I realized today that God does not want me to be satisfied with my life right now. I pray for peace of heart, but the reality is that right now I SHOULD be restless. He sees that i have turned myself over to my own wants and he has obliged me, saying "ok...if you want to follow your own way, i will show you that it will not fill you." He has led me to a place where i can do nothing but realize that i am empty without him. Sometimes i think God allows us to make our own mistakes, feel completely disconnected from him, and fall repeatedly with no intervention from him for the greater good of having us return when we have come to the realization that we alone are nothing. What good does it do to feel unworthy of His love? Of course we are unworthy, but His power is made perfect in our weakness. We cannot see the end. In our humanity, we focus all attention on the pain and discomfort of being purified and refined, and not enough time meditating on the ultimate end result. In the process of becoming refined in fire, the master's eyes are never turned away from us-waiting for the right moment (and only HE will know when that moment is) to remove us from the flames and clasp us to himself. God sees how steeped i am in my own selfishness, and he desires for me to be restless in that. If i allow my walls to be broken down, He will be standing on the other side with an offering of peace. We do not need to feel him. We do not need to know his plans. We do not need to fully understand the mysteries of his love. We need to trust and be aware of the place in our hearts that intrinsically knows that he IS and that he LOVES. When we feel things falling apart, when we want to just throw the towel in, we need to hold on longer, and harder than we think we can. If Christ can carry the weight of the world and it's sins on his shoulders, he can surely handle our pain and heartache. And when we truly come to realize the sacrifice of love he made, our pain and suffering and longing will be as nothing in the light of his affection and self giving love for us.

"God woos us, calls us, wins us, gives us his name, shares with us his destiny, takes responsibility for us, loves us with a love stronger than death."