I’m utterly humbled by my mailbox.\u00a0 Daily.\u00a0 It’s amazing.\u00a0 I drive up to my house, pulling close to the mailbox, reach in and pull out handfuls of encouragement.\u00a0 I tell myself each time that I MUST get better at sending cards to others.\u00a0 Tears always fill my eyes as I read them and realize that each one is a prayer spoken on my behalf.\u00a0 I’m undeserving, but so very appreciative.\u00a0 I’ve saved each one.\u00a0 I’ve read and re-read each one often.\u00a0 I know this is why I’ve not completely lost it.\u00a0 I’m surrounded by love and believe me, I do “feel the love.”<\/p>\n
I do have something that I need to share.\u00a0 It’s like a grain of sand in my shoe.\u00a0 It’s there and I know it.\u00a0 It doesn’t hurt.\u00a0 I could ignore it and actually it could go unspoken of forever and not matter one bit.\u00a0 But it’s driving me crazy enough to want to do something about it.\u00a0 Even in church this morning, I couldn’t bring myself to let it go.\u00a0 It rolled around and around in my head and formed so many thoughts.\u00a0 So, I’ll blog it.\u00a0 Not sure how it may be received, but it’s what’s on my mind at the moment.<\/p>\n
Someone once, who had the most sincere intentions, mentioned that, “God only gives you what you can handle.”\u00a0 I completely understand why someone would make such a comment.\u00a0 When life throws a curve ball, and in our case, several curve balls in a row, we have to wonder why. It’s human nature to wonder why.\u00a0 It makes us feel better to know that God is all knowing and He will carry us through this, that He will, in fact, only give you what you can handle because you can handle it.\u00a0 I’m not so sure I agree.<\/p>\n
Mel and I both\u00a0 deal with circumstances, not with ease, mind you, but maybe, as others have said, with a certain calmness.\u00a0 I’m not really sure what it is.\u00a0 Like I’ve said before, maybe I’m just too naive or worse, nonchalant<\/em>– even in circumstances when I shouldn’t be.\u00a0 It may be at times that we are like ducks gliding over the water, paddling like hell under the surface.\u00a0 I think we’ve overcome so much in our lives and have learned how to deal with our curve balls quite well.\u00a0 Only because we’ve had to.\u00a0 We are human, and certainly have our moments,\u00a0 but together, we are a good team.\u00a0 We balance each other.\u00a0 We calm each other.\u00a0 We have learned to move through life, finding the happy and making the most of it, despite the circumstances. We choose to laugh.<\/p>\n I can not believe that God has given me the circumstances that I’ve had to endure.\u00a0 Too often, I believe, we take words from the Bible and twist and rearrange them to fit into our molds.\u00a0 I think we take verses out of context and sticky tape them to our own stories. Maybe to make us feel better or feel smarter.<\/p>\n I have no doubt that God is carrying us.\u00a0 I have no doubt that God knows our plans and has plans for us to prosper.\u00a0 I have felt love and supported my entire life.\u00a0 I know<\/em> that I’m blessed beyond measure.\u00a0 I also know that God did not give Mary Clare her special heart to prove anything to anyone.\u00a0 I know that God did not give me cancer simply because I can handle it.\u00a0\u00a0 I know my life story was written before I was born and I know that He knows every word of that story.<\/p>\n I don’t have to understand why and frankly, I don’t want to understand why.<\/p>\n I have a story to tell because of God, not in spite of<\/em> God and He is the sole reason that I am able to tell it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m utterly humbled by my mailbox.\u00a0 Daily.\u00a0 It’s amazing.\u00a0 I drive up to my house, pulling close to the mailbox, reach in and pull out handfuls of encouragement.\u00a0 I tell myself each time that I MUST get better at sending cards to others.\u00a0 Tears always fill my eyes as I read them and realize that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6446"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6457,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6446\/revisions\/6457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.babypennington.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}