God's timing is perfect.
Sometimes it seems humanly impossible to acknowledge this truth when I'm engulfed by a feeling of hopelessness because I'm not handed the outcome I desire -- the one I feel that I deserve. Still, His unmerited grace has faithfully watered my soul, even when I cursed the clouds that carried that rain.
Considering the positions I've put myself into over the years and the soulsickness that inevitably followed, it amazes me that my life is what it is today.
Proverbs 16:9 A man's heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.
Not that my life is perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But I know where I stand, and with whom. I demand less of people than I used to because I know that God is the only one who will never let me down.I'm learning -- or should I say, practicing -- how to place my fragile life in God's hands and say, Whatever you have in store for me is good. Even when I'm disappointed. Even when beloved friends and family just die. Even when a house falls apart, a car explodes, or another cat runs away.
I realize that asking God to give us a child should be a leap of faith.
What if he had said no, and that it wouldn't be our job to be parents?
What if I hadn't met the ideal man to be her daddy?
What if our girl has needs beyond what we have planned and prepared for?
I could fall into an abyss of what-ifs, but I choose to rejoice. Not only because things have gone so well with our pregnancy thus far, but because I'm mindful every day that the events of the next few months will go precisely the way He has planned.
Our Child
Oh child, do you know, do you know
where you come from?
From a lake
with white and hungry sea gulls.
Besides the wintry water
she and I built
a red bonfire
wearing away our lips
from kissing each other's souls,
throwing everything into the fire,
burning up our life.
This is the way you arrived in the world.
But in order to see me
and in order to see you one day
she crossed over the seas
and in order to embrace
her small waist
I walked the whole earth,
with wars and mountains,
with sand and spines.
This is the way you arrived in the world.
From so many places you come,
from the water and from the earth,
from the fire and from the snow,
from so far away you walk
toward the two of us,
from the terrible love
that has enchained us,
so we want to know
what you are like, what you say to us,
because you know more
about the world than we gave you.
Like a great storm
the two of us shake
the tree of life
down to the most hidden
fibers of its roots
and you appear now,
singing in the leaves,
on the highest branch
we reached with you.
~ Pablo Neruda
Oh child, do you know, do you know
where you come from?
From a lake
with white and hungry sea gulls.
Besides the wintry water
she and I built
a red bonfire
wearing away our lips
from kissing each other's souls,
throwing everything into the fire,
burning up our life.
This is the way you arrived in the world.
But in order to see me
and in order to see you one day
she crossed over the seas
and in order to embrace
her small waist
I walked the whole earth,
with wars and mountains,
with sand and spines.
This is the way you arrived in the world.
From so many places you come,
from the water and from the earth,
from the fire and from the snow,
from so far away you walk
toward the two of us,
from the terrible love
that has enchained us,
so we want to know
what you are like, what you say to us,
because you know more
about the world than we gave you.
Like a great storm
the two of us shake
the tree of life
down to the most hidden
fibers of its roots
and you appear now,
singing in the leaves,
on the highest branch
we reached with you.
~ Pablo Neruda
Love it. Very inspiring.
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