Making. Us. New.

As I started this blog last week, I sat staring at a blank screen for a few minutes trying to come up with an address.  I typed in a few "titles" to find them taken.  I just wanted to move past this step and come back to it later.   Beginning to get frustrated, I took a deep breath, and my fingers typed the words.... making. us. new. 

He IS making me new  ......  this is something I have known, something that I have felt happening in me for some time .... really since I decided to give my life to follow Christ and his ways.  This is what the Holy Spirit is in the business of doing - transforming.   The problem with me is,  I really like to be in control.  I have really enjoyed trying to change myself in my own efforts. Striving - ugh.  Learning to take the back seat has been hard for me.  Learning that God doesn't need my help, just my willingness ...... hard for me.   Learning to submit to the process and lay all at his feet ...... hard for me.

But in a new way, I AM surrendered.  I am completely powerless here where the sacred has been torn from my life.
I am clay in the potter's hand.  He is forming and molding me.  It has come many times and in many ways as I have been following Jesus; and it comes here and now in my heartache, pain and loss.  It will continue to come in the really hard days, in the good days, and in the days that seem painfully mundane.

Below is a quote that a dear friend passed along to me about the formation process.

Is not a picture painted on a canvas by the application of one stroke of the brush at a time? Similarly the cruel chisel destroys the stone with each cut. But what the stone suffers by repeated blows is no less than the shape the mason is making of it. And should a poor stone be asked, "What is happening to you?" It might reply, "Don't ask me. All I know is that for my part there is nothing for me to know or do, only to remain steady under the hand of my master and to love him and suffer him to work out my destiny. It is for him to know how to achieve this. I know neither what he is doing nor why. I only know that he is doing what is best and most perfect, and I suffer each cut of the chisel as though it were the best thing for me, even though, to tell the truth, each one is my idea of ruin, destruction and defacement. But, ignoring all this, I rest contented with the present moment. Thinking only of my duty to it, I submit to the work of this skillful master without caring to know what it is.
-Jean-Pierre de Caussade

Thankful today for the way he WILL make all things new; and for the way is making me new day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment.
I give you my heart, Lord, I give you all of me. May you transform me into your likeness so that I may reflect your glory.  (2 Cor. 3:18).   That is my prayer for our family as we walk through this valley.  Though this doesn't seem like a good part of our story, I trust the Lord to make it good.  I pray that Dave, Kristi, Jadyn and Maci will be more like Christ.  This hope is sustaining me for now.