A dear friend sent this to me and I wanted to share it with you:

...We hide behind our humor. We hide with angry silences and punishing withdrawals. We hide our truest selves and offer only what we believe is wanted, what is safe. We act in self-protective ways and refuse to offer what we truly see, believe, and know. We will not risk rejection or looking like a fool. We have spoken in the past and been met with blank stairs and mocking guffaws. We will not do it again. We hide because we are afraid. We have been wounded and wounded deeply...To hide means to remain safe, to hurt less. At least that is what we think. And so by hiding, we take matters into our own hands. We don't return to our God with our broken and desperate hearts. And it has never occurred to us that in all our hiding, something precious is also lost--something that the world needs from us so very, very much.

We must constantly direct our gazes toward the face of God, even in the presence of longing and sorrow. It is in the waiting that our hearts are enlarged. The waiting does not diminish us…God does not always rescue us out of a painful season. You know that He does not always give to us what we so desperately want when we want it. He is after something much more valuable than our happiness. Much more substantive than our health. He is restoring and growing in us an eternal weight of glory. And sometimes…it hurts.

You will find that as God restores your heart and sets you free, you will recover long-lost passions, long-forsaken dreams. You'll find yourself drawn to some vision for making the world a better place. Those emerging desires are invitations—not to rush out and attempt them immediately. That also is naïve. They are invitations to bring your heart to your Lover and ask him to clarify, to deepen, to speak to you about how and when and with whom. "The place that God calls us is that place where the world's deep hunger and our deep desire meet." [Frederick Buechner]

"What matters supremely, therefore, is not the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it - the fact that He knows me. I am graven in the palms of His hands. I am never out of His mind. All my knowledge of Him depends on His sustained initiative in knowing me. I know Him, because He first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is no moment when His eye is off me, or His attention distracted from me, and no moment, therefore, when His care falters." -J.I. Packer in "Knowing God"

This has comforted me today so I wanted to share it with you. We love Him because He first loved us. Thank God that He chose me before I was even born and even before anything was ever created! Thank God that He resurrected my dead, sinful soul and made me alive unto Christ! The King of heaven wants to know me intimately, and that moves me to know Him intimately. His love is boundless and unchanging. He is the only constant hope and comfort that I have in my life...which is more than enough for all of eternity.

I guess I am just overwhelmed by His love and His blessings. I become discouraged by my worries and circumstances way too much...I am so prone to wonder.

Even when we remain faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself.