Julia Child

Julia Child was an amazing woman with an amazing life.  We know her best as the author of cookbooks, but she was SO MUCH MORE than that.

She is actually a bit of an inspiration to me.  Julia was a woman who longed for children and when that simply didn't happen for her, she ended up doing all these amazing things.  I know she would have traded every single thing, every adventure, every accolade for a child to call her own.  I know that because I would make that same trade in a heartbeat without a thought.  There is a peculiar pain about being childless.  Still, had Julia had her own way, she would have remained unknown, then the rest of us would have been Child-less.

I totally get that desire that is so strong you kind of don't care about whatever your purpose actually IS in this world, longing is longing and not all of our decisions in life are actually our own.  God had different plans for Julia, and it seems He has different plans for me.

David, in the Old Testament, wanted to build a temple for God, but God told him no.  Still, David recounted how he had been blessed and did not mourn how his own intentions were never realized.

That is true gratitude, to see all the blessings and not count as loss the longings for the desires of the heart.

I cannot turn one way and say, Look how I have been blessed! and then turn a different direction and say, Here is where I have been cursed! simply because my intentions are not the same as God's.

LOOK!  How I have been blessed!!!  That's really where it ends.  Anything less counts the curses as equal weight -or even heavier!- than the blessings.

I tell God ALL THE TIME, Lord, my life is Yours, and then a breath later am listing my personal preferences as to what He does with it.

One thing I have finally figured out, when you hand your life over to God, it is no longer your own.  I really have to let go of my own desires, no matter what great ideas they are, or how good or how helpful they are.  Those are about me, and centered around me, and not centered around the one Person who knows me down to my toenails and understands how to use me to the greatest good for God, for everyone else, and truly, for my own self.

I do believe that God is Love, and Loves me more than I can dare dream, and so whatever His plans are, they are for the greatest possible production of Love, right? Keeping my eyes fixed on Him, that wisdom rings clear and true.

But then, keeping my eyes fixed on Him is the only way I can ever know anything with clarity and in Truth.