On my 36th Birthday ~

Catie,

36 years. 

13, 140 days.

Look around you. 

See the holy, sacred moments. The spaces you never thought would be filled. The silenced hauntings where you feared your Father would never show His face.

Terrified you were forgotten.

Since high school, you've prayed for one thing...

That you would know deeply whose you are, so that you can make known the One who has claimed you as His own.

In reality, there have been hundreds ~ no thousands ~ of moments you forgot...

Among the broken relationships, pressures of school, stress of work, strains of marriage, failures of parenting, and explosions of turning your face from the One who loves you most, the scars of forgetting that you were made for more are bare on your soul...

But scars tell a story, and birth caverns for Grace to abound abundantly.

And because of Christ, the roots sunk deep, though the storms howled. 

The seeds grew down beneath the surface, before the fruit was ever born, ever seen.

And now, it's your cadence. The rhythm of your marriage, the story of your parenting, the tale of your ministry, the foundation of your love story with the Lover of your Soul...

You were made for beauty. You have been grafted into the One whom your soul craves ~ even when you can't feel it.

This ache, that never allows you to rest, is the stirring of eternity within your heart. Don't ever drown it out. Allow it to enlarge its territory with each passing year, with each new story that unfolds in your life. In light of faith, it will lead you to wonder and hope, not despair and desperation as you once so dreadfully feared.

Look around.

You have been made ALIVE in your Savior, through your Savior.

This mess, this gloriously beautiful mess, it's not you. The laundry piled high, the vomit rivers in the bathrooms, and the chocolate handprints on the walls. They're gifts.

Hidden Pearls.

He's allowing you into the spheres of brokenness in your children, in their families, in the workers and system who serve them.

He doesn't need you.

He invites you, and tenderly leads you like the Shepherd He is.

Yet it's weary, and it's messy, and sometimes, the grief seems more than you can bear, but you were never meant to bear it alone.

So He allows you to see their smiles, celebrate their successes and cheer for the smallest steps forward.

And He allows the Man of God who journeys with you to lead in wisdom and hope.

And He allows the Sons He grew within you, to be part of something so much bigger than they could dream or begin to imagine.

And He graces you with covenant friends, who hold up your hands.

You are not meant to plan or know the next 6, or 16, or 36 years.

You are called to be faithful today. And then tomorrow.

And the small decisions of faithfulness and repentance with hope each day give birth to a legacy of grace for years to come.

Seek His face today, because the One who calls you is before you.

And above all else, Catie, never forget...You were made for more.

You were made for Jesus.