My gift

Yesterday morning I read this from A Holy Experience.  That’s the name of Ann Voskamp’s blog that is emailed to me almost daily. 

“You don’t get to make up most of your story.  You get to make peace with it.  You don’t get to demand your life, like a given.  You get to accept your life, like a gift.”

That about sums up what I’m trying to learn huh?  I’m doing a pretty poor job of accepting and making peace.  If the lot I’ve been handed lately is a gift, it’s more like a scratchy, ugly knitted sweater that doesn’t fit right, rather than the “how do you know me so well?”-“this is beautiful!”-“it fits me perfectly”-“I love it” kind of gift.  The former gift is annoying.  You’re supposed to be thankful, but you know you’ll never like it.  So you just fake a smile and say “thanks”.  But inside you say, “how could he think I’d like this?”  “What am I supposed to do with this?”  “Doesn’t he know me better than this?”  The problem is that I truly believe Ann’s words are true.  So how do I look at the hand I’ve been dealt and call it perfect and beautiful and trust that He knows me fully in giving me this gift?  I don’t know.  I just don’t know.

(Here I stopped and cried.  But then I sat and thought some more and wrote this…)

I guess I don’t have to be thankful for the fact that we can’t adopt Bella.  I can be thankful I’ve known her.  I can be thankful for what God’s teaching me through all of this.  I can be thankful in the midst of it.  But I can also grieve.  I can be sad and frustrated.  A woman doesn’t have to be thankful that her husband died or that her son was diagnosed with cancer.  But she can choose to trust and be thankful in the midst of her grief and confusion and sadness.  Maybe that’s what it means to accept the gift and make peace with it.