Willingness. Waiting. Running.

Tonight I am all cooked out.  I love cooking.  It really brings me great joy.  I don't really get excited about the cooking, per say, but I get very excited about what I know will happen when people eat the food.  There is a gathering.  There is a sharing.  There is conversation.  Togetherness.  These are the things I love most and the idea of cooking is the preparation of all those things.  

But there is a sobering reminder to me as I wrap the girls gifts and get their stockings all in order tonight.....we are missing one.  My little love.  And oh, how I do miss you.  But the wait has been so rich.  It has been transforming.....and for that I am so thankful!  I have seen God transform me in new ways, refine me, prepare me, teach me, and love on me!  One of my adoption Momma friends that knows what this wait feels like posted this on her facebook tonight and well....I borrowed it for myself:

There has been some great tragedy this week here in the United States.  Unthinkable.  Unimaginable.  Horrifying.  The same day, a man in China stabbed 22 children and an elderly woman at a primary school.  Unthinkable.  Unimaginable.  Horrifying.  Where do we put all of this?  How do we respond to all of this?  I have been reading the book, "Half the Sky" by Nicolas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.  Just the night before I was reading how girls as young as 8 years old our sold as sex slaves.  What?  Completely Horrifying.  2.7 BILLION people live on less than $2 a day!  What?

And then I read this quote and it hits me hard.  Hard as I think about my little love in Ethiopia that I long for on a daily basis.  I pray for on an hourly basis.  But yet....it really reminds me how much I long for Jesus.  How much I long for my Savior to come and rescue me from this world that has gone completely out of control!  And so this Christmas I run to the manger with great urgency.  Because I know that He was a real baby that was really born and that really lived and that really died.....for me!  So that I might live with Him forever!  So I will run to the manger this Christmas and I will wait for Him to return again.  I will be willing to wait on Him and wait on His timing.  And I will be obedient to do the things He has planned for me to do until He does come again.  "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."  Ephesians 2:10

How are you at waiting?  How are you at running?  I have learned that the two go hand in hand.  As I wait, I must run toward Him and run the race which He has set before me to run!

Merry Christmas, dear readers!