Adversity and Contentment

I am hoping to have a blog-a-thon this week. We had an incredible summer, the house renovation is rapidly moving along, and my baby starts kindergarten monday morning!! God has answered some huge prayers this summer for us and I am trying to get myself back into a place where I can share and journal all of it!! One of the biggest places God has brought us to this summer is embracing the life of adversity we seem to live and also having rich contentment.

Everyone is writing a story whether they know it or not. People see and hear your life whether they are a big or small part of it.
Tim and I continue to have conversations about when we were 18 and what we wanted our life to look like verses now being 30 what we want our life to look like.
I think much of our life has included adversity. A synonym for that is difficulty.
As we begin to heal. learn. listen. move on from. the adversity that has been a big part of our journey, the pros out-weigh the cons. Interesting, right? Adversity has yielded fruit and blessing.
To be really open, the only real con and sin from adversity I still struggle with occasionally is when life seems to not be "fair." What I deem as fair, anyway. Mainly when people around me kind-of float through life with extreme ease. And the punch in the gut is when those who have had ease tell those who have had adversity what they need to do. I'm just gonna go ahead and say it, if you haven't been down certain roads of pain, you may not be the best person to try and counsel those that have. **
Just a little life tip. I apply it to myself as well. I don't know what it's like to lose a parent. Many of my friends have. While I can comfort and encourage, I am not going to challenge, try and relate, or tell how them how to cope. You see?
That question is a huge eternity issue that I am constantly reminded this Earth is not our home. Adversity is short-lived. And this journey is but a vapor. We are merely blessed to be able to wake up each morning and enjoy the blessings we do have. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about fairness though- it's non-productive. I've also learned its sin and to take captive thoughts and surrender them. Recognizing that and then actually doing something about it is powerful. You chose to call those thoughts out as a lie and move on.

The pros are something written on my heart. I can't even write about it really. Some of the things I have gone through the last 2 years alone, God has been with me in a very special way. I have heard and felt our Creator in very real ways. The times of loss has been the times of God's greatest appearances in my life.  He has given me wisdom, words of comfort, and a heart that has seen and triumphed through adversity. Because of Him. Because He was there.
Moving into this house, the Hope House, God has in a very real way restored hope. Restored peace. And restored me fully.
I no longer feel the holes of this world, but God has filled them. And filled them with joy.
The 7 lives God created in me, the 2 that are here on Earth, God has healed. The homes and moving and career changes, going back to school, renovating. God has brought peace.
Great peace.
It doesnt all even seem possible, but that's how God works. He takes complicated, messy, ugly lives and makes them joyful and peaceful. He is the greatest desire of the longings in our hearts.

In some weird way, the adversity that has been ever-present in our journey has led to freedom and contentment for us.
And you can't buy that.

To be fully content and fully in the moment of where I am right now.
Our joy is not necessarily in the event filled sometimes, its how we spent our time along the way. I want to embrace my marriage, kids, and our messy life renovating houses right now. And not miss a second. They are too precious.
I dont know if you can fully wrap yourself around this whole concept except to really evaluate inwardly. Focus on your todays.
When you can fully live for the moments and the day, you release yourself and will have freedom from the what ifs of tomorrow. And in the same hand, adversity viewed day to day is pretty easy to surrender.

Food for thought. Its neat that during our house renovations, we are so desperately tired and seeking God, that we hear from Him in big life changing ways.