Appointed Places

After waiting for a week to receive news of my recent brain scan, The report is in and there is no tumor. My brain remarkable, and I would almost believe that if I could remember 2+2 most days. The relief feels good. If you were praying, thank you. I don't think I give enough credit each and everyday to the miracle that my life is. I just cannot grasp fully what my life has become...Thankful, scared, overwhelmed with all kinds of different emotions. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. Today in the middle of regular life chaos, and some more good news, my heart is full.

What does today bring for you? What are you thankful for? Tonight while Kev and I were whipping up tacos our conversation was, "well babe I've got a new job and you aren't dying, so today is good." We like to keep things real around here, and light. In every new day and new moment I am thankful. The past several months have been hard. I can't quite articulate this season that we have been in. Nothing as hard as we have known, but not where I thought we might be either. Still choosing every day how we will respond to our circumstances with Joy, and ultimate delight in Him.

If I'm real and raw and completely open, It's been difficult and I haven't wanted to spill my guts about normal hard. Weird how it's easier to share sometimes about catastrophe than just admitting normal everydays are full of challenges here too.

"We wait in hope for the Lord;

    he is our help and our shield.

In him our hearts rejoice,

    for we trust in his holy name.

May your unfailing love be with us, Lord,

even as we put our hope in you." Psalm 33

“Waiting on the Lord is the opposite of running ahead of the Lord, and it’s the opposite of bailing out on the Lord,” writes John Piper. “It’s staying at your appointed place while he says stay, or it’s going at his appointed pace while he says go. It’s not impetuous, and it’s not despairing.”

There have been some big changes, little changes, and everyday plan old life changes. I have spent the last couple months trying not to be frustrated because of the way I feel most days. Our commitments this winter into spring have been overwhelming. Trying to do anything efficient and organized when I've been through hell and have half my brain cells frustrates me.  I want to be superwoman and I'm not. Tell me I'm not the only one! I've been napping a lot again and my stamina slows me down. Can I also just say...Being a mom is hard work you guys. The last couple months have been a tiring struggle trying to raise my 4 little people. They are growing up and I feel incapable many, many days. There has been lots of working through all of the things each one of them carries and needs. Who would have ever thought. I imagined these cute little babies forever, now they are all growing up and ganging up on me.

I feel like this season has just been full of waiting. Waiting to feel good.  Waiting for answer to scans, labs, and doctors opinions, wondering and waiting for what comes next. Looking around for a new normal and realizing everyday is a new normal. Waiting to tun the page but recognizing there are a few chapters right here still. But we can't just skip parts of our story, each and every day has a purpose of it's own. I do think we were designed with an empty waiting space. It makes us long for what we are really all waiting for. A space that only one thing could ever fill.

"Lord, I wait for you; you will answer, Lord my God." Psalm 38:15

It struck me this past weekend on Saturday. That day between the worst of days on Good Friday and the best of days on Easter Sunday. I woke up Saturday and was awestruck, "God this is how they felt in the waiting." They knew of the promises that were supposed to come, they were hopeful because so many knew Jesus was the king. They had to rest in those promises... that one day they would no longer mourn, but they just didn't know when. So many of us have been through the Fridays of life. The suffering. The deep sorrowful dark days. The days we have looked up and said, "Why have you forsaken me?"

So many of us have been through the Sunday's of life. Jesus rising gave us eternal hope. We see him. We know him. It's why we can celebrate with Joy and "rejoice in all things". The end sorry has unraveled. Hope has been revealed. Every single thing is made new and whole.

I maybe for the first time...related so much the year to all of you in the Saturday's of life. You are waiting for change, and hopeful for it. But in your HOPE and keeping your "eyes stayed on Him" you are waking and moving about your day in a season of waiting. It's the everyday living in just the moment you have been given.

"In retrospect, I can see that “wait” is the most precious answer God can give us. It makes us cling to him rather than cling to an outcome. God knows what I need. I do not. He sees the future. I cannot. His perspective is eternal. Mine is not. He will give me what is best for me. When it is best for me. As Paul Tripp says, “Waiting is not just about what I get at the end of the wait, but about who I become as I wait.” - Vaneetha Rendall Risner

No one wants Friday to come, but Fridays CHANGE you. Everyone wants Sunday to come, because that is the End story, the purpose and the celebration. But goodness, why did I never realize that Saturdays of our lives are so so hard and often so so overlooked. I am with you in each of these Seasons friends. And well, the awesome truth be told, God was all over the Saturday part too. Wait in full expectation friends.

"Our lives are filled with longings and unmet expectations. We wait. We say there’s purpose in the waiting, but we often try to move the story of our lives along to get to a better chapter. We have the tendency to miss what God is doing in our hearts now as we walk in the tension of the unknown. In this life we get glimpses of God’s work, but we don’t know the whole story. We mourn the state of the world, and we hope for the coming redemption. We’re challenged and refined in the midst of the waiting." Kelly Mott

And because we don't take family photos, especially at Easter, UGH.. Here is what all the Dennstaedts are looking like these days: