Walking this road isn’t always easy. Many times people will see us for just a brief amount of time, and all looks well. When you get just a glimpse into someone’s life, you have to remember that it’s just that - a glimpse - and that reality may actually be very different.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year - Thanksgiving is just around the corner, followed by all the festivities of Christmas. And yet, today, November 19th, our tree is already up and decorated. Why?
Because a glimpse into our lives will tell you that all seems to be going well. It is. But when you dig just a little deeper, if you look for just a little longer than a glimpse, you’ll see that we will hardly be home in December to enjoy the festivities and trim the tree, and have a “normal” Christmas season.
Why? Because life still goes on. Because when we have 14 school days in December, and we have to be at therapy for 13 of them, in addition to our regular schedules, that doesn’t leave much time for extras like trimming the tree.
One of the things I work so hard at, is trying to keep life “normal” for our family despite whatever our therapy schedule looks like.
How do you keep life normal, though, when “normal” seems anything but?
I don’t know. I don’t think that version of “normal” actually exists for our family anymore.
And that’s okay - please know that! (Because our new version of normal? It’s pretty awesome most of the time!)
But this parenting journey - this one that we’re on? Today, it seems impossible.
Today? Today, I see that I still have Christmas shopping to do. And I will have to go grocery shopping. My kids want to do some Christmas baking, and they’re going to want to see the Christmas lights around town and even down in the city. They’ll ask for extra time to watch Christmas movies. And they’ll ask for some of our other fun traditions.
Me? I’ll juggle the return of phone calls and emails in the therapy waiting room. And I’ll juggle schedules and I’ll probably mess things up - at least once. But, I’ll be thankful that people don’t count my mistakes. I’ll be grateful for the effort that everyone is contributing to help make this work out for us.
If you take a glimpse into our lives, you may find us frazzled at any given point. I can’t begin to tell you the toll that this takes on our family each time we prepare for these 10-day intensives. But to add on the re-evaluations and some additional things that have popped up? Really makes me want to just stop and hide out for December.
But that’s just a glimpse. It’s not the whole picture. How can it be the whole picture?
This morning I woke up to a post from a new friend, called “Looking for One More“. (Go read it - really, go. I’ll wait!)
She has a quote in her post from John Piper, and it says, “God is always doing 10,000 things in your life, and you may be aware of three of them.” The overall theme of the post is to look for one more - just one more - thing that God is doing.
It’s a perfect reminder for me - to realize that, in this hard time, God is doing so many things around me. I must look for one more. Just one more!
The thing is - when you look for just one more thing that God is doing, you see it. And then another. And then another.
Until you almost can’t help but to see God in everything that is going around.
And when you see God at work in so many different things, you realize something.
Come close; listen intently.
You realize that you’ve only had a glimpse - just a glimpse - of God’s goodness.
And…
It leaves you wanting more.
So, friends, whatever life is throwing at you, will you look, like my friend, Tresta, shares, for just one more good thing? Remember that what we see, in our own lives, in others, in the world around us, is a glimpse - just a momentary glimpse - into the reality of our lives.
When life is storming, and you’re not sure which way is up, will you close your eyes, open your heart, and remember that God loves you?
And then look around, find God at work in the small things - and the big things - and remember that you’ve had just a glimpse of what God is doing!
Friends, God loves us, and life can be big and scary and overwhelming.
But if Tresta can remind me to look for one more thing, and I can remind you to look for one more thing, and you can remind your friend to look for one more thing, think how much joy we can carry in our hearts!
And the joy that comes from looking for one more thing? Yup, you guessed it - it’s just a glimpse of the joy that we can have with Jesus!
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
- II Corinthians 4:18 NIV
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