Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Hungry

I’ve been learning the past weeks a valuable lesson about how to surrender and this song by Kathryn Scott truly unglued me at the seams on Monday night…it beautifully captures the rhythm of my life in these moments.

Hungry I come to you
For I know you satisfy
I am empty but I know
Your love does not run dry

Lord, I am so empty without your love and your presence in my life! I’ve turned my eyes from my beloved Jesus and focused on the storms that ravage the lives in this broken world, I feel myself sinking just as Peter did. The hurt, the exhaustion, the pain, the sorrow it’s all consuming without Your strength, Your power, Your grace, Your compassion and Your mercy. Lord, I need to keep my eyes on You for You have promised me in Isaiah 43 that when I pass through the waters You will be with me and the river can not overtake me. Lord, I know this in my heart, some days I must remind my head! Help me to remember Lord how hungry I am for your Spirit! It is Your Spirit that leads my heart to the place of motherhood loving the Best Family children. Show me how to love them through their pain: Innocence dying; a childhood stolen because of war. Innocence dying, an inherited disease that is killing their physical body. Oh Lord, I am empty and so hungry. Help me to know how to show them Your love does not run dry…

So I wait for you
So I wait for you

I wait for You Lord, some days I ache so deeply is it so hard to wait! So many times I fall short, struggling to “know” when and how to move and You’ve answered me so sweetly these past weeks with your beautiful promises in Psalm 27. Oh all the ways You answer the cries of our hearts, if only we wait in silence for Your voice. So I wait for You, needing YOUR guidance on how to touch and comfort my children from the east to the west. Those who are right here at my finger tips struggling endlessly with illness in it's physical and mental forms. Those I can not hold when they so dearly need a mother’s hug as they embrace the reality of death knocking on their door. Those who live in captivity of memories they can not erase of horror no eyes should ever witness none-the-less eyes of a child, these are the children you’ve woven into my life and my heart Lord ~ so I wait on You to fill me to overflowing with YOUR love for them, take my words and make them Yours!


I'm falling on my knees
Offering all of me
Jesus your all this heart is living for

Prayer; oh Lord thank you for the gift of prayer ~ I cry out to You my Father for the children, falling on my knees. All the children that ache in my heart for so many reasons. I focus my eyes unto You Lord and meet you in prayer, falling on my knees, knowing I can not do this without You. Jesus truly, You’re all this heart is living for. I know this without doubt because when my eyes turn from Your loving gaze, I feel empty, sinking and without life, hence I have no life to give! Truly, You are ALL this heart is living for!

Broken I run to you
For your arms are open wide
I am weary but I know
Your love does not run dry

BROKEN; Jesus I am broken, You know this. A heart of compassion seeps brokenness like a raging river and Lord I give it all to You. I can not carry the heaviness of all the pain You’ve shown me. I realized that is what I’ve been trying to do these days so You gently remind me in Your loving way through the mouth of a familiar face to fall back into Your arms wide open awaiting to catch me, BROKEN I fall onto You knowing it's safe to be broken BY You. Broken because my Best Family child Jean Claude has re-lived the horror of Rwanda’s genocide to give us written testimony of what terror his 9 year old eyes have seen. Testimony of how his innocence was stolen from him. A story of a boy who hid silenced in terrifying fear just feet away watching his naked father bludgeoned and dismembered, limb by limb while crying out in agony; watching in fear as his defenseless sister was defiled, tortured and raped before his very eyes, lying helplessly dying next to her father. A 9 year old boy who mustered the courage to cradle his bleeding, dying father in his small, tiny, child arms and listen whole heartedly to the plea’s of his dying father; begging Jean Claude to forgive those who had hurt them, begging his son to grow to know Jesus and be a man of God, caring for others before himself…a boy who’s final memory of his father is both wretched and yet somehow bittersweet in a way can no words can describe because it is a story of Your presence admist the terror God, only a story that You can see the beauty from the ashes as it unfolds. Lord, how proud his father must be looking down. Jean Claude has risen to the challenge and answered the cries of his father’s dying wish beyond measure! Jesus I am BROKEN; You know this…how can I envision my dear “old child” Jean Claude as a 9 year old living this unspeakable nightmare! BROKEN.

Jesus I am BROKEN because Jean Claude just shared with me yesterday that one of our dearest Best Family daughter’s is in her final days, losing the fight for her life to AIDS. I am BROKEN because my poor child has no one to hold her while she waits for her heavenly Father to come and take her home. BROKEN because my heart longs to be the arms that embrace her assuring this tiny child of Your love. Lord, I am broken because of all these children that live in my heart and my incapacity to meet their needs; my physical children and my spiritual children alike, I can not take their pain away. I know this is because YOU are meant to meet their needs Lord. The beauty in this lesson Lord is that I'm finally learning what you've been trying to teach: how to truly surrender. Help me fix my eyes upon you Lord and surrender my children to You, I am weary in strength there is no doubt, You alone know the depths of my exhaustion but I know Your love does not run dry. Lord, I wait in faith…for You…

So I wait for you
So I wait for you

1 comment:

Jodi said...

Desperately, helplessly, longingly, I cried.
Quietly, patiently, lovingly God replied.
I pled and I wept for a clue to my fate,
And the Master so gently said, "Child, you must wait!"

"Wait?', you say, wait!" my indignant reply.
"Lord, I need answers, I need to know why!
Is your hand shortened? Or have you not heard?
By FAITH I have asked, and am claiming your word."

"My future and all to which I can relate
Hangs in the balance, and you tell me to WAIT?
I'm needing a 'yes,' a go-ahead sign,
Or even a 'no' to which I can resign."

"And Lord, you promised that if we believe
We need but to ask, and we shall receive.
And Lord, I've been asking, and this is my cry:
I'm weary of asking! I need a reply!"

Then quietly, softly, I learned of my fate
As my Master replied once again, "You must wait."
So, I slumped in my chair, defeated and taut
And grumbled to God, "So, I'm waiting. . . for what?"

He seemed then to kneel and His eyes wept with mine,
And he tenderly said, "I could give you a sign.
I could shake the heavens, and darken the sun.
I could raise the dead, and cause mountians to run.
All you seek, I could give, and pleased you would be.
You would have what you want . . but, you wouldn't know ME."

"You'd not know the depth of my love for each saint;
You'd not know the power that I give to the faint;
You'd not learn to see through the clouds of despair;
You'd not learn to trust just by knowing I'm there;
You'd not know the joy of resting in me
When darkness and silence were all you could see.

"You'd never experience that fulness of love
As the peace of my Spirit descends like a dove;
You'd know that I give and I save . . . (for a start),
But you'd not know the depth of the beat of my heart."

"The glow of my comfort late into the night.
The faith that I give when you walk without sight,
The depth that's beyond getting just what you asked
Of an infinite God, who makes what you have LAST."

"You'd never know, should your pain quickly flee,
What it means that 'My grace is sufficient for thee.'
Yes, your dreams for your loves ones overnight would come true,
But, oh, the loss! If I lost what I'm doing in you!"

"So, be silent, my child, and in time you will see
THAT THE GREATEST OF GIFTS IS TO GET TO KNOW ME,
And though oft may my answers is still but to WAIT."

"And though oft' My answers seem terribly late,
My most precious answer of all is still, "Wait."