Patience, child. Patience!

Alternately titled: I'm really hard-headed (as if that's news).

You know what's really annoying?  When you fully believe that God can do anything, but you find yourself stuck in a rut of wondering why He won't just do what you're asking  and DO IT RIGHT NOW?!?!

Then again, it's also probably really annoying to God when I stomp around and pout like a whiny four-year-old, so fair trade, I guess.

My family's on my mind today, for plenty of reasons that I don't really want to get into right now because the way I explain it will do nothing but feed my ego.  I guess the basis of the problem, though, is that I feel so completely disconnected from them because not only am I a Christian, but now I've become very passionate about my faith, and they don't want anything to do with it.  I think they're seeing the changes in me and it freaks them out.

Here's where my hard-headed and hypocrisy come into play.  Here I am, proud to tell people of the miracles that God has performed in my life, and yet I've basically given up hope on Him working a miracle in my family.  The world might say, "Well, after thirteen years of this, it's understandable for you to feel discouraged."  But the truth is that God has been SO faithful to me, and I'm not being faithful to Him.  I'm letting my own ideas for how I want things to go cloud the fact that HE is the all-knowing, all-powerful God and this world is on HIS terms, not mine.

To be faithful to God, I have to be patient and believe that He will work miracles in my family.  It's not enough to know that He can, I have to take comfort in believing that He will.  The thing is, it's just not going to be right now.  He's got a plan for all of us already laid out, and no amounting of my shouting and whining is going to change that.  God and God alone will give me the strength and wisdom to be the necessary light to them until He decides to come work in us, both individually and as a family.  Aside from that, though, it may not be my job to guide them.  I was pointed to a verse I'd never heard of before, Luke 4:24, that says a prophet is not accepted in his homeland.  Maybe He's got someone else that's going to come along and offer the support that I have been able to find other places.

I just have to be patient for His timing.  It may not make sense to me, but He's got a reason for still letting things be the way they are.  Because I know that He can fix this.  It's not a matter of whether or not He can, because He can do anything.  My life is full of evidence of that.  I know that whatever He's got planned for the rest of this saga, it's going to be more beautiful than anything any amount of therapy or work by our hands could produce.