Being allured...

So it is a rainy Monday and Karen Carpenter's voice keeps running through my head. Rainy Days and Mondays.... Working from home these days isn't easy. The kids should be at summer camp outside running around building friendships and exploring the woods. Instead they have two choices: the third bedroom that is currently their playroom or outside in order that I can actually do what I get paid for. After an upset this morning they tend to be doing well, while I am, on the other hand, distracted.  

Distracted by what lies ahead and how things will look. Distracted in constant prayer over decisions to be made and the end of hope deferred, all while trying to remain faithful to what I know God is asking me to do. So I pray. I beg God to remove the distractions from my mind, and yet they remain and I ask why. How long will hope be deferred? How will I know when my instructions to hold tight end? I ask, but really, I already know the answer ... so I ask when, when!? The answer doesn't change: soon. Soon, Ruth. To God a millenia is a mere moment, a blink of the eye. Dear Lord, have mercy because being patient is hard, really hard. 

It doesn't matter what we are trying so patiently to wait for, it will always seem like forever just like those last weeks and days of pregnancy. That time when you can't seem to see beyond birth, even while groaning over a coming contraction. There are quite a few references to childbirth in the Bible speaking of what God is and has been doing since the beginning of time.  

Birth has taught me to ride each wave as it comes and to remain present in His presence. Just as it was with my third birth, when I am ready to head to the tub for relief is when I am told: nope, you're going to have a baby. The hard work of waiting,  the hard work of being present in the moment have all been done, it is bearing down to see the imprint of a foot, a miracle expectant, pushing out on my belly from the inside. It is in this intensity that we know the waiting is soon over and what we have waited so long for has finally arrived, visible to the world. With my own eyes I can now see it, and it's beautiful.  Forget the raging chills, sweats, and shaking of hormone shifts: a new life has begun. 

I guess that's why I have found myself alone in the wilderness with a fly rod in the midst of distraction to seek my first Love. The One who has held me through every pain, every contraction, and every miracle. "Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her." (Hosea 2:14) He speaks quietly to me: Trust the process. Trust knowing that all who seek will find, and all who knock, He will answer. 

Still stirred,

Ruth