Merry Christmas!

Something "jumped off the pages" as I was reading a devotion this morning and struck me in a deep, hurting and confused place. It was this; "I have held back nothing in my provision for you." I just want to write it over and over. I want to say it out loud. It makes my eyes well up and somehow, in this moment it helps make sense of everything I have ever been through or will go through up ahead. 

Simple truth.

I have felt cheated and short changed, but He has given me His all. 

I have felt hollow and deprived, but He has held back nothing. 

Where then is the disconnect between what I often feel, the things I believe I am entitled to, the way I thought things would go and the truth about my life? There is mystery involved, that I am sure of, but what if the miraculous healing didn't come because His provision, His best, was found in the valley? What if the baby isn't here yet because His provision is found in the waiting? His best in the story unfolding right now, in this day. What He holds in His hand is the best gift to open, even if it's not what I've been asking for. That's hard. Life sometimes is. But today I am comforted meditating on the truth that my God isn't heaven watching as I flounder, or dangling my dreams in front of me like a carrot. He's the conducter signaling every hymn and ho, in perfect time, navigating me through the lulls, walking me up the highs and catching me when I fall down low. 

So I can stop wishing things were different in my life, wondering what could have been, or why trials have come my way. Because 'He who did not spare His own son but gave Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Rom. 8:32

Merry Christmas!!