Zephaniah 3:17, “The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his live, he will rejoice over you with singing.”
Psalm 19:14, “May the word of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.”
I Peter 4:11, “If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever, amen.”
I have these verses cut out and taped to my desk, strategically placed so that I will read them and let them affect me. Funny thing is, even though they are right in front of my face, I hardly ever read them. But if they meant enough for me the first time I read them to place them around me, shouldn’t I make the effort to commit to what they mean in my life. I looked at them this morning, read them over a couple times and tried to let them soak in. God is mighty to save, my Rock and Redeemer, to him be the glory and the power for ever and ever!
These past couple weeks I keep finding myself in a funk. I don’t know if the reality of turning thirty hit me late, or if the hormones from no longer nursing are far too out of whack, but something has been off. It comes and goes in waves, and when it’s there, I find myself making the people around me pay for my instability sometimes. Now I’m not saying I need to be checked into a hospital or anything. Although no man would agree, I think what I am experiencing is relatively normal. But I find myself comparing the reality of the person I am to the romanticized version of who I thought I would be in my younger days. And to be honest, I don’t like that I’m not perfect. I really want to be, although I know no can be. But this reality makes me grouchy sometimes!
But in reading these verses, I realize, it’s okay that I’m not perfect. In fact, it’s actually a really wonderful thing that I’m not, because in my need for something bigger than myself, God fills in the places where I lack the strength, the wisdom, the ability to be the “ideal” version on myself that I envisioned before I had gained some life experience as a wife, a mother, a friend...
I am not going to be able to keep an immaculate house, train my kids to have manners and never fight with each other, keep my hair and makeup unsoiled, maintain a rockin' body, be the amazing, over-achieving part time assistant at work, and be the most gracious, picturesque wife that ever was, even in my wildest dreams. But that is okay because I realize that no one expects that from me, and if I really could do all that, I probably wouldn’t have a lot of friends. I wouldn’t want to be friends with that person. I would really be in a funk if I knew her – ha!
Anyway, all this to say that it truly is amazing to realize that in all our imperfections, God if perfect. So in those moments where the funk starts to form, it’s my hope that I’ll remember what I’ve written here today, and meditate on the what the Lord has spoken to me in these verses. I will try my darndest, with His strength, to be glad in knowing that God rejoices over me, imperfections and all, and go about my days with peace and kindness, for the sake of glorifying the one who loves me the most.
