Sometimes encouragement hurts, and is hard to listen to. Not because what is said is cruel (it's not- it's encouraging, right?). Not because you don't want to believe it. But because it seems so contrary to what you see... and you are afraid to believe it.

Today, I am grateful for the recent encouragement I've received... but it's smarting a bit.

I'm ready for some major changes to happen- and they aren't. People keep telling me they think they are about to, but I just don't see how... and the cop-out is to create my own changes, my own excitement.... in short, to run on some adventure. But I keep hearing something Linda said to me the other day at lunch, "I keep hearing people say they are willing to go wherever God calls them. Go someplace. But how about staying here? How about being willing to be planted?"

As long as I can remember I've had this sense in my heart that I will end up someplace else. I'll be called away. It's helped me lock in tight and deep, because I've known the value of being connected, and all the more if I am to be called out. But, the allure of getting to go to some other place can become an escape for me in my heart- it can be my refuge of hope.

Instead, I hear God saying to me, "How about being willing to stay?" Stay through the pain. Stay through the mononity. Stay through the ugliness of today, and the next day. I still think I will be called to travel/move someplace else one day, but for today, I have to be willing to stay. My only refuge has to be the shadow of His wings- that means wherever He is. And I have to be content to walk whatever path He's picked for me.

Reading Hinds Feet in High Places has been breaking me so deeply. I hear one thing over and over in the words of the story: 'Do you trust me to choose what's best for you? Your path? Your companions? The 'teachers' I give you-- even if Sorrow and Suffering?' I find myself repeating after Much-Afraid, because just like the crippled young woman in the story, I have to choose over and over and over again as one thing after another crosses me. 'I trust You to choose what's best for me. I trust you will do all you've promised- you'll make me into something beautiful, and you'll set me on high with you.'

Trust. I trust You. In the mess of a million things- You can choose what's best. I know it blesses Him when we can look around and see others walking the trails we'd like to be on, and look up to Him and say "I know You are choosing the best path for me."