I find myself doubly emotional these recent days. I’m naturally inclined emotionally to begin with, but I am in the third trimester of my current pregnancy and I do believe my hormones are doing flip flops as the skyrocket upward into infinity and beyond. This logical reasoning at least helps my confused husband somewhat understand why I’m sitting on the floor of our bedroom crying over just having had to discipline our 2 and 1/2 year old son.
It’s on a day like this (silly enough, a beautiful wintery day) that I feel overwhelmed. Overwhelmed, honestly, by disciplining my children, my just plain tiredness, my sin and shortcomings, my lack of peace, and so many other things I’m too embarrassed to confess. I have so many thoughts that run through my mind concerning this:
Why am I so hung up with the same difficulties and challenges?
Why am I struggling with the same sin over and over again?
Why isn’t it getting any easier after so many years of struggling with the same exact thing?
Why am I not running to Christ quickly enough and pressing into Him when I should?
Why is my faith and trust so small?
This morning my husband took our oldest son, Max, for a hike, and I put our 1 year old, Charlie, down for a nap so I managed to steal away outside on the deck of the mountain home we’ve been staying in for the holidays for some quiet time in the Word and prayer. The Spirit had impressed upon my heart the familiar passage of 2 Corinthians 12 so I immediately turned there. “I must go on boasting. Though there is nothing to be gained by it,” Oh man, how my pride identifies with that. But I’ll save that blog post for another time and place. Skip down a handful of verses to 7-10,
So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
I don’t like my weaknesses and being weak; I want to learn to master them and be strong. How can I be content with my weakness? How do I reconcile being tired of my weaknesses and boasting in my weakness? I honestly don’t know! But that’s because I’m thinking on it and considering it through my finite, human terms. I don’t know if it will ever make sense through those terms.
“My grace is sufficient for you.” My grace. GRACE. Our only reconciliation comes from God’s grace and pressing into it! His infinitely, undeserved favor and pardon frees us from all finite, human terms. It frees us not to sin but from from sin. I can exclaim with the angels and the shepherds, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and goodwill toward men!”
Press in, my dear friends! Press into God Almighty’s grace that is more than sufficient for us!
It's just Me Abby 
this has always been one of my most meaningful and challenging verses! love this post, and your blog Abby!