fight to surrender

Isaiah 55:8-9

"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways," declares the Lord. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts."

So true. I cannot and would not claim to know more than God or pretend that I am more powerful or loving than He is...but my thoughts definitely cannot understand His ways. With everything that has happened with the McClenahan family, I have been forced to think about a lot of things, one being the gift of my own sweet daughter. My head knows she's not really mine, but my heart...oh, it wants to say to God, "OK--just don't allow anything to come her way that I wouldn't want for her." None of this is going to sound right, probably. I don't know.

I think the love I have for Sophie gets in the way a little bit; it's hard for me to comprehend that someone could love her more than I do. But I was thinking the other night that she should probably get her hair trimmed soon, and all of a sudden I was hearing, "I know the number of hairs on her head." Wow. I have no idea. I can tell you how her hair is thicker and lighter-colored underneath. I can tell you how sweet it smells and how it still gets a little curly after a bath. I can tell you about how she sometimes tries to run away while I'm brushing her hair, and I chase after her and just keep brushing. :) And then I also thought about how, as much as I love Sophie, I love spending time by myself or with Nathan. I need breaks. And God never needs a break from any of His children. Obviously, He loves Sophie perfectly, unselfishly, not in this human way that I do. I need her. I do. One of the reasons I have always sang "You Are My Sunshine" as one of her goodnight songs is because of the last couple lines, "You'll never know, dear, how much I love you. Please don't take my sunshine away." And so, this is why I'm struggling to not just say I trust God with my daughter, whatever His plan might be for her. I want to mean it.

Our church currently does not have a pastor, so we've had various speakers come the last several months. A couple weeks ago, we had a former missionary who reduced me to tears, not that it takes much lately. He talked about how he heard a missionary speak when he was 7 years old and he turned to his mom and whispered, "I'm supposed to go." She was confused, so he repeated himself. She understood then, and he said tears filled her eyes though he didn't know why. He went on to talk about God's great joy in finding the lost, using the story of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal son (Luke 15)...all culminating in the joy over finding one repentant sinner. He said we have to spend our lives on something. Why not spend it on what brings the most joy to God our Father? This missionary we heard has grown children of his own, and I believe he said they are all missionaries now, living in all different places. He talked about visiting one of their websites and scrolling down and seeing pictures of his granddaughter's birthday party and he thought, "I missed it."But further down there were some pictures of their family with some of the people they are working with, and he was reminded of that great joy they are spending their lives for. He called it the "privileged agony" of parents to see their children go to serve God this way...seeking the lost.

This made me think of Cora since she has been described as a little missionary. And those verses at the beginning of this post? Right after those, the passage goes on to say,

"For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven

and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout,

and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater;

so will My word be which goes forth from My mouth;

It will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire,

and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it." Isaiah 55:10-11

Oh, Cora, Jess, Joel. To read this and think of your family...I have no words.

I guess where this leaves me right now is that I acknowledge I am scared to fully surrender, dedicate, whatever you might say here, Sophie to God because His ways are not my ways. His thoughts are not my thoughts. And yet I wrestle because I really do want her life to glorify Him and bring Him the greatest joy possible. So what do you do with those conflicting feelings? I want to say and mean with all my heart, "She's all Yours, Lord. Work Your perfect will in and through her life." The mama in me just has a hard time because the cost could break me.

I guess that's the end. I have no peaceful resolution right now.