Who I am.....

I'm in a women's bible study through my church.  This is my third year to participate and it's been such a huge blessing to me.  This year our study is on contentment.  This past week it was about learning to be content with who God created us to be.  It was a good lesson. 

I have spent a great deal of my adult life discontent with who I am.  I've spent a lot of time comparing myself to this mom or that mom or this wife or that wife.  I've spent time focusing on how I wasn't gifted with a natural bent towards routine and cleaning. I've spent a lot of time reading blogs by mom's of many (more even than I have) and wishing I had her patience and grace and ability to roll with the punches.  I've spent the last few months NOT doing this anymore and the contentment I have begun to feel with who *I* am is HUGE.

I am capable of cleaning even if it's not my forte.... now that I spend less time wallowing about how bad I am at it and just DO it my house has been amazing.

I am gifted with teaching.... I always knew this somewhere but it seemed like either a curse or an insignificant gift but now that I'm using my gift with my own children to mold them and shape them it no longer feels like either. 

I am gifted with four children and when I stop trying to be someone else and stop expecting them to be like children who belong to someone else I am more patient and content with them and who they are.

At study last night someone shared an analogy and I hope she doesn't mind if I share it here because it really hit me and affected me and I think it's something that is important for all of us to grasp.

Our verses were out of Psalm 139 - specifically 13-16:

¹³ For you created my inmost being;
   you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
   your works are wonderful,
   I know that full well.
¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you
   when I was made in the secret place,
   when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶ Your eyes saw my unformed body;
   all the days ordained for me were written in your book
   before one of them came to be.

The analogy was this:

Thinking about when my baby was first born and I am just looking at it and my whole being is just flooded with an indescribable love for this tiny perfect little baby.  And we are just in awe at how God created this little miniature human and it's just WOW.  And even as they grow and do things that drive us crazy we still just have this deep abiding love for them that doesn't waiver.  THAT is how God sees ME!  That is how God sees YOU!  We are His babies.  These tiny, perfect things that He created in His own image and His love for us is that deep, abiding, indescribable love.  Grasp that.  Sit in awe of that.  I know I did and still am in awe of the idea that God loves ME the way that I love my children only more because He IS love and HIS love is far deeper and more indescribable because it is PERFECT and we are not.

Who you are, who I am, is God's precious and loved child who He gave specific gifts to.  When we compare ourselves to others and complain about how we're not enough of this or that then we are telling Him that He did something wrong in how He created us.  Find contentment in realizing YOUR unique gift(s) and His purposes for YOUR days, not Suzy Homemaker's.

Be blessed.