I know I have been absent from my blog lately and I apologize. My life went crazy a few weeks ago. Not just a little crazy. A lot crazy. I’ve been reluctant to write because I’m struggling and I don’t want my posts to always be about struggling and pain. Also, I just didn’t have any words. I would sit at the computer and stare at the screen thinking, “I should write about what’s going on,” but no words would come.
On July 10th, we got notice from our landlords that we have to leave in 60 days. They’ve been trying to get us to leave for quite some time. They just finally decided to stop trying to make us want to leave and just kick us out. With a 60 day notice there doesn’t have to be any particular reason and there is no real recourse. We just have to leave.
Initially, I handled the news well. I was even feeling a little excited because I’ve been wanting to move out of this place for so long. It’s too small for us, it’s old and it is falling apart. This is the time for God to step in and provide a new, better place to live. He has to, right?
Now I’m 21 days into the search for a new place, though, and the excitement has given way to fear. We live in the Bay Area of California and the cost of living is one of the highest in the country. The truth is, we don’t have enough income to meet the expense of renting even a 3 bedroom apartment here.
For the past few years, I’ve been praying for a house with a yard for my kids to play in and enough bedrooms that my daughter (who will be starting puberty soon) will not have to share with her brother and her grandmother anymore. I haven’t been asking for a mansion, just a modest three or four bedroom house with a little backyard and room for the kids to play and grow. I’d been trying to dream big and believe that God wants to bless me and give me good gifts. Now, though, I’m wondering if I was wrong to believe that God would do such a thing for me. Now, I’m wondering if I should stop expecting for the best from him and start looking for anything from him.
I want to believe that God is going to use this to bring us a wonderful blessing, but the money just isn’t there to afford a monthly payment for what we need. The way things have been going, I’m afraid that we are going to end up in a smaller place or in a bad neighborhood, or worse yet, living in a cheap motel.
I know that “All things work together…” blah, blah, blah. That doesn’t help me right now. At this moment, I need tangible answers to prayer. I need to see that God has something in the works to take care of this problem because it really is starting to look like he has left us hanging out here all on our own to figure this out.
I’m not supposed to be afraid though. “Faith and fear can’t take up the same space.” I’ve been hearing that a lot lately. I know it’s true, but right now fear has chased my faith away, because I don’t really know that God is going to come through with a great place for us to live. I know we will be taken care of and that all our needs will be met, but I don’t know that God isn’t going to let things get worse before they get better.
I know I’ve talked about this before, but I haven’t figured it out yet, so it keeps coming up. I’ve been taught that in order for God to answer our prayers we have to believe and not doubt.
“Believe. Don’t doubt.”
“God answers our prayers when we believe.”
If God is a god who is going to not answer my prayers or bless my life because I am struggling and I’m scared and confused and angry and feeling desperate, then maybe I don’t want him. I don’t know that I want to serve a god who is limited by my faith at any given moment, because, to be honest, I’m a basket case. My emotions and faith fluctuate all the time. From day to day, from hour to hour, the way I am feeling and how much I am trusting God varies enormously. So, is God up there constantly monitoring the level of my faith in order to see if he can work in my life? Is he going to say, “Oh, you were almost there. I could have answered your prayer, but you had a bad day today and stopped believing that I was going to come through, so we have to start all over again. Better luck next time.”
That doesn’t seem like the character of the loving God that would send his son to die for the sins of people who hadn’t even been born yet so that they could one day be with him. I just can’t believe that it really works that way. I just wish that I could figure out which way it does work.
This situation has revealed to me how many wonderful friends we have and how many people are supporting us and praying for us. It’s really been an amazing blessing. What has been really hard for me, though, is how often I have had to talk about money. As in how much we have (or don’t have). I really don’t like letting people in on what really is going on in our bank account. It’s not a pretty picture and it’s one I’d rather that my friends don’t see. However, I have to tell them what we can afford to pay every month if they are going to be any help in finding something for us.
