Talk to me, Abba.

Sometimes, you feel like you are on the great hamster wheel of life when you have small children. You spend the majority of every day doing the exact same thing in an almost precise cycle. It generally culminates in a shed tear or two. This alone is enough to drive a person to their knees crying out, "help" to the Lord. 

Add in traveling with my husband and three small children to lead worship for months out of the year. I am in one hotel room with my children for ... months. Denbigh leads worship sometimes six times a day. Add practice. He comes home, a three and a half hour drive, on Sundays after a ten p.m. service on Saturday night. I never see him.

My van started making a horrible noise. It died while driving it down the road to get lunch. It started back up, but who knows.

During the last few months, we had kids swing on my daughter's curtains and bend the rod, get sharpie on her heirloom bedspread, get stripper on the butler pantry counter, the table, the buffet, the side table outside, broken (original wavy) glass in two french doors, a broken window, hours upon hours of traveling alone with my little girls, aging parents that need to be cared for, and hurtful comments from loved ones. My dad cancelled a lunch date with me because he didn't want to leave the dog alone too long after I had driven two hours to get there. A two and a half foot piece of our baby grand piano was broken off. Lulu's swing was broken.

Where will I find time to repair all of this? Can it be repaired?

I am a one on one type of a gal. There I was surrounded by hundreds of screaming campers when I found out that our huge tree had fallen. I didn't know the extent of it. Our tree had fallen. My favorite place in the entire world to sit and be with Jesus. 

People can come at you with a thousand encouraging words, but what I needed to know had to come to me from the heart of God. I needed to know if going in circles is truly what He desired for my life. Surely, He is making room for something. We've been talking. I have been slowly stripping the remnants of paint off of the windows in our dining room. While I am doing that, I just keep listening. Sometimes there is nothing said. Sometimes, there is this soft enveloping feeling like my Jesus is very near to me. Then, my heart turns to a verse. Remember when the psalmist tells us that he is going to be anointed and seated at the table. 

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

Sometimes, I forget the battle that is waged against fellowship with Christ. He is preparing a table for me. He wants me to prepare a table for you. He wants me to continue to work against all odds to make a place for you to sit and feel His presence. He is redeeming the moments. 

Then, a tree preached the gospel to me.

As I stared out the second story window through the tree that was hit by lighting, you can see a clear path headed straight to our backdoor. The tree absorbed the destruction.