Trusting Ultimately / Struggling Trivially

"Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall! My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind and therefore there is hope.
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end, they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 'The LORD is my portion,' says my soul, therefore I will hope in him." - Lamentations 3:19-24 -

We sat in clinic (St. Jude in Peoria) yesterday getting blood work and waiting on the nursing staff. We arrived at 9:30 and were dismissed around 1. Those are just going to be long days no matter how you slice it. Jada and I began to strike up a conversation, the details of which could be classified in the following statement: difference of perspective.

To be sure the LORD has guarded Jessica and I from SO MUCH these 4 weeks that our view of providence (in all its fullness) has expanded. That is until the other day when I went to the mailbox and we began receiving the bills. God has already got the ball rolling here and I seemed quite confident for some time regarding it...but that was before my eyes befell just the first of many bills that made my annual salary look like a pittance. "Okay, health care is expensive, I know, but God's got it under control." That was my perspective and really my heart. I know that ultimately this is my last concern, but now the questions of how had begun. This was the topic of Jada and my discussion while at clinic.

She was looking around the room and said to me... "Dad, are tumors expensive?" "Well, sweetie, actually they are not but the removal of them is for sure." "Hmmmmm" - she says. Then with absolute cuteness she furrows up her brow and says, "how much?" "What do you mean?" "I mean, how much has everything cost so far?" "Well honey, we have only received bills for a few things so I am not really sure." Her brain begins working overtime, complete with the listless glance into space to allow time for calculating. Finally, she says, "I think it had to cost almost 100 cents!"

I was taken back at the difference in perspective. From day one I have had complete trust that financially things will be fine. That is still my stand today - St. Jude is a GREAT organization...but as Chris Tomlin sings, "Our God is greater!" Still, I love how the difference in perspective allows for Jada to have a greater range of faith than her father. In Matt. 18:2-4 Jesus uses children as a benchmark for faith. He desires us the emulate the faith of a child. I believe it is because their range of faith differs so much from that of an adult. Allow one illustration and then I will wrap this up...

Yesterday one of the child life workers was making a necklace for Jada. She holds up smiley faces and frowny faces to put on the necklace - each depicting one day and how she felt that day. When asking Jada how many happy days and how many days did she hurt, Jada replied, "Miss Shelly, they are all happy days because of Jesus." So, while her 100 cent statement nails the "Ultimate" (or final purpose) end of things, her "happy because of Jesus" statement pins down the trivial side of living. An area of struggle for me. Ultimately Jessica and I are comfortable with what is going on and we TRUST God absolutely. Conversely though, I struggle at times with training my children, loving my wife, and being woke up for he 5th time in the night by a 2 year old (that last one is way too specific to be made up by the way).

Faith, then, is not so much what you are facing. It is what you find when you face what you are facing. Have you ever noticed that life for children is nearly always a perpetual discovery? Something is always amazing them. I submit that if you seek for God ultimately, with humility (see Lamentations 3:20), you will be amazed every morning at how he condescends into your trivial. All of this is to provide us with the Good that comes from our "gall" (bitter experiences) as the author of Lamentations puts it.

PREVIEW: In all the craziness surrounding Jada there is lost this picture that we are not defined by Jada nor her illness. We are first and foremost children of the living God. So, for the next three posts I am going to dedicate my writing to the other three people in my life that round out the Rumbold family. First, I will dedicate an entire post to my wife who has strength and beauty I never would have guessed seven years ago existed. Then a post for Oliver (aka. the Goober) which will likely include some story about him and underwear. Finally, a post about Pierce who God has already used to break through the darkness of this time for Jessica and I.