiding place.
 
"O God, You are my God, earnestly I seek You;
my soul thirsts for You, my body longs for You,
in a dry and weary land where there is no water....
My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods;
with singing lips my mouth will praise You....
Because You are my help, I sing in the shadow of Your wings.
My soul clings to You; Your right hand upholds me."  (Psalm 63: 1, 5, 7-8)

It is a season to wave goodbye.  To shake off what is known and embrace the unknown.  Summer, in it's cutoff jeans and straw hat, is slowly waving goodbye to me.  The smell of wheatfields and cut grass, the lemonade and iced tea, the purple haze that colors each evening, the warmth that falls on me like a heavy blanket straight from the dryer...it's coming to an end.  How appropriate that this is the time I am waving goodbye to the city of my youth.  The place I thought would hold Annie's youth.  I love every season, really I do.  But I'm always a little sad to see one end.  Goodbye fresh peaches and cherries; goodbye sweet friends and dear church; goodbye flip-flops and barefeet and freckles; goodbye family I love and family I wrestle with.  Goodbye.

Hello, fall.  Hello Spokane with your beautiful parks and tall pine trees; hello new friends or the possibility of new friends;  hello turtlenecks and falling leaves and the smell of apples and spice and pumpkin bread and school starting;  hello new begining.  Hello new season.  "With singing lips my mouth will praise You..."
Whatever the season.