Circle K and Big Faith

I smiled big this morning as I grabbed a drink at the local gas station and looked at the Circle K logo on my cup. That symbol has always been fond to me. 

Outside my Grandma's house in Marana, Arizona, there is little to see besides desert, cotton fields and...if you look far enough into the unending horizon, you'll see a Circle K gas station. And, one of the things I remember most about my Pawpaw, is that he never let a day go by without hanging out at the Circle K for a while. Chatting with locals. Shooting the breeze. Making note of "visitors" (and making fun of them). Perusing the paper and drinking coffee. 

When we moved to West Virginia, we had lots of Circle K mugs -but WV has no Circle K. So when I saw one of those mugs, specifically the one my dad had in hand every day as he walked out the door to work, it made me feel close to home and close to my grandparents. 

My Diet Coke had the same effect today. (It's the small things, right?) My heart is full of missing my family right now and, even the smallest of reminders of them brings me great comfort. 

This "in-between" time sometimes proves to be more difficult than I expected. Between my family and my family to come. The thing is, I asked for this moment. I prayed, when I was 16, that God would allow me time between my father's house and my husband's house to establish my own house. (Why God allows us to ask Him for things which we are totally oblivious about, and why He acquiesces those naive requests, is a mystery to me.) 

But He has given me this time - and my commitment to Him is to make the most out of every moment! This year, I felt Him stirring Isaiah 54 in my spirit early in January. Saturday, as I read it in a different version, I saw the picture more literally. 

The passage says, "Enlarge your tents. Stretch your tent curtains wide." 

Powerful. But more powerful to me when I heard it in my mind like this:

God is literally telling a barren woman to build onto her house:

 "Add on a room - maybe two or three - your family is going to expand. You need more room. More than the Duggars." 

Absolutely. In. Love. with God's Word. 

The faith we need today is no less than it took Noah to build an ark, Abraham to lay the promise of God on an altar, or Peter to step on the water. 

Isn't it an incredible adventure?