Every time I do, though, I feel ashamed. Every time I say it out loud, I feel that I am admitting to my failure to provide well for my family, because it reveals once again how hopeless and impossible the situation looks. I know that the amount of money that I have bears no relation to my worth as a person, but it is really hard not to connect the two in this culture, in this time in history. I should not be in this situation. I should be able to do better. Admitting that I can’t is embarrassing and humiliating.
People are worried about us and I don’t want them to be. I don’t want the people I care about to feel sorry for me. I see it in their eye and hear it in their voice, though. They try to encourage me and tell me that everything is going to work out, and I agree with them. I tell them that I know that God is going to take care of us and we’ll find something, and sometimes I believe that, but sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I say the bold faith-filled statements because I’m trying to make them feel better. I don’t want them to know how scared I really am. I want my friends to think that I am strong and I don't want them to know that sometimes I’m barely holding it together.
So, there it is. That’s what’s been going on and why I haven’t written, for anyone who noticed. Please don’t feel sorry for us. Just pray for us. Please pray that God will provide a good place for us to live. Pray that I can have the faith to trust him in the midst of the turmoil. Pray that we can see clearly where he has an open door for us and that we have the strength to walk through to wherever he’s trying to lead us.
In spite of it all. . . In spite of all the doubt and the fear and the insecurity, I want to go where he’s leading. I want to stay in his will because I believe that is the safest place for us to be.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Sunday, July 8, 2012
A Wedding, A Show and A Prayer
For anyone who has been waiting for my posts the last few weeks, I apologize. We’ve had a very busy last two weeks. My cousin got married on June 23rd, so we took a mini family vacation to L.A. to attend the wedding. It was an AMAZING event! I hope Alex and Sammie don’t mind if I post a few pictures.
I know it’s nothing like what his parents feel about it, but it’s a very strange thing to watch a young man that you carried around when he was a newborn, played with when he was a toddler and teased when he was a teenager, stand in front of all his family and friends and commit his life in marriage to a beautiful young woman. He’s become a grown man, tall and handsome. I’m happy for him and sad at the same time.
I watched my own little guy running around with his cousins and dancing like crazy on the dance floor and thought about how one day, before I know it, I’ll be watching him make the same commitment to a young lady that he loves. I hope and pray that he turns out as well as Alex did.
We came back from the wedding just in time to get into the final rehearsals for the Celebrate America show that our church does every year for the 4th of July. It’s a huge patriotic event and concert that we do that the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View every year. My husband is in the choir, my kids are in the kids choir, and I had volunteered to help with the kids, so we had a lot of practices to do and were out late every night from Wednesday to Saturday June 30th, the day of the show.
That day, just before the show started, there was a very difficult situation that happened backstage, which ended with me feeling deeply hurt and rejected and my daughter not performing in the show. I’m not going to get into the specifics of it here, because I’m in the process of trying to work it out with the others involved. However, the resulting emotional fallout for me has lasted for days. It left me questioning myself, my value and my judgment. It actually kept me up for several nights because I couldn’t stop the rerunning the event in my mind and planning what I should say to whom in order to deal with it.
Needless to say, it’s been a long few weeks.
The other day while I was working, I had Air1 radio playing. The song Remind Me Who I Am by Jason Gray came on and the words kind of popped out at me. I’ve heard this song many times, but maybe I wasn’t really listening before. It was the words from the chorus that caught my attention:
Tell me, once again
Who I am to You, who I am to You
Tell me, lest I forgetete
Who I am to You, that I belong to You
To You
I think that lately I have forgotten who I am. In all the chaos of living every day in a life filled with difficulty, struggle, disappointment and insecurity I’ve lost sight of who I am in Christ.
Intellectually, I know that I am a daughter of the King and, as the Bible says, joint heirs with Christ. The problem is that I don’t know that I’ve ever really internalized that. I don’t know how to live in this fallen world and yet keep in mind that my destiny lies beyond it. Sometimes I manage to hold onto the idea that I am a Child of the Most High God for a little while, but then life comes along and shatters that perception with the reality of here and now. My life certainly doesn’t look like that of royalty. It doesn’t look like I am highly favored and blessed. So, how do I maintain the knowledge that I am who the Bible says I am when my circumstances look more like those of a pauper?
