Some weeks you just don’t have it. 

Posted it anyway. Oops.

Posted it anyway. Oops. (And I like that it looks like he’s wearing a hair net. Just voted, Josh? Or just served some meatloaf? Either way, well done.)

This is one of them. 

It’s a normal week with normal things, but a feeling is heavy in the pit of my stomach. It’s worry or fear or maybe it’s just a general dread of what is to come, but I guess it means that I’ve officially grown up.  Suddenly (or finally) the future of this country feels near and dangerous and frightening.

And as much as I wanted to Insta-Face-Tweet a picture of Josh at the polls Tuesday morning—wearing the “I voted” sticker that I stuck on his jacket and forced him to pose in—and write snarky things about how you should vote too unless you were voting for you-know-who, he wouldn’t let me. Wisely, probably.  

There’s a good chance you-know-who will win, and it makes me sad. The girl who didn’t care about politics is letting politics make her nearly sick.

Thankfully, there’s God.

~

I read about Hannah this week in 1 Samuel.

She wanted to have a child, but was barren and, obviously, had been for some time. So she went to the temple to pray and beg God for a baby. The priest, Eli, blessed her, sent her away, and we know the end of the story. God gave her a son several months later.

What caught my attention was how distraught Hannah was as she prayed. She spoke so feverishly and unintelligibly, Eli thought she was drunk. No doubt, she was heavy with fear and worry too. There was no guarantee God would answer with a yes.  

But after she prayed—still not knowing what the outcome would be—she left the temple and, the Bible says, “her face was no longer downcast” (1 Sam. 1:18).

In other words, even before getting her desired answer, Hannah’s entire demeanor was changed.

Why?

Because Hannah trusted God.

She trusted that He was sovereign—fully in charge of what would happen in the future—and because she also trusted that God was good, she had no reason to fear the outcome.

Even if it wasn’t what she wanted.

~

These few thousand years later our circumstances may be different than Hannah’s, but our God is most certainly not.

He does not change. He is still sovereign, and He is still good. He is still in charge of elections and barren-ness and family conflict and job searches. He can be trusted, no matter the outcome. And we can be like Hannah, whose reaction to his ultimately affirmative answer was to praise his in-charge-ness.

“The LORD brings death and makes alive…The LORD sends poverty and wealth; he humbles and he exalts…For the foundations of the earth are the LORD’S and upon them he has set the world” (1 Sam 2: 6,7,8b).

~

Hattie said something this week that made me laugh.

I needed to be outside and I had asked her to come get me if she heard Nate wake from his nap. But she looked concerned. “Mommy,” she asked. “What if I forget to remember?”

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It’s easy to do, sweet Hattie. To forget to remember, even when it’s something important. When worries or troubles or uncertainly creeps into our our mind, we can suddenly neglect the very truths we need to be standing on.

But it’s the key to that non-downcast-face, I believe.

Set your worries before God and don’t forget to remember who He is.

Fully good and (praise Him!) absolutely, fully in charge.  

***

Speaking of forgetting to remember! We mustn’t forget our giveaway…

Congrats to Kendra T! And thanks to all who played along. You make me happy.