Hoping To Be Surprised

I love to be surprised...if it's a good surprise that is.  If it means my sister showing up at my door from a state away, or a night out planned by my husband, who doesn't love that?  One time I had a friend schedule a house cleaner to come and clean my house before I hosted my husband's 40th birthday celebration.  Just dreamy!

In my opinion, a good surprise comes from those who really get you.  Those people that know concert tickets aren't your thing, but Broadway tickets would be on point.  Friends that can surprise you with a piece for your wall and it fits in perfectly with your "taste".

I've come to learn good surprises make me feel not only loved, but also known.

We're currently praying to be surprised at our house.

School started this last week and it's felt kind of rough for my 13 year old.  One day before classes started, she found out she had been put in a class separate from all of her friends but one.

Middle school is just plain hard.  You couldn't pay me enough to relive those years.  The inner turmoil, the drama, the tears, the questioning, the longings.  I'm convinced it's even harder with the addition of social media.

What?  So and so is hanging out with her BFF?  I thought I was her BFF!  Besides, she said she couldn't hang out tonight.  Evidently she can, because she is!  Just not with me!  (These are the conversations we try to navigate through at this age.)

Anyways, all that to say Middle School is hard enough when you're with your friends.  It's doubly brutal when you've been separated from them, while they're all still together.  And so, to say the year ahead feels doomed might sound over dramatic, but at 13 this is how we communicate.

As a mom it's hard to see your kiddos struggle.  I admit to being a "fixer".  I fix to avoid pain, I fix to avoid conflict, I fix to avoid being uncomfortable.  Nothing brings out the fixer in me more than when my kids are hurting.

But I know better...at least I'm learning to know better.  Fixing is rarely the best solution.  It's no secret that most often it is the hard in life that molds us over the easy.  In the hard we're challenged to make a choice.  What will we choose to focus on?  In the hard our belief system is tested.  We say we trust God, but do we really?  In the hard we either become victims or overcomers.

Every person wants to be known as someone who sees the good, who trusts always and who overcomes.  But in order to be known as this type of person, we actually have to walk through the hard and choose.  Choose joy even when we don't know the outcome.  Aaaggghh!!!!  This is so much easier said than done.

As I'm preaching this to my daughter, I'm really speaking it to myself.  Because inside I'm throwing my own fit.  I'm ticked that this is the way our year has to start off.  I'm sick for my daughter who has worked hard to find her place only to now feel displaced.  I don't feel like we deserved this.

But Lord knows no one does.  I'm learning to recognize that circumstances like this have nothing to do with whether we deserve them or not.  But they have everything to do with molding us into the one we have been created to be.  It sounds beautiful in theory, but it's super hard in real life...especially when it's your child that's being molded.

Since fixing is out of the question, I've had to process what it looks like to walk alongside my daughter in this.  The tightrope I'm walking between being empathetic while still calling my 13 year old to something higher is a thin one.  Most days I feel at a loss.

The one prayer I keep coming back to is "Surprise us Lord!"  I have asked my daughter to commit to keeping her eyes open for ways the Father might choose to surprises her.  I figure no one knows her better than her Creator, so who better to know ways to speak love to her through the unexpected?

So, last night I asked my daughter if she had seen any evidence of the Father's hand at work and she gave me an adamant, "no".  Ugh!  How crazy is it that with that one answer I'm ready to bail on praying?  Oh ye of little faith!

The thing about surprises is that you never know when they're coming.  The not knowing in this situation just might be killing me slowly...I didn't say it was, I said it might be.  Obviously my daughter is not the only one being molded here.

I want to be committed to this prayer on my daughter's behalf.  At this point the surprise may just be  making it through the year with minimal tears...right now we'll take that.  But I'm boldly praying for more.

I want nothing more than for my daughter to experience her Father at work in her life.  I want her to be able to look back and give testimony to the way He was faithful.  I fully understand that this may not look the way we might hope, but I also trust that the Great Creator loves and knows my daughter more deeply than anyone.  Any gift He gives will be good.

Matthew 7:11 says, "So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him."  

So I'm asking...

I'm asking for my daughter to be molded, I'm asking that she might have eyes to see the good, I'm asking for her heart to be strong.  And I will be hopeful on her behalf that her heavenly Father will find a way to surprise her in all this.

To My Girls -- My prayer is that in the hard of life you will choose to trust, choose to believe, and choose to find joy.  It will rarely be easy, but it will bring life.  May you find hope as you walk through these seasons in knowing that your heavenly Father is at work, always molding you to look more like Jesus.  Don't run from these situations, instead ask the Father to show you what He wants you to know.  And always remember that God is good.  He is loving and gracious.  He is faithful and always walking alongside of you.  Hard is not bad, hard is not something that is being done to you, hard is simply a way for us to press more deeply into the loving relationship we have with our Creator.