ASTOUNDED

Astounded:  amazed and bewildered (Webster)

I just feel astounded today as I gaze upon the landscape of my life.  My two youngest boys are down on the property shooting a BB gun and their voices and laughter carry up the hill to my ear.  My oldest called to tell me that he is on his way home from school (on his bike) and can his buddies come over to ride the track?  Of course they can!  I am sitting down, looking out on this beautiful view that God has blessed us with up here on the hill and dreaming about what it will be like to hold our precious 4th in my arms.  I wonder...will it be a boy or girl?  Will it have my thin hair or Brian's beautiful thick locks?  Will it have blue eyes like brother Ben and Daddy, or brown like the Italianos?  Then I find myself just worshipping the God who knew my days before one of them came to be and who is forming this gift in my womb...not one second of development unnoticed by him.  It's astounding.  Then my mind wanders off to Mary, and what it must have been like for her to carry the Son of the Living God.  To have the Living Word living and growing inside of her.  Talk about astounding!!!  Finally I am taken to a place somewhere in the distance, where there is a beautiful hidden treasure being formed in another's womb, far away, but GOD see's her and His hand is on her.  He is calling her forth because there is a family who longs for her.  

I am so thankful that the Father has never, ever turned His face from me because of the price that Jesus paid.  He watched me being formed in my mother's womb and His gaze has never left me since and it will never leave my children.  He watches over them day and night.  The scriptures say, "He who watches over you neither slumbers nor sleeps."  

On an evening several months ago (back in April I think), I was laying in bed.  I had put down my book, He Loves Me, and I was asking the Lord what His love for me looked like. I mean, if I could really see it in action, what would that look like?  He is so present and immediately I had a vision.  I actually saw myself as a fetus being formed in my mother and all of the sudden my little heart started to beat. I looked closer and there was Jesus with a smile as huge as the sky beaming at me and laughing and saying, "Look, look at her!  There's our girl.  Look at that beautiful heart that I formed!"  He was totally delighted.  Then I looked back to 'me' and my little toes were starting to bud.  Again, Jesus was completely focused on what was happening and He was shouting, "Look, look at her toes.  Here they come!"  His face was filled with LOVE and I couldn't take my eyes off of Him.  I started to cry as He spoke to me.  "This is exactly where I was when you were being formed and where I have always been since.  I can't keep my eyes off of you."  

Gosh, even when I fail and blow it and get so stuck in a rut... He is still looking at me with love and encouraging my becoming.  Only He can see what I am becoming and He fills the spaces between where I am now and where I am going to be with opportunities to be transformed by His love, and I am so thankful and ASTOUNDED!