Kindness of the Lord

The lyrics from Chris Tomlin's Kindness song keeps playing in my head.  Not the whole song but one specific line..."it's your kindness Lord that leads us to repentance."  Through all the changes, emotions, anger, bitterness, and sadness I was very clouded with His kindness to my life.  Focusing on things of this world tends to cloud my eyes to what He is doing in my life.  I'm so thankful that the cloud is slowing going away and I'm seeing all His kindness to me through the unknown valley that we are in. 

His kindness with blessing us with our baby girl.  After about 5 years of not getting pregnant I thought that the Lord said "all done" with having kids.  So it was a surprise when I found myself pregnant in Aug but sadly losing my baby a couple of weeks after knowing.  It was a hard moment because I thought my prayers to have another one was finally here but the Lord continued to say "trust me."  I learned a lot through that moment of grief and then He blessed us with another little baby in April, who will be 2 on Friday.  His kindness of orchestrating my children's timing to be born is so amazing.  He knew that we would be moving and that this transition would have been harder for me if I didn't have my little boom boom by myself.  Loneliness would have been at my door day in and day out with the two girls at school and at gymnastic leaving me home alone.  His kindness to allow me to have another little bambino at home at this moment in time is something that I do not deserve but am very thankful for.  

His kindness with blessing me to stay home again.  Having a full time job that I loved before we got married helped us the first year of life when Caleb lost his job.  But saying goodbye to it for staying home with S was difficult because I honestly didn't know what it meant to be a mom or how to be a mom.  I grew up with my grandma and my mom worked (which I'm very thankful for) but I didn't know how to be a stay at home mom and saying good bye to the corporate world was unknown.  And here I am again saying goodbye to my part time job that I loved to stay home with E.  But I realized last week at a ladies bible study that maybe me staying home isn't really for E, although it's a necessity because we don't know anyone here, but maybe it's really for my two bigger girls who are going through all those emotional transitions when you are in middle school and being a middle child.  Oh this stage of life is more confusing for me because they are confused with all their emotional and hormonal changes.  So His kindness to allow me to stay home and be in the present with them will hopefully help them with everything.

His kindness with blessing us with another awesome church family.  It was very emotional for me to leave my church family of 3 decades but the Lord guided us to this new church family that has allowed the transition to be much easier.  The body of Christ is so amazing.  These people have only met us since around August and we have made great friends already.  They have welcomed us in as a true family and my girls have gained awesome friends as well.  I'm grateful that throughout our time at CFBC we have developed this mentality of intentionality with relationships and although we didn't realize how much that mentality will affect us here, since everyone at CFBC strived for that so we don't really think we are being "intentional" when we actually are, it has allowed us to cultivate relationships with people and putting ourselves out there for the gospel.  We truly want to serve and point these believers to Jesus...we want to be the big arrows!!  His kindness with directing our feet to walk through the doors of Legacy Church has been such an eye opening for me because I've only had one church family, so meeting new people and worshiping with new people is all new to me.  But it's amazing to see how the Gospel breaks down barriers and allows people who do not know each other to have an instant connection because of Jesus.

There are so many other ways that the Lord has been so kind to us here.  The transition is going well and all though there are moments when I miss everyone at home, He is taking care of us with growing our affection for people here and growing our skin to be okay with the cold.  I can now go outside with a longsleeve thermal shirt in 50 degree weather and not freeze!!! His kindness has led to me to my knees repenting of my sin...complaining, bitterness, anger, questioning His goodness.  Although I still get sad and I still want to move back home...I can't deny His kindness to our family and I know that His plans for our family here will not be in vain.  He will use us here and He will grow us here and I am very very thankful for that.