Too Much

I know we are way behind in updates. We feel the tug daily to tell you of our world. The things we are experiencing. The people we are meeting. The relationships we are building. The family that has visited. The teachers in our home daily. The students we are teaching. The athletes we are coaching. The children we are parenting. The marriage we are nurturing. The lives that are changing.

I could go on and on.

But what is overwhelming to me today is that as I scan Facebook, as I glance over CNN.com as I hear from many of you, is that we are all burdened. Here are just a few of the needs that I know of personally:

A friend looses her sister
A man looses his job
A man leaves his job
A wife needs to go back to work
A car needs to be replaced
A new round of Invitro begins
A family moves to a new city
A family hears their adoption is soon
Another family hears their adoption is soon
Someone is struggling with depression
Someone is pregnant without insurance
Someone cannot make ends meet under current circumstances
Someone is struggling with addiction
Someone is hurting from a spouse's addiction
A family is living with their parents
Somebody had a second miscarriage
A mother doesn't know her place in her world
A friend looses her best friend
A deadline needs to be met
Someone needs to loose weight
Multiple families with car trouble
Somebody needs to find a new home they can afford
Many are pregnant
Babies are sick
Babies are in the hospital
A friend looses her job
A friends is paying for her own wedding....

These are all people I know and these are all current and these are only off the top of my feeble brain. There is so much pain, so much struggle, so much need.

I want to remember who God is. His Power. His Glory. His Residing Presence. We are just in process. He is refining us. He is giving us distinctiveness, our identity in Him. I want to be distinguishable from the rest of the world despite what my challenges may be. Beth Moore states it well from her Esther study, "One of God's purposes in this journey is to help us recapture both our identity and identification as His children - not so we can be obnoxious but so we can be influential."

So if you are or if you fit into one of the above burdens, or if like me you feel the weight of the everyday burdens like making another meal when you haven't even cleaned up from the last one or begging your children to take a nap so that you may have a moment to do or to be still yourself...so for all of us, this is my prayer and my song today:

Habakkuk 3:17-19 A Hymn of Faith
"Though the fig tree may not blossom,
Nor fruit be on the vines;
Though the labor of the olive may fail,
And the fields yield no food;
Though the flock may be cut off from the fold,
And there be no herd in the stalls---
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will joy in the God of my Salvation.
The Lord God is my strength;
He will make me walk on my high hills."

A HIGH HILL IN THE JUNGLE OF PANAMA...

It may be a mystery as to why God has given you your burden. Even so, I pray we steward them well.