ever richer fruit

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We are women, and my plea is Let me be a woman, holy through and through, asking for nothing but what God wants to give me, receiving with both hands and with all my heart whatever that is. Elisabeth Elliot

Waiting on God requires the willingness to bear uncertainty, to carry within oneself the unanswered question, lifting the heart to God about it whenever it intrudes upon one's thoughts. Elisabeth Elliot

Faith's most severe tests come not when we see nothing, but when we see a stunning array of evidence that seems to prove our faith vain. Elisabeth Elliot

"to be a woman is to have suffered. 

I can’t really explain why I think this is true. But I think I never felt so much the fragility of being a woman with the weight of the decisions of men in my life as I have recently. If womanhood was a skin, it took a cold, pouring ice rainstorm to step into it." -v.perng

when i ask for vision my trembling heart is asking for a forecast, a fortune telling, an easy way out. for blessed release from this -- how nearsighted of me though, to ask for "happy escape" from the suffering that God himself has carefully ordained for me. the suffering of obeying him when it's difficult to die to myself. as i survey my life i see clearly the hand of the great physician grasping the tool of suffering as it hems me in and as it readies me to bear fruit. when i ask for vision, give me precisely this gift: vision of your greater will in this. ever deeper roots, ever sweeter communion, ever richer fruit. this i ask for soberly.

my fragile fingers have a slippery and timid hold on a foundational understanding of present suffering. my hindsight understanding of suffering is solid, but sometimes in the present, the pain is all up in my face in an obnoxious and unrelenting manner. who has ever grown great faith except through great trials? through blood, sweat, tears.


sidenotes;
tonight i feel winded