My Portion

I love mornings. I know that puts me in the minority, but I really do. I love silence punctuated only by bird songs. I love crisp, cool air and dew glistening on grass blades. I love watching the sun peek out behind the trees and the way the sky slowly lights from one side to another…

…love it.

Driving into the office this morning, the sky that was dark and brooding began to make way for lighter shades and thinner clouds. I rolled down the window, zipped up my jacket and drank in the smell.

A passage in Lamentations 3 danced its way through my heart…

“22 Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.

23 They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.

24 I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him.”

25 The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him;

26 it is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the LORD.”

Can’t you just imagine the writer waking on just one such morning to pen those words? I can… perhaps he was watching the sun rise and the light overcome the darkness…perhaps he was listening to the birds sing or thinking about the dew cleansing the new day…

I love that in the middle of celebrating a new day full of compassions, the writer acknowledges that waiting is good… that when we seek the Lord (not His stuff) and know He is our Hope and our Salvation and our PORTION, the waiting game becomes almost a pleasant experience.

Instead of waiting for the other shoe to drop or the next difficult thing around the bend, we can actually begin to wait expectantly on the One who Has given Himself to us…who in Himself contains all that we need…the One who delights in giving good gifts…

In this season of my life, I am just barely beginning to have glimpses of that patient hope. I’ve spent the last couple of years really fighting PTSD (for those of you who don’t know what that is- its an immobilizing anxiety or fear) and I can’t tell how healing it is to know that the fear of what could be can, at the touch of God, be transformed into an expectant hope of good. It is a process for me, but I hear the Lord wooing me out of the wilderness…

“perfect love casts out all fear…”

I wrote a post some time ago entitled “Where I’ve Been” and I can’t tell you how I am looking forward to writing the post “Where I am Going”… the Lord is giving me new dreams. I’ve had to relinquish my rights to the old ones (more like pry my fingers open from the death grip on them- don’t pretend like you don’t know what I am talking about! *grin*)… and it was scary, because I didn’t know what would replace them…still don’t… but I am getting glimpses.

In big and small ways, the Lord is reminding me to have a loose grip on everything… I put an offer in on a house last week. It was so cute. The yard was full of big, old trees… the house needed lots of work… it was in a great neighborhood. I had myself all talked into it. I had started arranging the furniture in my mind, picking out paint colors… and we made a good bid, but it wasn’t enough.

I got the call when Co and I were at the zoo and when I hung up, I realized I wasn’t that disappointed after all. I didn’t feel like ‘now what, God!??!’ instead I found myself affectionately wondering, ‘hmm, wonder what better place you’ve laid claim on for us.’

Let me just tell you all in case someone thinks I am boasting… that was ALL GOD. My natural self would’ve had a ruined day at the zoo over ‘losing’ that yard, friends. ALL GOD. He’s moving that truth about ‘working it ALL for good’ from the frontal lobe of my brain to the depth of my heart. And that’s the tiniest of examples.

So this morning as I am preparing to teach on learning theory, I am thankful that God finds pleasure in allowing the sun to rise on this new day, that He is giving me new dreams, and teaching me the pleasure of waiting on HIM and not paying so much mind to the details.