A God-Shaped Hole

I'm blessed to have many people in my life who help me refocus on what's important when things start to get blurry.  I was sitting and talking with my stepmom one evening and in this story she was telling me she said something like, 'there's a God-shaped hole in everyone and you can't fill it with anything but  God or you'll never find happiness..."  How absolutely true.

These past few months have been CRAZY.  With a new relationship turning into a long-distance relationship, then turning into a long-distance engagement, then turning into a marriage, I have been focusing all of my energy on trying to keep everything together.  My whole life has changed.  I'm no longer solely concerned about myself and my family, but now I'm taking care of a husband and having to figure out how to communicate and live with someone else.  How do I balance my wants with his wants?  How do I balance his family with mine?  How do we balance our future?  And here's a biggie - how do we balance our budget?! Yikes.

But to the point -- I was constantly aware that I was losing my focus.  I was filling my time with wedding plans and spending weekends and weeks driving back and forth from Indiana to Missouri.  I wasn't finding time to read my Bible, I prayed sporadically, and I almost didn't even know how to pray anymore, I was making excuses for those Sundays I missed church, and I wasn't finding myself wanting to talk about my love for the Lord anymore.  And I wasn't happy.  I even knew I wasn't happy.  When I did find time to pray, my prayers were, "I don't know how to do this anymore." "Something's missing and I don't know what it is and I don't know how to change it."  "Help me find you again."  When my stepmom used that phrase, "a God-shaped hole," I realized what I had done then.  I had been filling that hole (and seriously failing) with things of the world.  With stress about a wedding and families meeting for the first time.  With my new husband who falls so short of God, and who is absolutely ALLOWED to fall short of God, because he's not all perfect, but mostly perfect and that's just perfectly fine with me.  With financial stress and moving-in-together stress and all of these things that just do not give me the fulfilling satisfaction of having God in that God-shaped hole right in the center, forefront of my little heart.

And so, I'm getting ready for church this morning.  I'm finding little moments to pray about all of those stresses and just let them go.  I'm on the search for some new books about faith (so make me some recommendations if you are reading this!).  And now I feel like I actually can be happy.  My heart feels full and there's plenty of room for God and for my husband and for everyone in the world, but only because God is there giving me the strength and immense capacity to love.