It’s early on Sunday morning and as usual, I’m up early. I love the quiet mornings with my coffee and Bible. Quiet and unhurried mornings with things to do but no real timeframe to complete them are such a gift. It’s nice to have Michael here, if just for a couple of days for now. What I have learned during this transition time of moving, is that home is where we are together. I have struggled calling Lander, Wyoming home but equally struggle calling California home unless Michael is there. He makes either home for me.

As I write this first blog from my Lander patio, I am struck by how good God is to allow me to always have a view that feeds my soul. What a wonderful friend who knows my heart and provides me with all I need in order to listen; in places He can still me and heal me. I am grateful.

As I was reading this morning in Romans 8, verse 18 was the focus of the devotional.

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”

Sufferings of this present time and the process of comparing stuck out to me. In the United States and more specifically in my personal life, I have experienced little to no suffering. Certainly, things and events are not fair. It seems that people who claim to be good and righteous get by with ungodly things. I get angry at such things and resentment and bitterness builds in me. I get tunnel vision and only seem to focus on my hurt, my ‘suffering’ (and I use that term loosely in a personal suffering context).

In a devotional called Stay Fit: Strengthening your Connection to Jesus, Lauren Espy, compares the focus on suffering to the focus on brokenness.  Brokenness is a word that is hard to describe in tangible terms, for me. Am I broken because of the hurt of events or is it a state of mind/spirit that despite the events or hurt, I remain held and secure? I think the latter is truth and is the desired result of the former.  It’s a place of surrender. In her devotional, Lauren talks about how Jesus broke the bread to feed the 5000. He held the bread and was in control of it’s breaking, as well as its holding and distribution.

Broken, held and used. Certain not possible if I focus on my hurt in what seems unfair. Comparing the suffering with the glory as described in Roman 8:18, the suffering comes up deficient. I come up on the short end of the grace of God and mercy he offers me. I come up short of experiencing his glorious working out of my salvation for my good and His glory.

Lord help me be comfortable in brokenness or at least still in it. Help me lay down the resentment and trust I am held and loved.