Blessings

For Charlotte's funeral, I picked the song "Blessings" by Laura Story to be sung by our pastor's wife.  For a couple weeks before we lost Charlotte, I had been hearing it on the radio a lot.  Now that I think about it, it was just another way God was preparing me for what was to happen in our family.  After we lost Charlotte, I knew I wanted my pastor's wife to sing "Blessings" and "Give Me Faith."  About a year earlier, she had sung "Blessings" in church with her daughter.  When I called her to ask if she would sing, I couldn't remember the name of the song.  I was like "the one you sang about a year ago and it has the word tears or something in it."  She knew immediately and she said yes!  

When I first picked "Blessings," I picked it because of the chorus...

Cause what if Your Blessings come through raindrops
What if your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You're near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

The Lord knew I had shed many, many tears and I needed to feel Him near.  I needed to feel that even in this just maybe it was His mercies disguised in pain.

As time went on the days and weeks after her funeral.  I would play the song and it took on a completely different meaning for me.  One day I heard it as I was driving home from Costco and just began merging onto the highway and I began to weep.  Not so good when you are accelerating up to 70 mph.  The verses are what made me weep.

We pray for blessings
We pray for peace
Comfort for family, protection while we sleep
We pray for healing, for prosperity
We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering
All the while, You hear each spoken need
Yet love us way too much to give us lesser things

I wept out of conviction.  I'm guilty.  I pray those things.  I pray His blessings on myself and over my family.   I pray protection for my kids while they sleep.  I pray for God to take the hard things out of my life.  Don't get me wrong.  I don't believe it is wrong to ask God for these things.  But sometimes I pray selfishly, for God to make my life easy and comfortable rather than praying for his will.  This is where my weeping stemmed from.  How dare I think that I should know how my life should be or end up, that it should be problem and pain free.  As the song says, its about His love for us.  This love that "loves us too much to give us lesser things."  The part that really brought me to my knees in repentance is...

We pray for wisdom
Your voice to hear
And we cry in anger when cannot feel You near
We doubt your goodness, we doubt Your love
As if every promise from Your Word is not enough
All the while, You hear each desperate plea
And long that we'd have faith to believe

Ugh!  Do I believe Him in His goodness as I say that I do?  Do I believe He is who He says He is in His Word?  Or do I throw it back in His face and say, "You're not with me because I don't feel you,  because my circumstances are tough and because they don't seem to be getting better"?   What if each and every day He is giving me His mercies?  Be it the hard days or the easy ones.

For me, His mercies in disguise in this time of mourning are knowing Him more for who He is.  I love the line toward the end of the song that says, "what if my greatest disappointments or the aching of this life, is a revealing of a greater thirst this world can't satisfy."  That's it!  That is exactly what He has taught me through this struggle.  I long for Him!  In this world I'm gonna have trials, but it makes me long for Him and Heaven all the more.

For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.  Philipians 1:21

This song has changed my prayer life.  I still get caught up in the "all about me prayers," but "Blessings" has made me think twice.  I want my prayers and my life to be "all about Him and His glory."  I have to believe He knows the best way to bring Himself glory whether it be through pain or "blessings."