Waiting

These Fall days are going by so fast I can hardly keep up. Much activity this past month. What was once quiet and slow paced is now full of noise and motion. Seems like there is always someone sleeping on a couch or in spare beds and my house is starting to resemble a familiar memory......dog hairs,dirt and too much laundry. We have been invaded...but it's a good kind of invasion. Loved ones that have come home to roost for awhile,visitors and of course the lovable new member of the family Max who is providing his own kind of commotion that I never anticipated. He is so big and so full of energy it's scary. We adore him but realize that exercise and discipline are going to be VERY important. I am trying very hard to follow Ceasar the Dog Whisperer's advise but with a puppy you must also carry a good dose of patience. He is six months old so I can't expect too much to soon.

I am getting regular pictures of my other new baby Isiah almost daily from his mom and dad. He is three weeks old now and I'm sure giving his parents a chance to hone up on their patience quota.



So patience and waiting are the words this week that are giving me something to think about. My mother use to tell me that she thought I had a lot of it but sometimes I wonder. I need to look this up in Scripture because there is much written on the subject so it must be an important part of our makeup. My heartfelt request these past few months is having the patience to wait. It seems like everyone in my family is at a point of surrender to the unknown. There is a quiet confidence that God is in control but there is still a restless soul that wavers between hope and despair. I know that God has us at this place to fine tune His life in us and I feel secure in the knowledge that His ways are above our earthly ways but the waiting for His plan to be revealed is starting to take it's toil. I lay in bed at night and worry for all of my children. They are in the infant stages of carving out their future and this world is not as kind as it was thirty years ago for us. It feels like the boundaries are closing in and there are fewer options these days to take chances. I feel this even for myself. Our whole life has been about taking chances and never thinking twice that we were not going to succeed. So why are we now at such an uncertain place in life? Our tomorrows feel like a pleasant dream that we wake up from and realize that it was in fact a dream and we are living the nightmare. It seems like there is so much at stake at this place in our life. Your life depends on the choices you make so I plead with my children to make the right choice. To me the only choice is living out of God's life and believing that all things will work for your good when you are crucified in Christ. Unshakable faith that we cannot yet see what we will be....that part comes in another time and in another place. The proper collaboration between God and us for living is this: God does the living and we let Him.

We need to fall flat on our faces every now and then, to suffer the consequences of making a bad choice, to be afraid or unsure of the future. Bottom line is we need to be perfected in our salvation. This is how God drives us away from a soul-oriented way of living into a Spirit-oriented way of living. Living from the Spirit is a strategy for success. I remember always shouting out the door to family members as they would go off into the day, "walk in the Spirit" and they would smile and shake their heads like I was a little wacky but it's the truth and I still remind them of that truth. As they now face their own mountains in life and I am not there for those everyday conversations, I pray that they have God's truth ingrained upon their hearts.

So on this day I am on my knees for one of my boys as he goes for a very important interview that could determine his future ability to provide for his family. He has been through a tough year and I am wide eyed in seeing him handle it all with such grace. I am so use to being a part of solving problems, trying to make life easier for them all, interceding so that they don't have to suffer and this week I got the reprimand from God that this is not my job anymore. I felt so far removed from all that he was going through and realized there was nothing I could do about any of it anyway so all I could do was pray and that I did. Now it's between him and God and all the years of training him up in the Lord.

"One of the greatest strains in life is the strain of waiting for God."
— Oswald Chambers

And so I wait.

ISIAH ATLANTE GIOVARA

Too much activity going on and no time to sit down to write. Sometimes life has a way of throwing us into a tail spin and it takes all we have just to hang on. The biggest and best event that has happened in a long time is the birth of my first grandchild, Isiah Atlante Giovara. There are no words to describe this event so I can't say to much more than a door of love has opened and I am running,leaping,crashing through into grandparent heaven. Along this journey I can foresee that there will be many new experiences with this child as well as his parents. As I seek to walk deeper in the Spirit, I am contemplating how much I need to stop every now and then and not run too far ahead. Sometimes my emotions get the best of me and I can trip and fall into a pit of self doubt. It's hard to not think that all of life's experiences are about you. It's never about you rather always the other person and the sooner you die to the notion that the world revolves around your little life the better. Anyway we had four days in Pittsburgh sharing the beautiful birth of Isiah with Eli and Jill and we are now home and back in the groove and they are day by day learning how to maneuver life as a family.

I started writing a few notes on the subject of consistency last week and then couldn't be consistent enough to sit down and write. Maybe God was showing me something through it all. Still everywhere I turned the word consistent kept coming up so I know that this is an area I need to look at. I have always been a person, from the time I was little, that would come up with grandiose plans and then never follow through to the finish. I just can't seen to stay on target with a passion. My journal writing is my most consistent thing I do and even then I can go weeks at a time with nothing to say. I make great starts then slowly fizzle out. I don't think God looks on and says,"that was a great intention." I'm even starting to think that He waits to see how serious we really are as to what we believe. It's like paying someone to do a job before the job is done. I have done that a few times and gotten burned. In hindsight I would think, "why did I pay the guy upfront.' He either did a half way job or in one instance he did half a days work, went to lunch and never came back. I learned my lesson through these experiences and so now I wait,evaluate and then reward. Maybe God does the same thing. Your relationship with Christ has to be anchored to a source that is consistent and daily, not occasional. The reward comes later and that sometimes is the hard part.

Ira and I have committed to a daily prayer time before we leave the house. Sometimes it's easy and some mornings when we're both racing around it becomes a little difficult but I am trying to not look at it as something we are just fitting in when we have the time. I am looking at it as a commitment that will be producing a great reward in our lives and in the people we pray for.

Spiritual consistency - the kind where you keep gaining ground instead of just gaining and losing the same ground over and over again - that kind of spiritual consistency is anchored first to this daily, non-negotiable time with the Lord. The fuel for your faith has to be a daily time in His Word, looking for a practical step of obedience for that 24 hours. Your life is one day at a time and in God's Word to us, He only promises us daily bread.

Spiritual consistency also means a fresh, daily surrender of your life and the things that really matter to you. You have to learn the power of resisting the devil instead of just allowing him to manipulate you through your feelings. Remember, if you "resist the devil," then "he will flee from you" (James 4:7 ).

If I can make each new day a new beginning then I can stop trying to keep the last high moment in my life alive and instead press on to all the good things that lie ahead. I've ridden this spiritual roller coaster long enough and to me this deeper walk in the Spirit is a life that is consistently trusting that God has a plan for my life and as I depend on His leading for each day, it will come into being.



My sweet Gabriel has returned home from Hawaii and he and the love of his life Katie are desiring to maybe start a little cafe here in the mountains. Yes, my passions run ahead and envision marriage and babies and something we could all do together but I am trying to take a deep breath and let God work. If it is to be, it will be. In the mean time we are all bonding as a family,seeking God's Word on each decision we must make and WAITING....the hard part!!