Like Mary

**I wrote this post last year but it has been on my heart so much this last month that I wanted to re-post it along with several updates.  I hope it blesses you again if you remember it from last year, or I hope it blesses you brand new for all my recent subscribers.  Merry Christmas.**

I hope you don’t mind me being a little real with y’all today.

Sometimes I read other blogs and everything just looks so happy and all-around awesome for that blogger – as if they never have to bribe their kids with M&Ms so that they will smile for a photo or that their marriage never hits a bump or that they never raise their voices at their children.

In fact I was reading a blog the other day and I showed it to the Happy Hubby and said in frustration, “She makes everything look so easy!  So perfect!  And how in the world is it possible that she is an awesome writer/crafter/mom/wife/photographer/AND genius-at-coming-up-with-clever-Elf-on-the-Shelf-poses all-in-one?!”

The Happy Hubby replied, “Well, babe, you kind of do the same thing on your blog…”

I realized in that moment that he was SO right.

Happy Home Fairy is one of my favorite things – other than my faith and my family.

I want it to be this fun, creative, inspiring place for my readers (whom I treasure deeply).  I want it to be a happy place – not filled with lots of posts heavy with trials and tribulation.

But I realize that in my attempt to do that, you only get to see a small snippet of our lives.

This blog does not reveal everything that goes on in my world.

I am going to share with you some ‘real’ things today because I NEVER, EVER want this blog to be a place that stirs envy in my readers.  I NEVER, EVER want my readers to walk away feeling some sort of emptiness because the enemy led you to believe that somehow I’ve got this thing called living all together.

Because I definitely don’t.

To be perfectly honest, life is hard right now.

I told a girlfriend yesterday that lately it just seems like we have just been rolling from one difficult thing to another.

The Happy Buddy had a febrile seizure on Sunday.  He was acting on the verge of sick, but I was scheduled to sing on the worship team and he didn’t have a fever or any symptoms at the time, so we brought him to church.  After the worship, I sat down with him in the back of the sanctuary to listen to the sermon.  His head was in my lap and I was stroking his hair when all of a sudden his little body began convulsing and then he threw up everywhere.  I knew something was wrong though because it was like my boy wasn’t there any more, his face was completely unresponsive.  I slapped his cheeks a few times and spoke to him quietly, then quickly picked him up and brought him back to the fellowship hall where a few of the deacons called an ambulance.  The Happy Buddy was still not responding as I carried his limp body out to the paramedics.  We drove to the hospital and spent the afternoon in the ER.  It took several hours before he ‘came to’ and then another hour before his speech returned.  There were several moments where I thought perhaps the seizure had stolen the Happy Buddy’s ability to talk.  It was an intense afternoon – full of reminders of the uncertainties we faced with the Happy Baby’s health when we were in the hospital with him.

The Happy Baby is almost 2 and just the other day he started acting it.  And let me just say, it is NOT easy disciplining that kid.  It’s easy to let him get away with stuff because of everything he went through (and not to mention his super cuteness), but I have to be strong and remember that he is still a little sinner (albeit a super cute little sinner) and needs Jesus just like the rest of us.

The Happy Hubby and I are trying to figure out how to train up our boys, get through the busy Christmas season, and still find time for our own marital needs like date nights and intimacy and communicating beyond who changed what diaper and who is picking up who from school.

I am physically exhausted.  Do you ever wonder how to balance it all?  If I feel like a good mom one day, my marriage suffers.  If I feel like a good wife another day, my kids eat chicken nuggets and don’t get their teeth brushed.  If I am a good wife and a good mom one day, then I suffer.  I mean, I have an in-grown toenail on my left foot that is driving me crazy and not letting me wear any of my favorite shoes and who has time (or money) to go see a podiatrist for help when I am trying to keep a million spinning plates in the air??

(I don’t blame you if you want to stop reading this now that I’ve revealed too much about the condition of my feet.  Lol!! :-))

I could list several more things to prove to you how un-perfect I am and how our Happy Home is struggling to make sense of the day-to-day hurdles alongside everybody else, but God gave me a little pocket of truth that I would like to share instead.

When I was holding the Happy Buddy and his body was all limp and we were rushing to the hospital and I could sense that rising choice in my heart of whether or not to journey toward despair, I was reminded of Jesus’ mother, Mary.

I was reminded how an angel appeared to her – out of the blue – and told her that she would be the one to carry God’s Son.

