“God of mercy
Sweet love of mine
I have surrendered to Your design.
May this offering stretch across the sky
And these hallelujahs be multiplied.”
(“Multiplied” NEEDTOBREATHE)
Multiplied is one of my favorite songs right now. I think it just really expresses where I am at emotionally/spiritually these days.
My little family is really going through a difficult trial right now, (if you haven’t read the back story, you can find it here) and life can really be a roller coaster. I have days where my faith is strong, and days where I lie on the couch and cry because I feel so broken and weak. But overall, I would say that my heart could repeat the words of that song and mean them.
I have surrendered to Your design.
I have sung those words countless times. Even before any of this had happened to us, I sang them. I thought that I meant them, but now with my literal life and the life of my unborn son hanging in the balance, I swallow hard before I repeat them.
Have I truly surrendered to His design?
Do I really trust that His way is best?
Even if that means my baby boy dies and I do too? Or if God chooses to spare me but takes my child, will I still sing His praise?
Will He still be good?
If He allows my child to be born in the next few days and I watch him fight for his life in the NICU, with chords and tubes covering his tiny body, will my trust still firmly rest in the Rock that is higher than I? If I watch Elijah breathe his last in a glass incubator, never getting to see his older brother or the sky or his grandparents, will my heart still say “hallelujah?”
These are the questions that create a lump so big in my throat that those words stop short. I chew them and taste the weight of the meaning they hold.
Then I sing them.
Why? Because I am a super Christian who has the faith to move mountains?
Heck no.
If you could see my heart, you would be struck by just how weak I am. By how many times the words “Why, Father?” are whispered in a prayer. By how many times I clench my jaw in rebellion, thinking that somehow my resistance to the grief that could soon take over my heart will make it all better. That somehow I can change God’s plan.
But He is so loving. So patient with me. He lets me fight and wrestle and kick my feet in defiance. Then He tenderly changes my focus, turns my eyes upwards and gives me a glimpse of His perspective.
“Set your mind on the things above,
not on the things that are on earth.”
Colossians 3:2
Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
Matthew 16:23
The Lord has brought me to such a place of surrender. Partly because I have no choice (ha) and I can’t control what happens to me or Eli. And partly because of the every day choice He is calling me to make. The choice to say “I trust You” even when I feel so anxious.
When my perspective is an eternal one, the trials of this earthly life don’t seem so overwhelming. I remember that my life is just a vapor, and I want to make it count. I want this life I’ve been given to be an offering that causes people to say “God be praised.”
“May this offering stretch across the skies,
and these hallelujahs be multiplied”
(“Multiplied” by NEEDTOBREATHE)
The Carolina Farmhouse 