Overflow

As of yesterday I am two months in to my grand adventure and honestly, things just keep getting better.

Today I played some music and FaceTimed my person, Monica. Then I built a couch fort with two of my boys and played with them for a while. After Nan came to take the little one to the playground, I worked on my German lesson and helped the oldest one work on his French lesson. Then I built a slingshot for the boys to play with, we had pizza for dinner, and now I write and relax and maybe have a Skype date or two before I go to bed at a completely reasonable hour.

This life feels too good to be real.

I think part of me has just been waiting for something to go wrong. That's been the general pattern of things, at least. Life goes great and turns into something amazing and then one area crashes and burns and drags the rest down with it. I'm sure most of you know what I'm talking about. We begin to live in fear, refusing to allow ourselves to get too happy, believing that at some point our happiness will just be taken away. But we don't need to live life that way.

The pastor at my church in Colorado told us about his mother's amazing cooking. He said that she makes the most amazing ribs in the universe and everyone who had tried them could attest to that. He described her process, how she cooked them for hours and every half hour or so she would pull them out and brush them in more sauce than seemed necessary.

"Mom, they're already dripping with this barbecue sauce, I think that's enough."

"Nope, just a little bit more."

This is similar to the way that Papa douses blessing upon us.

Subconsciously, I think a lot of us believe that we must work in order to be rewarded. And don't get me wrong, that is undoubtedly true. God loves to bless us when we do work for His kingdom. But He doesn't need an excuse to give us great things.

The Word says to delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. I really and truly believe this. I have seen first-hand over the course of the 2015 year just how real this truth is. Seek His face and He lavishes His grace upon you. He doesn't need a reason besides the fact that He loves you.

I chase Him first. And because of that, I can now be happy even when I am sick or lonely or stressed. My joy stems from nothing but the fact that He is. And now nothing can ever take it away from me.