sweet memories of you

To the One who has been with me from the earliest memories of my life, I am grateful. You have pursued me, guided me, protected me, and loved me since my birth. You selected me to be Your child since before the foundations of the world were set in place. You have bought me at a price that no one else would ever be willing to pay for one such as myself.

Yet I struggle. With my health of recent times, with my relationships from now and of old, and within my heart and mind I struggle against myself and against Your firmly gentle guiding hands. If I could only remember always the love of my Father. If I could only remember the ways in which you have used me, worked through me, developed Your attributes within me throughout all the struggles and mishaps of life. My current state of health annoys me. I grow weary so easily, I am discouraged with my fatigued and aching body. I rebel stubbornly against the pills in my medicine cabinet that hold hope of healing me. And worst of all, I glare out of my fatigued body and ask You why the first 4 months of my marriage have been so wrought with struggle. When others blissfully sail through (or so it seems from the outside), I have been given this fatigue and moodiness and vertigo, I have been made to rely on my new husband in ways I never imagined, and have seen him serve me so unselfishly. And yet I have also seen him struggle. Struggle against his desire to have a wife that is no longer physically hindered, a wife who laughs and plays like the woman he dated, the woman he proposed to, the woman he married. It hurts that I have caused my husband struggles. It hurts that I have struggled in myself.

But my memory is so short and my vision so limited. For if I were to look behind me, I would see Your fingerprints on this mould of life that is still shaping me - and Scott - to be the most detailed and intricate images of Christ who is in us. I would see last year and the Lyme disease that Scott suffered and the fear of MS or cancer or permanent paralysis that You saw us through and refined us so carefully to love one another most deeply and to know You more fully. I would see the master's degree that I sweated and cried and poured my heart and energy into and finally completed, not because of any work on my part but because You gifted me and stretched my mind and awarded me a degree at the end - but I received so much more than a degree from You.

If I looked back, I would see years of hurt, happiness, ups and downs. But if I really looked back, what I would see is You. Not a tear has fallen from my eyes that You have not seen, no sigh has escaped my lips that You have not heard. You have been there for the days where I have laughed so hard I cried streams of joyful tears, and for the days where I cried so hard that the tears could no longer come. You have been there for the days where I have fallen on my face in worship, and the days where I have thrown the selfish tantrums of a 2 year old when I didn't get my way. And You have used it all. You have worked through everything and made me who I am, right now.

So I struggle with my current circumstances, but if I were to examine them clearly what I would see is not a body that is flawed, but Your merciful love that is not satisfied with me as I am right now. This is not about me and my health, but about You, and Your desire to see Your Son in me. Bring it on, Mighty Father, I look at my current struggles with fear and trembling in my heart, which tells me all the more that this struggle is needed. Heal me if You desire, but open my eyes most fully that I might see Your glory made perfect in my weakness.