Barren and Blessed

Search Me, O God, and Know My Heart To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David. 139 O Lord, you have searched me and known me! 2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. 3 You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. 4 Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. 5 You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it. 7 Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? 8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! 9 If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 10 even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” 12 even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light wi...

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.  - 2 Peter 3:9 I'm going to switch gears a little bit for this post because I want to highlight a contrast in emotions and to show how making use of God's grace and trusting him in all circumstances played out for me. Faith can absolutely be shaken to its foundations, but true faith is kept by God himself and He will never let it fail.  At the time of our second adoption match, I wrote an email to a friend of mine, whom I had been supporting through infertility struggles using my own experiences.  This is the email I wrote to her at that time: "We were matched in mid October and are expecting to meet our daughter when she's born next week! The birth mother and father are amazing people. We have talked to them on the phone, emailed back and forth, and just met them last week. And her family is very suppo...

The salvation of the righteous is from the Lord; he is their stronghold in the time of trouble. The Lord helps them and delivers them; he delivers them from the wicked and saves them, because they take refuge in him. - Psalm 37:39-40 I was still in my pit, desperately trying to climb my way out. I took refuge in my Savior, for a while. And then I got angry. Again all the questions of why this was happening to me, only now with a more sinister hint to my thoughts. They threatened to pull me back down into the abyss. Didn't God care about my suffering? He is sovereign so why was he doing this to me? How could a good God let this happen? Sound familiar? Such common questions. But I was forgetting again that I'm not the center of the universe. Suffering is a guarantee for Christians walking the path of life in obedience to God's word. Intellectually I knew that. I needed to ask myself: How do I measure what is good? Can suffering be good? Suffering exists because of sin, whethe...