Life will be better when...

...Moses starts sleeping more at night.
...we're in the new house.
...Scotty gets on top of his work.
...Jubilee gets past the jealous phase.
...I have more time for myself again.

We've all done it.  (Or am I the only one?)  We look ahead to some future goal, a hope, the return of something we had before, and think life will be better/easier/less stressful.  I think I'll somehow become more content, more godly, more disciplined when these things happen.  The Lord has been challenging us about this erroneous way of thinking.  It's the lie that we too easily believe that keeps us from being content, keeps us from finding joy in the now, robs us of learning what this season (how ever hard it may be) is meant to teach us.  Scotty and I are trying so hard to take this phrase out of our vocabulary, but I know we both still struggle with it.  We're at the beginning of a transition phase and sometimes we just want to push through and get to the end of it, as though the process was not more important.  It's in the midst of the stress of a new job, the exhaustion of a baby who needs us all hours of the night, the confusion and frustration of trying to build a house in a developing country that we learn to cry out to our Lord who is in control of it all.  We see how quickly we fall short of being merciful, kind, patient people and instead see a big mess of ugly sin that is need of endless forgiveness.  We learn to be grateful for little things.  How desperately I want this season not to be one we'll look back on and say, "Whew!  Glad that's over".  But, "Remember how sweet that time was?  How much fun we had as a family in the chaos?  How much we grew?"  Only by God's grace.