Showing Up. . .

So after celebrating a nice but relatively uneventful Easter yesterday I awoke to  my middle son informing me that my oldest son was sick.

Sigh, another sick child, just how I wanted to end the day. . .

And I wish I could tell you that cleaning up after a teenager is somehow less gross than cleaning up after a toddler but it is not.

These moments, if I’m totally honest, they just aren’t very fun. They are hard. I get tired and I don’t so much love being a mom when I’ve got a million things to do and a sick child on top of it all.

I feel overwhelmed and quite frankly want nothing but to hide under the covers and let someone else deal with it all.

So after a restless sleep, I awoke this morning with a prayer in my heart as usual, asking for guidance and direction about how I could possible do it all. And ever so softly I heard Him say “just show up”.

Just show up. And that’s what I do, every day. I obey and I’m reminded of this verse about obedience being better than sacrifice, though sometimes obeying feels like a sacrifice.

“Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
as much as in obeying the Lord?
To obey is better than sacrifice,
and to heed is better than the fat of rams.” 1 Samuel 15:22

When I obey He is able to take my meager offering and like the loaves and the fishes He is able to multiply it and somehow make it enough.

Enough to meet their needs and even have a little left over.

And I can’t help but think about how He showed up on that Friday all those years ago and bore my sins on the cross. And His obedience was a sacrifice that He freely accepted for me and for all of us and I’m so thankful.

But it’s still hard. This whole being a mom/wife/human thing.

Every day there are challenges but I feel a bit lighter knowing that He doesn’t expect that I’ll do everything but only that I show up.

Because when I do, He meets me there. In the hard, gross, dirty, sick places. He meets me there and He is enough.

Friends, where might He be asking you to show up?