Wait…what did I title this?!
I never wear a bra to bed. I always have clothes on (unlike Matt ha!) in case I have to jump out of the bed quickly for something, but never with a bra. Not like I need one though. God has blessed me in other ways! Anyways, I was thinking how constricted I felt last night and realized I had a sports bra on. In fact, for the last several months I’ve worn one every night! Why the change? Well it’s simple, I now have two older boys in the house and if they need me in the middle of the night I need to have a bra on. It got me thinking about the other comforts I have given up to bring three more kiddos into our home. I drive around in an old beat up church van, waving to the teachers and friends in the pickup line rolling down the window saying, “it’s the church van!” with a roll of the eyes and a sideways smile on my face. On hot summer days, my arm gets stuck to the arm rest because the duck tape holding it together is melting away. But of course, the kids like riding in “the boxer” better so they have more room to spread out. In the mini van, they are snug tight next to each other and I’d much rather get stuck to an arm rest than hear them arguing and complaining the whole car ride! I roll the windows down and daydream about my hair waving out the window of my silver, Jeep Wrangler when in actuality I just look like a crazy mom with hair flying allover the place.
When I looked up the definition of comfort I found, “a state of physical ease and freedom from pain or constraint.” One of the things I would always tell my mission teams was to step out of their comfort zones. You may have to sleep on the floor. You will be hot and sticky all day long covered in bug spray. Live like our friends we are going to serve. God never called us to be in a “state of physical ease” and sometimes in our pursuit to make disciples we are actually living quite the opposite.
There is good news though! God does want us to live in comfort! Yes, you heard me, just not the worldly state of comfort. The biblical definition of comfort is to give strength and hope to someone.
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God,” 2 Corinthians 1:3.
To the eyes of the world, we look crazy/strange/out of our mind — which to an extent, we are — but we are trying our best to comfort others the way God has so greatly blessed us with comfort.
It’s not about the physical comforts we are giving up, but more about the comforts of strength and hope we are providing to our children!
Of course I still whine and complain, but at the end of the day when all is drained out of me, I lay in bed and try to remind myself why we wanted to do this in the first place. I charge everyone today to take a look at what physical comforts you can give up to bring strength and hope to someone else. Love you, friends!