Blessed by the Name of the Lord

Tonight in church we sang the song "Blessed Be Your Name" which is one of my favorite worship songs. I love that it starts with life in a good place and says, "Blessed be Your name," and then the next lines are about life being hard and yet again says, "Blessed be Your name". At the very end it says, "You give and take away. You give and take away. My heart will choose to say, Lord blessed be your name."

Loving God is not about feelings any more than loving my husband or my children is about feelings. If that were true what would we do when we don't "feel" loved. When our husband's are too busy to listen or our children yell mean things at us because we have said no? Yes I do feel love and am overwhelmed by God's love for me at times. But often I am just going along in life. We are living in really tough economic times. And beyond economics, people all around me are struggling with health issues, family dramas, the loss of a child or spouse, the loneliness of parenting. Some are in times of triumph and joy, new babies, new jobs, found love, great friendships, answers to prayers. But in both these scenarios, God is God. And in times when "the world is as it should be" or "as the darkness closes in" our hearts will choose to say, "Blessed be the Name of the Lord". Because God IS God I will choose to follow Him.

Blessed Be Your Name
by Matt Redman
- - -
Blessed Be Your Name
In the land that is plentiful
Where Your streams of abundance flow
Blessed be Your name

Blessed Be Your name
When I'm found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed Be Your name

Every blessing You pour out
I'll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say

Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

Blessed be Your name
When the sun's shining down on me
When the world's 'all as it should be'
Blessed be Your name

Blessed be Your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name

Every blessing You pour out
I'll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say

Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to say
Lord, blessed be Your name

Mario Brothers and Me

My oldest son, Hockey Boy, loves Mario, Luigi, Toad, Princess Peach, and all the characters in his Wii Mario games. He loves to tell me all about each of them. He likes to give me a play by play of each Mario Kart race he had that day and explain exactly how to make Mario do a spin jump in Super Mario Galaxy. He can talk about other subjects, but this is his favorite. At one point I got really tired of hearing all about Mario every time we got in the car or sat down to dinner. I wanted to tell him to stop talking about Mario. I was about to but I suddenly stopped.

Mario is for some reason important to my son right now. While I may not care if Yoshi is 10 or whether Luigi speaks Italian or Portuguese these details are incredibly important to him. And he is important to me and I want him to always feel he can share with me that he can talk to me and I will listen and take him seriously. I can't tell him to stop talking about Mario and then expect him to talk to me when he is a teenager about his struggles or his joys. He is important to me and what is important to him needs to be important to me.

And taking this a step further. If God is our Heavenly Father and he cares for us with a perfect love, He must want to hear what is important to me even if I don't think it would be interesting to God. The details that matter to me must matter to God because He loves us so much more than we are even capable of understanding.

Matches the Dragon

This week we have a visitor in our home. Our 4 year old has disappeared but there is a nice dragon named Matches who looks just like our son but talks in a quiet, gravelly voice. In November and December it was Yoshi, a character from Mario Kart, who at our house speaks with a very high pitched voice and can be quite naughty. At the new year we finally had to ask for our real son to return because we missed him. He has also been Ruby the Red Fairy, Amber another Fairy, and a few other characters whose names I missed. For some reason I have completely humored him with his imaginary characters. At church I write his real name as well as that day's character's name on his name tags. I call him by his character's name and then he will follow directions. I don't have a good imagination, but he does and I really don't want to squash it, even when the voices sometimes grate on my nerves. And Yoshi's voice can be really hard on your ears. But I am hoping if I honor his imagination now and show him that I respect who he is he will know that HE is important to me.

Instability

So this week has been a week of extreme lows and extreme highs. Actually as I write that I realize that to me they seemed extreme but in the grand scheme of things not really but it has been a stressful week at our house.

We are currently facing the situation of job instability at my husband's work. Thankfully for us he is the one that puts together the numbers so we always have a pretty good idea of how safe his job is at any given time. This week the bottom started to fall out and his job has become very unstable though he is going to survive the upcoming round of layoffs. It was incredibly hard news in light of these really tough economic times. Thankfully the next day he had some great leads of other jobs with his former companies. One takes us home. One takes us to another new life in another part of the country. One is secure, a hard offer with a very stable company. One is just a possibility. Okay so too many details.

Let's just say that there are choices to be made and now I am wondering how do we make those choices. We seek God's guidance at all times, but how do we really know what is the right choice. And is there a "right" choice? Do we look for opportunities that best utilize my husband's gifts, talents, education and experience even if those require yet another new school for our son and another new life for me? Do we go with a job that is less challenging but pays the bills and allows us to go home? Do we stay the course here and give the company a chance to make it allowing our kids to stay here?

It would be so nice if we had time to figure all this out. Unfortunately it seems that answers are required sooner than we want to give them. It feels so overwhelming to make such huge decisions. But I have been through this before, many times, and the one thing I do know is that I really am flexible and can make anything work which I guess is a good thing.

So these are my thoughts this week. It has been a while since i have blogged but I have been spending all my time extensively researching all our options as they have presented themselves this week.