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.
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