up in sacrifice.” Elisabeth Elliot makes this statement in her book, Suffering is Never for Nothing. How simple, and yet how difficult to truly come to grips with.

God is love, love is sacrifice, and those sacrifices in the name of love cause us to suffer. Love and suffering are inextricably bound together. You can’t have one without the other, and our best illustration of it is the cross. Jesus went through just about the most suffering a person possibly can go through on the cross. He was humiliated, beaten, bloody, and broken. He died very publically for all to see. He was spat on, betrayed, and completely crushed.

Have you ever stood in front of nature and been completely in awe of the awesomeness of God? For me, I was a teenager standing on the Maid of the Mist, a little boat that launches out of the New York side of Niagara Falls and sails into the horseshoe at the bottom of the falls. Standing at the bottom of this huge waterfall, water hurdling over the edge and crashing with such force into the river below that it ricochets into a hazy mist that drenches everything.

Before you ask, no, I have not had the baby. Last week’s lack of devotion wasn’t a silent announcement, it was just pregnancy brain. And in the past week, Sam and I have been learning a whole new lesson in patience and waiting for the Lord’s time. It’s not something we’re unfamiliar with. We waited on God to date. We waited on God to get married. We certainly waited on God to conceive this child. And now, we’re waiting on His appointed time for her to come.

I don’t think I’ve ever walked through a season of life where so much change was happening all at once. Not even when I was married, although there was a lot of change in that season as well. And I know, I have a decent amount of readers that don’t have kids and are probably tired of hearing me talk about being pregnant, but I can’t help it. It’s just where I am right now. Having your first child is a life-change like no other. Simultaneously, you’re growing a baby in an area that only you have occupied all your life. Every day, it seems like there are new changes, new aches, pains, growth, symptoms, and all the while, this child is reminding you that they are growing out of what once was next to nothing.

This week, let’s continue on into the following verses, which are deep with vivid imagery. The Lord is our shepherd. He makes us lie down in green pastures, He leads us beside still waters. He refreshes us and leads us along paths of righteousness. When I was a kid, memorizing these verses, I pictured my Papa’s house in the mountains of New York. His house was at the top of a hill, surrounded by woods, and at the bottom of the hill was a little stream and an apple grove. Everything about it was green and beautiful to my childhood imagination.

There have been three separate times where I’ve witnessed nature and felt simultaneously so small and powerless against the greatness of God’s creation, and comforted with the fact that the same Mastermind of this same landscape thought that I was important enough to include in His design. The first was at the foot of the colossal horseshoe at the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. The second was stepping out of the airport in Cape Town to see the three mountain peaks that makeup that city’s skyline: Devil’s Peak, Table Mountain, and Lion’s Head. The third was this weekend, from the Fred W. Symmes Chapel in Camp Greenville, South Carolina.

Prayer is my jam this week. Why? I was challenged by a new friend to take part in a seven-day prayer challenge, designed to deepen and enrich prayer life by focusing it past all the requests and drivel that tends to bog down our time with God. Over the past few days, changing and repurposing certain details of my prayer time has reignited my desire to share my heart and time with Jesus.