Have to stop...

My latest blog hopping venture has taken me all over the blogerworld to find people that have adopted from different countries, all with so very different stories, very different drives, but one common thread - the one true God.

I have to stop. I can do this for hours and what I usually find is myself in a near pile of tears on the floor feeling helpless and (shamefully) jealous that I can't do more than just pray right now. On one hand I'm so ready to jump in and just Do the THING and go start the process of helping wherever I can, and on the other hand, I temper my drive with the what if's and the logic behind the emotional conquest. I know - because I hear and read - that it is not easy. Reading stories like this tend to ground me back to reality, but then there is still a tug that pulls at my heart strings, and like an addiction I come back for more 2, 3, 4, 5 times a day just to read and see the pictures of the children smiling, unsure of where they are and where they are going and even if this is the real deal. So many of them have tasted and seen things you and I can not even conjure up in our heads. They are in need of serious love and support. Can I do that? Then I weep and exclaim, Father, only you know the intentions of my heart. Search me and find anything that is a vain desire and dispel of it so that when the time comes, I can do Your bidding with a pure heart, eager to show You and Your love to any child who will take it from me. Lord...if I am not ready, make me ready.

It is so appropriate that He is searching me even now and we (our Father and I) are communicating about the way He would take Jason and I as I begin to teach this Friday on rising to the challenge of Kingdom work. All around me He interjects thoughts and provokes images in my mind that show me we are called to His work, if we would just believe of ourselves what He believes in us. So often we step back and recoil from doing anything other than our daily life because we don't believe God can use someone like us...someone like me...what does that mean? Why are we so stuck on the fact that we are the ONE person God has chose not to use in a mighty way? We are the one person who did that one unforgivable thing that God refuses to use..who are WE to say what we are, when clearly He has called us, before the foundations of the earth was laid, He called us.

Man! I get so frustrated with the whining and the sniveling and hear me now...it's my own whining and sniveling I take issue with here. I don't know where you stand in your walk...but I know in mine, I've spent way to much time flushing minutes down the toilet waiting for the next big thing...waiting for God to use me in a big way...all the while in my arrogance thinking the small ways are too small for me and they really don't count. ugh....

Lord, use me. In the small ways, in the big ways, just use me. Don't let a day go by where You don't afford me the opportunity to do Your work, to see Your people and the life around me the way You see it. I don't want to wonder and waste away thinking I could have done something big...You Lord are SO big and in all things that are working for Your good, for Your glory....it is big and it is amazing. Thank you for calling me to Your plan. Whatever that is, I ask You take me to it. I am ruined for Your plan. Please, don't let my words wither away into nothingness, allow me to write and speak all that is You and all for You.

use me...

My reality? I may never get to adopt. I may never go overseas and work again. I may never realize the picture of what I believe is the thing to do...but if I'm doing what God calls me to....if I'm listening to His desire over my life and taking the challenge...I will have all and be doing all that I need. What more could I ask for but to be in His world doing His work now?

Thy Kingdom come...Thy will be done.

Yes Lord.