moving mountains...

i have prayed and journaled countless entries to God this past 18 months asking him why so much all at once.  a husband with an illness-a son moved to college-a daughter planning a wedding-a precious, rough and rowdy eight year old boy with a unsympathetic, and often fussy, teacher-financial challenges due to the economy-a mother's death...why God do you place this mountain of challenges in my life? 

God gently replies back..."if it were just one or two of those challenges, you would handle it all on your own".  this mountain has been placed in front of me to draw closed to God-to depend on him to provide the love, grace, strength and wisdom i desperately need.  i mumble prayers asking God to remove the challenges-to make my life easier...my priority is for my life to be easier but God's priority for my life is to strengthen me in the midst of my "mountain climbing".  When I look at it from His perspective i have a glimpse of why i am "stuck" in this phase of my life.

It parallels parenting...Jeremiah doesn't wonder how the meal makes it to the dinner table or where the money came from that purchased the food, he just sits down and looks at the plate of food and inquires how many bites he has to consume in order to have dessert.  i daily plop myself down at God's table and ask how many bites of this mountain do i have to swallow, before i can move on to the dessert portion of life.  God wants me to be nurtured by this phase of life and to count on him to provide so gracefully for me.