confronting fear, affliction and earnestly seeking Him

"I will go away and return to My place until they acknowledge their guilt and seek My face; in their affliction they will earnestly seek Me." --Hosea 5:15

I've devoted a couple of blog posts to whining expressing frustration, confusion and overwhelm to this season of life. It's just... brutal.

Motherhood and marriage is a crash course to holiness, righteousness and Christ-likeness 101. Truth of the matter is, you can't be a great wife and mom without the sweet grace and tender mercies of Christ Jesus.

How can we love when we don't know love? As I was sitting, reading Scripture this morning, it dawned on me that I have yet to truly know the love of Christ. 1 John reminds us that "perfect love casts out all fear." I still fear Beloved. Oh, how I fear.

As my exceprt from my journal reveals, "I live in constant fear; of the dark, of the shadows, of catastrophe, of starving, of not having enough money, of not being a good enough mother, wife, or individual. The list goes on and on." And it's a secret list that reminds me and confronts me with the truth of my own affliction and the very fact that I have yet to know the love of Christ in a truly intimate way.

I still have such a long way to go Beloved. So very long to go! But while reading Hosea this morning I realized something. In my affliction, I have and will earnestly seek Him. My affliction hardly compares to men and women who are being martyred daily, or persecuted for righteousness sake, or even tortured in the name of religion, but my affliction is one of heart, a relational one so to speak.

Personally speaking, this season has been hard not only because I'm a new mom and I'm still trying to figure this thing out, but because there are other elements, other "pieces to the puzzle" so to speak that cause my heart to break and ache on a very regular basis. It's been a personal journey of leaning into my Beloved with (quite literally) all that I have and believe that He alone is True and Faithful.

And can I just say...
It's.Been.Hard.

But...

In some beautifully chaotic way, I have earnestly sought my sweet, precious God and I have grown so much closer to Him through all of this. My affliction of heart has caused me to earnestly seek Him. Just like He said it would in Hosea. And in that realization, I have to just know and trust that He is good; and He will work all things for my good. Not my desires, not my capricious wants, but truly my eternal, heavenly and Holy good.

nd suddenly, that affliction turns from pain to beauty, from frustration to understanding and from weeping to dancing.