this mom thing...its hard.

I couldn't find the words to say, so i just didn't write. i could write about all the great friends i have here in greenville. i could write about how cute and sweet and perfect maggie is and how she melts my heart each day. i could write about the way my love for jake keeps growing and growing. i could write about all these things. good things.

but there is something deeper. something nagging, painful, stripping me of all comfort i have known in my life.....
anxiety. There, i said it. the feeling of being out of control. Of circumstances, of life... i know that God uses so many different things in our lives to show us that HE is truly the only ONE in control. He has shown me this through the last 6 years as a new Christian. BUT whoa. I was NOT ready for this.

Lately, i have seen it. Seen my lack of control. How little control i really have over my life after all. I love to believe that i do have control. After all, i get to decide what i'll wear, what i will do, and how my day will go, right? Wrong. this is the secret of motherhood-the constant, wearing sacrifice of laying my own life down for maggie daily. I can "predict" how my day will go, but God may not allow it to happen that way. I can plan a trip to the store when maggie is not tired, but that doesn't mean she won't be fussy. I can plan fun things to do, but maggie can sleep right through them and then they don't happen.
God has been gracious to me in not allowing my plans to happen. DAILY, He is showing me that it has to be His will above MY will, that i am to daily surrender myself and my life to Him.
this has been so humbling and so hard and brought me to my knees. Crying, rocking like a baby, seeing my sin of control, my hands gripped so tightly to my way.

When God gave me this baby, He asked me to give of myself, past what i think i can give, on a daily basis. i think it's one thing to give of yourself for a set time every day, but this job? This is constant.
Above all else, i have seen the enormous task and responsibility of raising Maggie. I can't ignore this command from the Word. but in this, i am paralyzed. Paralyzed by fear of doing this wrong. fear of not doing enough. fear, anxiety....
which brings me back to the One who saved me from myself in the first place, to live for Him. During this season of pruning, figuring out what it means for me to selflessly give of myself for my family, i have realized that i can't do this in my own strength. i will fail miserably when left to myself. I am needier of Jesus than i have ever been. no, that's not true, i am as needy as i always have been, but God is opening my eyes daily to my insufficiency and deep need. i have been clinging to this passage in matthew-“Therefore I tell you, do not worry^(B) about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.^(C) Are you not much more valuable than they?^(D)27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life^[a]?^(E)

²⁸ “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. ²⁹ Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor^(F) was dressed like one of these. ³⁰ If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?^(G) 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.^(H)33 But seek first his kingdom^(I) and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.^(J) 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.