While Samuel was sacrificing the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to engage Israel in battle.  BUT that day the LORD thundered with loud thunder against the Philistines and threw the into such a panic that they were routed before the Israelites.  The men of Israel rushed out of Mizpah and pursued the Philistines, slaughtering them along the way to a point below Beth Kar.  

Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen.  He named it Ebenezer, saying, "Thus far the LORD has helped us."
1 Samuel 7:10-12

I'm taking a moment to mark the moments when He thundered loud in my life and delivered me from large things.  I'm taking a moment to bow head and focus on lines and borders: in this place, the Lord helped.  Here too, He was.  And where He is, He makes the time worthy.

I've been wrestling lately with performance and I've been shoving back that measuring stick that lives somewhere inside of me and that loves to question the spaces He has me and the time I spend in them.  It would be such a relief to keep my time small and tidy and simple.  To spend more of it working at one place and less of it creating.  

Instead, I am part time with children and part time at home with my writing and with the people He has put into my world for now.  I catch myself thinking, When I have a baby.  If we made a child, then maybe it wouldn't feel wrong to be here.  Maybe I would feel a little more validated.  Wouldn't cringe when I tell people what I do I work as a math specialist part time and I help a friend out in her office and... I write?  Meet women for coffee?  Pray over high school girls that I desperately want to be available to because the teenage years can rob and break you?

But sometimes, I feel that thunder in my spirit.  Climbing a mountain with five of them listening to conversation about being living sacrifices: Thunder.  Late night texts asking me how she can have a faith like Hadassah: Thunder.  Messages thanking me for writing the words they've been living with too: Thunder.  Having the time to sit on the couch with The Word and quiet music and my journal for a whole morning: But that day the Lord Thundered.