It hit me from out of the blue.  There I was, mindlessly clicking through the blog of a woman who left the city, married a rancher and now is raising her family on the prairie and writing cookbooks that sell millions of copies. 

And then, I clicked on a perfectly framed picture she took of that amazing prairie view which came with a description of why she loved her wonderful life, and suddenly I became wistful…and overwhelmed.

Overwhelmed  with an ache to know what God is doing in my life, why I’m living in the tropics when what I’d really like to be doing is kicking through piles of leaves, why I’m managing my single life when what I’d really like to be doing is living with my own cowboy and raising my own little pack of ranch kids. (Maybe not literally, but the thought has crossed my mind that I think I’d enjoy the ranch life).

“God, is my life going on behind your back?”

Of course it’s not.  I knew better than that. It was just one of those questions that bubbles to the surface when one reflects too much.   I found myself turning to Psalm 139, which my Bible has titled,  “God’s all-seeing eye and inescapable presence”.

“Oh Lord, you have searched me and known me.  You know my sitting down and my rising up.  You understand my thought afar off.  You comprehend my path and my lying down.  And you are acquainted with all my ways…And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.” (Psalm 139: 1-3, 16)

While this isn’t where I expected to be at this point in my life, none of it is going on behind God’s back.  He fashioned my days and created my calendar and has me in this place (with palm trees), in these circumstances (still waiting), at this time (November, 2010) – for a reason.   And it’s all going on under His loving and watchful eye. 

So while I can still allow myself to wonder about prairie life and cowboys, this is still a pretty good place to be – in the inescapable presence of God.

Then she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, You-Are- the-God-Who-Sees; for she said, “Have I also here seen Him who sees me?”  Genesis  16:13

“Can anyone hide himself in secret places, So I shall not see him?” says the LORD; “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” says the LORD.  Jeremiah 23:24

Behold, He who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.  Psalm 121:4