HIS plan...

I love my children....but, sometimes I just wish I could be selfish.  As a mom it is easy to get wrapped up in all your children's needs and activities and if you're not paying attention you can completely lose yourself.  This morning I was faced with the decision to be a responsible mom, focusing on what was best for her child or to be selfish and do what I wanted to do.  I chose to be responsible but was feeling a bit bitter about the decision, especially since the "selfish" option was going to church.

Let me back up a bit.  I haven't been able to sit in church and hear a sermon in over a month now due to my children's illnesses and activities.  I know there are alternatives, listening online or spending my own quiet time with the Lord and my bible but I've been missing worship and missing being spiritually fed in church.

Yesterday I had the privilege of speaking to a group of women at a church event.  While the experience was thrilling and terrifying all at the same time it only made me crave being able to get back to church all the more.  Then I came home, back to reality.  My youngest two both fighting something, one teething the other struggling with fluid in her ears.  Not quite sick but not quiet well but both cranky.

So my husband and I weighed our options.  He had to be at church as it was his week to work in the booth and record the service for the website and television.  The timing of one of us going to one service and the other going to another never seems to quite work out so Grandma to the rescue.  She agreed to watch my kids so that my husband and I could go together.  I was so excited! About going to church!

Then bed time came and this whole "spring ahead" daylight saving time business.  My kids are typically really good at going to bed, but not last night.  And my kids are typically pretty happy in the morning, but not this morning.  As my youngest was throwing herself on the floor, throwing about her tenth tantrum I knew I had a decision to make.  Be responsible and put this poor girl out of her misery and down for a nap or be selfish by taking her to grandmas and suffering the consequences later.

To bed she went.  My husband headed off to church.  Grandma picked up my non-sleeping girls and I was left with quiet and another decision to make.  I could pout that I didn't get my way.  I could throw myself a little pity party and think about unfair it all is. Or I could let God speak to me.

I turned on some worship music.  I started with a little Crowder (obvious choice for those of you that know me).

There's no space that his love can't reach

There's no space that we can't find peace

There's no end to Amazing Grace

Then I opened up my email and looked at my verse of the day.

So don't be embarrassed to speak for our Master or for me, his prisoner. Take your share of suffering for the Message along with the rest of us. We can only keep going, after all, by the power of God, who first saved us and then called us to his holy work. We had nothing to do with it. It was all HIS idea, a gift prepared for us in Jesus long before we knew anything about it. But we know it now. Since the appearance of our Savior, nothing could be plainer: death defeated, life vindicated in a steady blaze of light all through the work of Jesus. 2 Timothy 1:8-10 (MSG)

This was HIS plan since the beginning of time. That today, March 9th, 2014 I would wind up sitting in the quiet listening to God speak to my heart. Telling me that there is no place that his love can't reach and no space where I can't find peace and that there is certainly no end to His Amazing Grace.  It was HIS plan  to show us His grace through Jesus Christ.  And because he has vindicated and illuminated my life I should share the good news.  It was HIS plan even if it wasn't mine when I got up this morning.