On Monday, I posted this picture of my current letterboard to Instagram. Thirty minutes later I was cleaning up puke, and have been pretty much ever since as the stomach flu has taken down the kids one by one. Last night, three at a time. Big family problems.

Yesterday, I also received some life-altering news. And to be honest, this line ANTICIPATE HIS GOODNESS was one of the first things I thought of. It was no accident: that line on the wall in my kitchen, on that day. I would letter it again in a heartbeat. Because here’s the thing I’m learning about goodness — it is a person not an outcome. 

There’s a song by the artist Audrey Assad called I Shall Not Want that I listened to over and over when Sawyer broke his leg in November. The refrain burning deep down in my soul — When I taste Your goodness, I shall not want. I shall not want. I shall not want.

It always comes back to that, doesn’t it? Believing GOD is enough. That in the face of a diagnosis or a broken leg or a child dying or a husband leaving or even something as mundane as the stomach flu, He is all I need. And to have Him is to have real goodness, to be satisfied, to want for nothing. And that place is good indeed.

“The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want…
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”   psalm 23:1,6