Adjusting to Change

Life is full of change.  Never has that become more apparent than it has in this period of my life.  When I was a young woman, I loved change.  Of course, the change I liked was good change.  I loved being a mom and watching daily change in my children.  It seemed at the time that I would be raising children forever and I was happy for that.  For me, there has been nothing more fulfilling in life than raising a son or a daughter and watching each of their personalities develop.  I wondered what they would be like as adults.  I pondered what it would be like to have grandchildren. 

Now all that wondering and pondering has come to a partial fulfillment.  They are all grown now and have children of their own.  What I never counted on in my thinking was that they would actually leave and live somewhere else.  That was very silly of me, but I just assumed wrong things borne out of my heart's desires.....desires to be the grandmother close by.....desires to be the place that they would want to come to and spend the night and do all sorts of fun things with their grandparents.  They do get to do that, but those visits are few and far between up here in Oklahoma, as they naturally have very full lives where they live and it is hard to make the trip up here. We actually see them more often down where they all live.

More change has just occurred and I have no idea what it will be like for the grandparenting department.  Our oldest son and his family have moved far away.  I can neither just run over there in a few hours now, nor be there for every birthday as we have in the past.  I am anxious to see what the Lord is going to do in their lives in the foreign land of California.

Our thoughts and plans are not God's.  He has greater plans than we could ever imagine.  While my heart longed for them to be near, that was my own desire, not God's best plan for them.  They have followed His plan for their lives and I am happy that they all know Him and are following Him.  I truly could not want more than that for them.  I just miss them.  That's all.

This summer is one of change for the Burress house - literally the house.  We are adding that long-needed downstairs bedroom.

Beautiful, isn't it!!!!

Maybe, by this fall, we will have a complete new addition for this old house.  This kind of change is what I'm talking about....Good Change!

As we move into the stage of life without children or grandchildren around, I know God has plans for Ike and me that we do not even know about.  We have some ideas, but we are praying to see what will happen.  Waiting is just the hardest thing to do, isn't it?  Even when you know that God is in control, it is still hard for me to wait.  It feels just like waiting for Christmas Day to finally come so I could open those shiny gifts.  I am wanting to open God's shiny new gifts for our lives.  His ways are not our ways and His plans are not our plans.  Oh, how I still wish they were.  I thought I had some pretty good ideas about how life should go.  I guess I did not.

Please pray daily for American Christians to seek repentance and seek God's guidance.  That's what we all must do on both a personal and a national level if we want God's direction in our country.

Enjoy the plans He has for you, or at the very least, accept His will and move on, counting on Him to lead you.  That's what I want to do.  I will read this tomorrow when I start to sink into wrong thinking.