Daily Adoring: God Who Lives in Me.

There are some days when the loudness and the friction between personalities in this house make me want to run for those hills that surround us and try and hide somewhere on  the other side.

It's those days that find me sitting before our school day begins with my Bible open to Ephesians 4 and desperately praying that they hear the truth of verse 32...

and while those very words are leaving my mouth, 

they are already back to bickering and fighting.

Hiding under the table is acceptable for a mama to do, right?

Zeruiah burns hot with a fever and Elias decides his school book needs a bath and Olivia sneaks that picture book onto her lap and Lyla alerts me to the fact and I tell you, I could just lose my mind and I really don't think they would even notice.

And we are half way through our school work when I stop it all and just look at them as I pull out a story book I had been saving for just the right moment when work was all done and they were playing all quietly. But it just wasn't going to happen so I might as well make the moment right and instead of drilling the 18th subtraction problem that she already understood, we piled on top of each other in that Starbucks chair that still smells like coffee and I begin to read of the Gnome from Nome.

And that's all we needed.  All we needed to begin again.

I read this morning of the Jesus who welcomed small children despite the disciples protests, of the Man who gathered them close regularly to bless them. I thought of their mamas who brought them near to the One Who delighted in the small ones He had thought of before they ever were.

This same Jesus - His Spirit lives in me and it fills me with His love and His joy for the children He's given. And so when I'm weary and I'm ready to run away and hide-away, He reminds me - He is here with me and through my loving, they will, I pray, come to know His Love is true.

So when the moments are hard and when I feel like I'm fighting against a current that is dragging me down, that's dragging us all down, I take a page from the notes of Charles Spurgeon,

I have learned to kiss the wave that throws me against the Rock of Ages.

~~

When the day becomes stormy and I feel like I have nothing left to give, no energy to do the next thing needed, let me remember, Lord Jesus, that You are in me. That my soul is now Your home - that my body is Your Temple and You, Who took on dusty skin for 33 years, has made the deepest places in me holy.

You live in me and Your Life is now my own and You ask me to die so that I can find Life and it's in the dying that I really do begin to live.

You are holy and good and Your love transforms - let it transform these lives within our four walls as we learn to love like You.

Amen.