But I Don't Wanna!!

Is that a quote from my 4 yr old or his mother?? Well, there's really no wrong answer here, because Tyler certainly says it often enough. The sad thing, though, is that it's also been my response for quite some time now to my own Abba Father. Not consistently, not at every corner, not to every request or demand He places on my heart...just here and there, just when it's the stuff my humanity holds to the tightest. But just as I want the best for my Ty, God wants the best for me. I can't accept that answer from my son, and my Father won't accept it from me.

I'm a little hung up lately on just how stupid I am. I've tasted and seen that the Lord is good. I have. I know it. I believe it. Or do I? Really? For some dumb reason I still want to hold onto the hopes and dreams and well...sins, I guess, if you wanna get right down to it...that I think make (or will someday make) me happy. Yep, that's me. I'm trading in my real, honest, nothing compares to it JOY for some form of happy. Hello??!! Why can I sit here and write this and know that it's completely stupid yet walk away and still be suckered into it.

Ugh. I ramble. C. S. Lewis is so much better at this. I've read so much of him that I'm not sure which text this comes from, but it was in my devo last week. Here...my heart, his words:

"When we want to be something other than the thing God wants us to be, we must be wanting what, in fact, will not make us happy. Those divine demands which sound to our natural ears most like those of a despot and least like those of a lover, in fact marshal us where we should want to go if we knew what we wanted.

"He demands our worship, our obedience, our prostration. A man can no more diminish God's gory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word darkness on the walls of his cell.

"But God wills our good, and our good is to love Him. That is, whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want. Once more, we are embarrassed by His intolerable compliment to us, by too much love, not too little."

Lord, thank you for not letting me settle. Thank you for being altogether good and determined to fill me with only the best...YOU! Thank you for your unmatched patience as I stumble and whine, "but I don't wanna..." Thank you for your love and grace. And for your voice that calls me back time and time again.