I don't really like curveballs. I like everything well thought out, planned ahead of time, with every T crossed and I dotted. I prefer to know what's going to happen before I jump into anything.
And I definitely don't like feeling out of control.
Buuuuuttt 2020 happened. I dodged curveballs, ducking and weaving to miss on coming balls flying at my face all year. I learned to lean right and dodge left, and honestly could say that 2020 didn't sucker punch me in the stomach as one would have expected in such a tumultuous year.
Even before this year started, I heard God whisper LOVE to me as my word of the year. I thought, Ok I can handle that one. Love is good. Love conquers all fear. Love....well, LOVE is an action that isn't my strongest suit. Ok, maybe God has some stretching for me to do in the form of LOVE. I entered January with grand ideas of how to LOVE those around me better by showing up, being uncomfortable myself, and dying to my own wants and needs for others.
I failed over and over. My quest for some sort of peace in the outbreak of hell that 2020 was expressing itself to be, made me lose focus of the one thing God had laid on my heart to begin with. LOVE OTHERS, Carla.
You see, I'm remarried and have two children from my first marriage. My experience with having kids in that toxic environment programmed me to believe the lie that having kids is a prison sentence. Enter the love of my life, who has always wanted a kid his own, and you found one resisting wife to the possibility of any more kids. Until one night I sat watching a movie with my husband. The crying father tenderly watched his own daughter...blah, blah, blah. I'm not that emotional, but I looked over to see tears streaming down my husbands face and KNEW without a doubt that his HEART'S DESIRE was to have a baby of his own.
He would never pressure me. He would kinda side swipe the topic. Because he KNEW that I didn't really want to have any more kids, and therefore died to the idea of having his own.
But God. Oh God. I heard him whisper what is LOVE? Friends, love is dying for someone else. Not in the actually physical dying (although that is the greatest demonstration of love, but that's not what I'm talking about here) Love is dying to what you want for the sake of someone else's desire. That is love. LOVE is putting down your own thoughts and feelings for the sake of someone else's. Love is blindly entering into the unknown, trusting that God has your future in His hands, even though it's scary and uncomfortable.
And I'm going to be honest here this has been a long journey of me ignoring what deep in my heart was the inevitable. I couldn't act until I received a verbal calling out by a true friend, telling me that If I knew my husband really wanted a baby and I ignored his desire then I really was disobeying God to get me to act. There is NOTHING more disappointing to me than DISAPPOINTING and DISOBEYING God.
Because sometimes a true act of Love is calling out someone in Love.
So, bottle of wine in hand and a soft prayer under my breathe. I finally acted upon obeying God and Loving my husband and FULLY trusting God's sovereign plan for my life. I laid down all my carefully thought out plans, hung them outside to dry and asked God to intervene if he wanted to intervene.
He gave me TWIN BOYS in return. LOVE got me knocked up! At the age of 38 I find myself pregnant with twins, as in two. Not just one, but TWO (naturally I might add.) And although the road ahead might be bumpy and I'm sure lacking sleep, I know without a doubt that LOVE has been the greatest gift of 2020. Doing hard things, with God leading the way delights my heart in more ways than I can count. And friends, this curveball, was never really a curveball but a well thought out plan orchestrated by the God who LOVES me more than I can possibly bare. There are no curveballs when you walk with the One who laid down His life just for you and I. He has GOOD plan, one to prosper us, and one to give us hope and a future. These babies won't be just a blessing to my husband, but to me as well.
~Love does indeed conquer all fear ~
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