A Whole Year

I can't possibly go through today without acknowledging it's significance. Today (in about 2 hours to be exact) marks 1 year since David Benjamin Kubnick entered the US, became a citizen, and entered our home for the very first time. A whole year.

Years used to seem longer to me. When we started having kids and the speed of life started to mimic the speed of light, years got shorter. This year, however, has been different. It has been short and long. The best and the worst. The easiest and the hardest. We were driving home from Cole's football game today and I was on a scenic route through Bluffton, windows down, sun on my face, angry little girl in the middle seat, super angry little boy in the back seat. And in my head I was like "how is this my life?" And THEN, the cars in front of me started braking and I saw an SUV half pulled off the road about a half mile ahead. There were 2 people standing behind the car and I was all kinds of irritated. Why can't they pull all the way off the road? People are just the worst! And then all of the cars were going suuuuuuper slow. The kind of slow that allows you to sufficiently mean mug the people causing the chaos. As we drove closer to the car, a tiny little white haired lady was barely making it walking to the back of her car. She had on a perfectly pressed, bleach white cardigan sweater set and perfectly pressed slacks. Her hair had clearly been rolled recently as it was stiff and perfect. And she was STRUGGLING to walk along side her car. But she made it to the back. Just as I was driving up on her car. And this is what I saw......

A homeless man was pushing a grocery cart full of bags. Bags in the cart and tied to the sides of the cart. He was filthy. And this little lady had pulled her car off the road in front of him. And she struggled her way alongside the road, and as I passed, she had her hands on him. Touching him. And her eyes were closed. She was praying over him. In her perfect, clean, white hair, white sweater, she didn't care if she stopped traffic on I-95, she was touching this man. And praying for him.

I drove the rest of the way home thinking about the struggle. About how sometimes, as Christians, and even as non-believers, we become numb to the struggle. We forcefully desensitize ourselves to the hurt, and we completely miss the opportunity that God is giving us to walk out of the struggle a new person. We start to accept the "hard". We just say "this is my life now" and we tread in stagnant water for the rest of our lives. We are given choices. We are handed circumstances. And we are afforded the luxury of grace, daily, and a do-over and another chance with each rising sun. And we just tread. And we drudge. Because "this is my life now". And I was thinking about this woman, in her old age. What has she seen in her lifetime? I can't fathom the burdens she has carried. I can't even stomach the loss she has suffered. She could have driven by that man today and chalked it up to safety or to the fact that it took her a decade to walk to the back of the car. But she didn't. She didn't just accept her personal circumstance. She chose to be better than her circumstance.

We walk through every single day of life like that homeless man today. Our carts are full of baggage. We've got baggage tied to the side and pouring out over the edges. But God meets us. In his bleach white sweater of perfection, with no need for us or personal gain amounting from meeting us, He does it. Right there in our circumstances. And He expects us to stop treading in circumstantial stagnant water, and start relishing in living water.

One of the greatest challenges of this year for me has been learning to love the way that God loves me. And the first thing I had to do was to understand that love is not at all a feeling. It's a verb. It shows up. It forgives. It humbles itself. It sacrifices. It puts itself dead last. It pushes through and perseveres. It fights. It endures. It does not feel all tingly inside. It does not give you butterflies. It does not kiss your forehead. It prays for it's enemies. It rejoices in suffering. It trusts that God's will is the only will. It does not fail.

I may not ever be capable of loving anyone in this capacity, but one year ago today, God loved David Benjamin Kubnick enough to put him in a family that would introduce him to the greatest love he will ever know. And God loves Jake and I so much, that every morning, when He tells the sun to rise, He gives us another day to break the cycle. He gives us another day to walk through the fire. He gives us another circumstance and another choice. We've had a year full of them. Our prayers have changed many times over this year. And tonight they will change again........my prayer for our family, and for yours as well, is that we do not let the "hard", harden us. That we continue to seek God's purpose in the struggle, rather than surrender to it.

It has been a WHOLE year since we stepped off that plane. A WHOLE year closer to each of us allowing God to make us whole.