Blend – to mix with another substance so that they combine together.
To blend isn’t easy. (That might be a massive understatement.) In fact, B an I are finding the word intentional to be our family word for this first year. We decided early on to be deliberate in our connection with the kids. We are also purposeful and specific in our requests to the Lord as we ask him to fuse us together as one spiritual piece. We put in effort (lots of it and in various forms) in order to encourage the merging of our new family.
All of that to say, we work at this “mixing of substances” thing.
But that isn’t what this post is about.
This post is about the times we don’t plan it or we don’t do anything on purpose. It’s about the nights that we just do our normal, humdrum bedtime routine without any particular intention at all…And then God, just because He is good, decides to show up. Right in our living room.
B was in Phoenix for a week in January for work, so I had all the kids on my own.
Bye B!
Note: I missed him. A lot.
But.
It was so good he was gone.
I have had the kids on my own in the afternoons after school of course, but as all parents know, nighttime is different.
It was Monday. We’d had dinner at Chick-Fil-A. (As I said, B was gone.)
We came home, took showers, played a round of the card game “Spoons” and then I told them to hop up on the couch so we could read out of our devotional book.
I sat in my normal spot. I expected these creatures of habit to do the same.
They didn’t.
B wasn’t there. And apparently, neither was predictability.
Layla didn’t have B’s arm to hold, so instead she inched over as closely as she could next to me, like a small, soft magnet.
I was surprised, but thankfully my maternal arm innately flew around her immediately. She burrowed down in it, right into my side, as if she had for fifty nights in a row.
The thing is though…there hadn’t been fifty nights of this.
This was the first.
She stayed there nestled for the entire reading of our devotional.
B’s absence grandly shook up the ordinary bedtime routine.
I guess somewhere along the way I inadvertently thought the family wouldn’t be able to blend if we weren’t all there together working hard to make it blend.
But that night, even though the family wasn’t whole, the Lord set up an opportunity for a divine linking.
(And yes, I am definitely considering this small crack in time as a sweet family nudge, straight from the Father.)
This moment didn’t happen despite B being gone, it specifically happened BECAUSE B was gone. God took an average night without any expectations, one where I wasn’t being intentional at all, a night where we were just running through our normal routine and gave us a notable step forward in the mixing of substances, combining us together.
This blended thing is hard. The enemy makes it even harder. But then the Holy Spirit breathes His holiness over a routine night and creates a joy that can overpower all the difficulties this blended thing might bring. I am so grateful for a God who triumphs and I plan to watch for his next tangible arrival.
