Some days I really feel like I'm walking in sludge. Now, as I say this don't be thinking that I'm in the depths of despair or anything like that. I definitely had a moment last weekend when some money stuff didn't work out because of a mistake I had made - yes, I had a moment over that.

But my eyes see better than they used to and God is good .

He is very good and I see him in things large and small around me.

Larry and I are in a time such as we have been in before. As Larry has been reading some stuff by someone whose name I'm not quite sure of or I would tell you, he's been able to identify a pattern in time that we seem to be living out. He's looked back over the history of us and has been able to see this pattern and so we are expectant to see what will happen as this time period is fulfilled.

In the meantime I see God's grace expressed in my little family/fractal and the things that God is doing there. I love to see the grace of God at work in my children and grand children. They have been so protected and loved by Father. I see that grace here at work where I feel I have his favor giving me favor. I see it in this new business of Larry's and what it is doing for him.

There are some very definite good things that are comfort and joy to my heart. But still I feel the effort of going forward. I am not one who can just sit down and stay sat until things get easier so I keep trying to move. I press this way and I can't go anywhere. I press that way and I can't get very far. I believe I have what Arthur Burk calls a motion anointing. The outdoors is my favorite sanctuary and walking is my favorite prayer position. And there are other ways that motion expresses itself in my life. But it's so much nicer to be on a mountain top that to be in the marshy places that we sometimes walk through on our way to the next mountaintop.

Back to the point. This sludge. My trudge.

I know - I know - I know there is life on the other end of this. I wonder if what I do - this pressing, pressing - has any value or is just me frustrating myself. Is there intercession in this? I hope so. I know that I need and get reminders of what God is doing and his grace and love. Those reminders - in and of themselves - do not lift me out of the sludge. They give me hope and keep my wandering eyes in the right direction.

I guess I will find out later whether this is just for this period of time or have I just become somewhat jaded because of the ups and downs. I will find out if I have the capacity to believe that we can actually live inside God's blessings. Or is it that even? Could it be that this roller coaster life we live is really the one he always had for us and I just have no capacity for living such a life? That's entirely possible.

Sometimes I think of Joseph when he was in Egypt. He became the Second in Command to Pharaoh himself. He had everything that was the finest - but he was still a captive. Maybe he could have resigned and went home, I don't' know. It seems to me that God chose him to be a captive and a captive he remained. Are we not all Christ's bondslaves? Isn't it about what HE wants to do in the earth?

So perhaps the roller coaster is where he always wanted us to live. I just don't know. I would love to have a strait stretch, though, that would last for as long as I've been on the roller coaster.

Larry has been reading a passage from Psalms over us each morning lately that gives me hope that something different is on the way. Something that is affirming and confirming of this life we have lived.

I life the sound of that phrase - something different is on the way.