Maybe I just need to hear it again from God. That’s probably something I should start praying about.
Heavenly Father, I know that the Bible is supposed to be enough for me to know that you love me. I also know that the very fact that you sent your son to die in my place is also all the evidence I should need. I’m just so weak. My heart is fragile and I get discouraged so easily. This world seems determined to beat me down these days and it’s so easy for me to forget and feel unloved and forgotten by you. I get distracted by how hard life is and forget that this is only the dress rehearsal for eternity.
So, please forgive my weakness. And, please tell me again who I am to, that I belong to you. Please tell me again that I’m the one you love. And help me not to forget.
Amen
All the little details and final touches made it so memorable. We had a great time!
 |
| My family. Just so you know we were actually there. ^_^ |
I know it’s nothing like what his parents feel about it, but it’s a very strange thing to watch a young man that you carried around when he was a newborn, played with when he was a toddler and teased when he was a teenager, stand in front of all his family and friends and commit his life in marriage to a beautiful young woman. He’s become a grown man, tall and handsome. I’m happy for him and sad at the same time.
I watched my own little guy running around with his cousins and dancing like crazy on the dance floor and thought about how one day, before I know it, I’ll be watching him make the same commitment to a young lady that he loves. I hope and pray that he turns out as well as Alex did.
We came back from the wedding just in time to get into the final rehearsals for the Celebrate America show that our church does every year for the 4th of July. It’s a huge patriotic event and concert that we do that the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View every year. My husband is in the choir, my kids are in the kids choir, and I had volunteered to help with the kids, so we had a lot of practices to do and were out late every night from Wednesday to Saturday June 30th, the day of the show.
That day, just before the show started, there was a very difficult situation that happened backstage, which ended with me feeling deeply hurt and rejected and my daughter not performing in the show. I’m not going to get into the specifics of it here, because I’m in the process of trying to work it out with the others involved. However, the resulting emotional fallout for me has lasted for days. It left me questioning myself, my value and my judgment. It actually kept me up for several nights because I couldn’t stop the rerunning the event in my mind and planning what I should say to whom in order to deal with it.
Needless to say, it’s been a long few weeks.
The other day while I was working, I had Air1 radio playing. The song Remind Me Who I Am by Jason Gray came on and the words kind of popped out at me. I’ve heard this song many times, but maybe I wasn’t really listening before. It was the words from the chorus that caught my attention:
Tell me, once again
Who I am to You, who I am to You
Tell me, lest I forgetete
Who I am to You, that I belong to You
To You
I think that lately I have forgotten who I am. In all the chaos of living every day in a life filled with difficulty, struggle, disappointment and insecurity I’ve lost sight of who I am in Christ.
Intellectually, I know that I am a daughter of the King and, as the Bible says, joint heirs with Christ. The problem is that I don’t know that I’ve ever really internalized that. I don’t know how to live in this fallen world and yet keep in mind that my destiny lies beyond it. Sometimes I manage to hold onto the idea that I am a Child of the Most High God for a little while, but then life comes along and shatters that perception with the reality of here and now. My life certainly doesn’t look like that of royalty. It doesn’t look like I am highly favored and blessed. So, how do I maintain the knowledge that I am who the Bible says I am when my circumstances look more like those of a pauper?
Maybe I just need to hear it again from God. That’s probably something I should start praying about.
Heavenly Father, I know that the Bible is supposed to be enough for me to know that you love me. I also know that the very fact that you sent your son to die in my place is also all the evidence I should need. I’m just so weak. My heart is fragile and I get discouraged so easily. This world seems determined to beat me down these days and it’s so easy for me to forget and feel unloved and forgotten by you. I get distracted by how hard life is and forget that this is only the dress rehearsal for eternity.
So, please forgive my weakness. And, please tell me again who I am to, that I belong to you. Please tell me again that I’m the one you love. And help me not to forget.
Amen
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