We can only imagine what that must have been like – did Mary’s brain immediately start making lists of all the ways she she felt she fell short of the calling, how tired she was, or how would she ever survive all of the ridicule of a pre-wedding pregnancy?  Do you think she worried about this child’s future or how His coming might effect her relationship with her fiancé?  Do you think she got upset with the Lord for placing a call on her life that inevitably meant things would suddenly get very, very hard?

Maybe.

But the Bible only records what Mary said in response to the angel’s message.

She bowed her head quietly and said, “I am the Lord’s servant.  May it be to me as you have said.” (Luke 1:38)

This, my friends, is the reason why God chose her to be Jesus’ mother.

She ‘got it.’

She understood this whole living thing.

She knew that choosing to walk by faith is never easy, but always best.

You can hear the trust in her voice – ringing out like Christmas bells – when she spoke that phrase of ultimate surrender, modeling for the rest of us how to follow God.

“I am the Lord’s servant.  May it be to me as you have said.”

Yes.

And don’t you love how ready that response was on her lips?

It was like she was well-accustomed to saying, “I am totally and completely God’s.  He knows what is best for my life, so whatever He wants – I want.  Even if that means I might face difficulty, criticism, pain, wrestle with anxiety for my child’s well-being, or even have to walk through a hard season in my marriage.”

I can imagine she repeated that phrase when the innkeeper turned her and Joseph away and they were led to a dirty stable for her to deliver Jesus.

I can imagine she repeated that phrase when people mocked her for being pregnant before being with Joseph.

I can imagine she repeated this phrase when the angry crowds beat her son, whipping Him and forcing Him to wear a crown of thorns.

I can imagine she repeated this phrase as she watched Him hang on the cross under the weight of the world’s sin.

Oh, how my daily trials seem so minuscule in comparison to Mary’s!

But nevertheless, they are trials all the same.

And I want to make the most of them.

“I am the Lord’s servant.  May it be to me as you have said.”

This is how I want to respond whenever my life makes me want to run off to Target for therapy.

This is how I want to respond when the uncertainties of my children’s health begin to weigh my heart down with fear.

This is how I want to respond when I am tempted to compare my life with another’s via the internet (and for the record, I actually just unsubscribed myself from one particular blogger’s Instagram, blog emails, Facebook, etc. because the whole thing was just becoming too much of a distraction.  Sometimes you have to make drastic moves in order to walk forward in freedom!!).

This is how I want to respond instead of picking up the phone to complain to a friend.

This is how I want to respond on the days where I would rather throw in the towel come morning when the whole parenting/wife-ing/living cycle starts all over again.

There is such sweet joy in that kind of surrender, my precious readers.

God hand picks each of us to be Mommies to our Happy Buddies.  Wives to our Happy Hubbies.  And Women who recognize that, as the angel said to Mary just moments before he left her, “For nothing is impossible with God.” (Luke 1:37).

To live this life under the umbrella of His love is to recognize that our lives belong to Him.

He can do whatever He wants with us – we are His servants.

We must lay it all down and simply rest in the fact that God is good.  Whatever He does do with us, we are promised that He will be with us every step of the way.

Sometimes asking Christ to dwell in us will literally leave stretch marks – you know?

But as He grows in us and we are stretched, we remember that He is shaping us to be more like Him.

Mary, when perfectly surrendered to the Lord, had the blessing of being Christ’s mommy.  She got to nurse the King of Kings.  She got to care for Him and snuggle Him and rock Him to sleep.  She got to make sure the Prince of Peace had clothes that fit, food in his tummy, and a roof over His precious head.  She got to hold the Messiah when He had a bad cough or runny nose.  She got to watch Him grow in favor with God and man.  She got to witness His ministry and miracles.

And He took care of her, didn’t He?  Right up to the end when on the cross, Jesus provided for his widowed mother’s future by placing her in the hands of John.

“For the Mighty One has done great things for me…” Luke 1:49

So, friends, this Happy Home is imperfect and messy.

I struggle like everyone else to make sense of the daily ups and downs of life (and toenails).

But what carries me from one minute to the next is not whether or not I can push forward in my own strength or by reading about someone else’s.

It’s that I hold it all before my King with open hands, declaring that I am His, and accepting what He gives in the knowledge that He knows what is best for my life.

Difficulty?

Bring it.

Trial?

Let’s do it.

This is what God is giving me right now.

And I choose to be like Mary.

“I am the Lord’s servant.  May it be to me as you have said.”

-Julie :-)