10 months.

The pediatrician told me 7:30 pm.  Have your children asleep by 7:30 pm.  Well, it's 10:21 pm as I write this sentence and Roya is laying on the couch beside me as I type... still concerned about all the wires that had been hooked up to her arms, legs, and chest as the nurse had tested her heart this morning.  Well, I failed day 1 of our new prescribed schedule...

I have this intense mingling of emotions coursing through my heart, mind, body, and spirit.  I am a Mom, and ever practical.  I have one child with food allergies and sensitivities and spend way too much money on groceries.  Another child with psychologist appointments, both children undergoing heart exams trying to discover any genetic threads they would have received from their father... and I am so sick myself, undergoing appointment after appointment trying to get healthy enough to take care of my family!

Some days, I am driving in the car and suddenly get this image of one of my daughters falling down and dying, and I feel like I'm going to hyperventilate and tears start streaming down my cheeks... Don't be irrational, I tell myself.

(Pause, while I put Roya in a "midnight" bath...)

But even when my practicality is at an all-time high, I am unable to separate myself from the love of God... (Rom 8:39).  Where can I go from your Spirit, Lord??? (Psalm 139) I am now, perhaps more than ever, unable to still the longings and groanings of my spirit, the bursting forth of revelation and anointing for healing and transformation... My passion to see women set free all around the world.  I am unable to quiet the roar of intercession and prophecy for an age such as this...

God told me in September that I had one year.  One year.  One year to be a widow, to "wear black" so to speak, to put on my sackcloth and ashes, to weep and to wail.  But 10 months... 10 months is dangerously close to one year, and my spirit is stirring.  Who am I at the end of this journey?  In many ways I am the same.  I am Natasha, woman called into ministry, worshiper, singer and writer, mother, friend, sister, daughter...  I am all these things and more.  Yet, I am also new.  Fast approaching a new life, a new way of being in the world, and with it a new confidence, a new understanding of sorrow, a new appreciation for beauty, a new depth in the Lord...

Who am I?  Where am I?  What am I doing with my life?  Of course, I have asked these questions before, but now the urgency has set in and I am both elated and terrified to discover the truth...

I am and always will be a daughter of the King.  No matter the circumstance!!  Both in death and in life!!  My vows are embedded in Book of Life.  I am a servant of the Most High God and my life is caught up in His.

For I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me, and the life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me (Gal 2:20).

For 29 years, the Lord has been investing (Pause this deep and spiritual moment as I get my five year old out of the bath and put her in bed at 11:00 at night...) in my growth and maturity as a believer.  I am forever ruined for the ordinary! (I forget the name of the woman who wrote a book with this title...)  I am so tired I want to beat myself over the head with a wooden spoon!?  Or wait... Is that a spank stick? And Roya is still running out asking me to come put Rescue Ointment (Burt's Bees) on her leg because it hurts...

(I am determined to write this blog post tonight!!!!!!)

The point is... I surrender.  I surrender to the will of God, not the bottom line of my budget.  I surrender to the Word of the God and to the leading of the Holy Spirit, not the fleshly part of me that wants to make sure we're okay, take on the responsibility of provider that belongs only to my God.  I surrender to the God who orders my steps, no matter what plans have been made in the past.  I surrender to the God who whispers sweet nothings into my spirit and inspires me to believe...

I have always believed in God's kingdom coming and His will being done on earth as it is in heaven.  As I child, I read about the disciple Peter walking through the city streets, his shadow falling on the sick and the lame, and they were healed.  Since then, God has been stirring in me the faith to believe for the same thing.  To live and breathe the kingdom of heaven so that it intersects humanity everywhere I turn.  The cost of this life is so much greater than I had anticipated in my childhood innocence!

We're at 10 months.  My husband is with me in a new way.  He has forgiven me and I him.  However irrational it is or was, its done and was needed for my heart to heal.  I no longer feel a sense of betrayal, but I feel his sense of support.  Go for it, Babe! He seems to say, with glee and exuberance.  Go for what??  I don't know for sure, but The work of God is this: to believe in the one He has sent. (John 6:29)

So, here I am!  This is me believing!  Go for it, Lord!!  Do the thing that you do best!!  Lead a broken soul in the Way everlasting and bring glory and honor to Your Name!!!!