Perspective Shift

     I feel overwhelmed with all the Lord is teaching me, but a good overwhelmed. I feel like He is just sitting with me and sharing all these truths and I am trying to soak it all up because I know that seasons like this don't last forever. As I have been walking through this season of learning faith and being asked some hard questions, my perspective on my life and life in general has really begun to shift. I have said before in one of my blogs that our perspective is not God's perspective and His ways are not our ways. With that, I really feel like He has been challenging me more and going deeper with me on what that really looks like in my life.
     I have shared before about my struggle with it taking a while to get pregnant and how that has shaken me up a bit. There is so much uncertainty when it comes to having kids, and I guess much of life is that way, but this has been a major area of struggle in my life. And the longer times goes on without getting pregnant the more and more I can feel fear and panic try to grip my heart. The days when hopelessness seems to get the best of me, I find myself asking why the strong desire to have kids and why have I ALWAYS wanted to be a mom if these longings are never going to be fulfilled? While praying through some of these questions this week I was reminded of the story in the Bible of Abraham and Sarah.
     Abraham and Sarah wanted children but they had none and they were past the child-bearing age. God spoke to Abraham in his old age and promised him a son, born from Sarah, and also said that his offspring will be as many as the stars in the sky. As time passed, they began to doubt God's promise. Sarah did not think they would have children so she told Abraham to sleep with her slave, Hagar, and have a child. Abraham did just that and had a son with Hagar named Ishmael. Sarah and Abraham waited for 25 years for God to give them a son and God did what He said He would do and gave them a child. 25 YEARS! Abraham was 100 years old when this happened! He had two sons now. But, didn't God say that his offspring would be as many as the stars in the sky? To anyone looking at Abraham's family, I am sure they thought, surely, God must have lied or forgotten what He promised you. How could this man have many offspring but only have two sons? But from Isaac started the lineage of the Israel nation, hence, making Abraham the father of many.
    So, that is a WAY abbreviated version of a really great story but I had to give some background for this blog to make any sense. This story spoke to me about perspective. There are so many times in our lives when we feel the Lord has spoken something to us or He has given us a desire to do or be something and then we take that and mold it into what we think it should or will look like. I don't think dreaming or making plans with those desires is wrong in any way, but I think the struggle for me is when I make those dreams something that I think has to happen. I assume because God gave me such a huge heart for children that I will have them, and lots of them,  when I think it is the right time.  I lose perspective, and when I lose perspective I close myself off to what the Lord may have in store for me. God told Abraham he would have many offspring and I am sure he may have thought that meant literally, lots of children, but it did not. But Abraham stayed open to the Lord. Things don't always happen they way we want or when we want it to happen, and there is no doubt that it is a painful process sometimes, but our ways are not the Lord's. That has been my challenge, praying for the Lord's perspective in my life, praying that I stay open to all His ways. Knowing that because he gave me a passion for children also means that, that passion can be fulfilled in a thousand different ways and I need to trust that the way He chooses to fulfill it in my life will bring me ultimate satisfaction. My prayer truly is that the Lord's will would be done in my life the way He sees fit, because when I choose my own perspective I close myself to all the glorious ways my Lord wants to fulfill my desires.