I Am...with you (just look in the window)

I needed the presence of the Lord in my heart and at my house this week.

If you have been reading here you know our youngest child offers us opportunities to be stretched and to lean into the Lord as we travel with him on the road to recovery from his unbelievable past. He has taken things to levels I didn't think we'd ever see in our home, and last weekend something happened that made me wonder what our next steps should and would be.

I knew one thing when Monday rolled around. I needed the Lord to show me something, to reach out to us in a tangible way, to become real and to move. I began my day by tuning into a message online titled, God is...Able. Before long I found myself sitting and taking notes, then I found Kyler over my shoulder, I invited him to sit and listen with me.

My favorite line from the message:
God doesn't want you to smell like everything you've been through.

Nice. Quite frankly I feel like we're going through crap right now in this one area and when we come through it I don't want to smell like it. So that was a good word. I looked over at my child listening intently and said, "You've been through a lot, and right now you smell." (once again, nice Young Mother of the Year material) He looked at me and said he knew. I told him that this was not the aroma God had for him.

God showed up for me when these things were said in the message:
* Don't fall apart because you are in this situation.
* Win the battle of faith.
* It stinks, but still believe our God is able.
* You can't go by what you see, but by what God says.
* Faith over unbelief.
* Tune into God's report, don't believe what you see and hear.
* Start praying back to God what he has already said to you.
* Refuse to taste bitterness.

God heard the cry from my heart, that I needed him, and he was now speaking to me. My child, so distant for so long, was sitting at my side listening to a message. My heart was calmer and I felt strengthened.

As I pulled out of my driveway later that day, this is what I saw in window of this child's bedroom.
Two things immediately came to my mind, if anyone is going to protect this child, let it be the strongmen, mother of the Lord & hero's of the Bible! Second, I asked for the presence of the Lord, and it looks as if his Son showed up in the window, I took that as a sign!

I know I will need to revisit this post myself in the upcoming days as my husband just entered Kyler's bedroom to find he had put liquid Elmer's glue (which I didn't know he had) all over his wooden window sill.

(hmmmm....maybe I better check and see if the hero's have been moved from their positions.)

"I cannot do it," Joseph replied to Pharaoh, "but God will..." Genesis 41:16