Somewhere between a mediocre and very rough day today. It is a very rough day for where I am right now. It would be a mediocre day for four or five months ago. I forgot to reset my alarm for a holiday last night, so I shut off my workday alarms this morning and overslept the time I was supposed to wake up. Not a big deal, but a big deal for me. I even only missed the wake up time by 45 minutes. I still felt guilty.
Then my day went downhill. I did not feel productive. That was the least of my problems. By early afternoon I received a few emails at one time that nearly gave me a panic attack. My world started to close around me in irrational fear. The truth is I have no answers to any part of my life right now. But the fears that closed in on me were not based on truth and I even knew it as I started to panic. So I did the logical thing and called my Gramma.
It was good to have someone speak truth in my life. I already knew the lies I was believing, but it was good to have someone confirm that they were lies. It still took me half the afternoon to work myself back into a place where I was not living in fear entirely. Two and a half of my Gramma’s hours and she and I were both logical, but I still felt like my life didn’t have any hope. Honestly, it was a mild flashback to the two weeks several months ago when I didn’t believe in God. This time I just felt forgotten by God.
I often feel forgotten and passed over in my life. In fact, it is one of my biggest issues I have to work out with God. It is hard to not feel forgotten or neglected when I believe God has called me to a life so utterly against the American dream. For so many years I used to have a chip on my shoulder and hold people with money and wealth and power in contempt. I have lost much of that. I used to hold Yankee fans in high derision. Now I just don’t. I still don’t understand rooting for the rich and powerful when they play against the unrich and unpowerful, but I realize the rich and powerful are not evil in and of themselves. There is nothing more wrong with people who pursue power and riches than there is with me; they are just broken in a different way than I am. Though I would not see riches or power as broken at all if the people who had them were leveraging everything for Christ, then I would see it as a powerful advantage.
I know I have to keep processing the rest of my frustration with where God is calling me. I am occasionally super annoyed He didn’t call me to something nice and rich and powerful. I wish there was an easy way for me to learn beans and rice and small incomes are okay, especially when they are blessed by God. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that having very much more than I have now will entirely disable me from being able to serve the people God has called me to serve. I am not going to lie. It still annoys me.
Sometimes it highly annoys me that I don’t have enough money for as many new clothes as I would like. But if I followed what John the Baptist said about having two coats and giving one away, then I have about four times as many clothes as I need; so I should definitely quit whining.
My day turned around when I read the discussion question for my New Testament class today about Paul being all things to all people. If all I have to do to be all things to all people is eat beans and rice (actually I eat a whole lot more sweet potatoes and chicken), then I am in real good shape. God is calling me to a really easy life. So far no 40 lashes minus one, no shipwrecks, no stonings. My life is shaping up pretty good.
I babysat this evening. By the time the kids were in bed and I had communicated with a few more people, I was actually believing in God. It helped that someone noted that my dream for this city will take years and lots of help from God. Oh, yeah, I suppose I was trying for instant gratification.
What if I believed God is who He says He is? I would live in that perfect love that casts out the fear that creates my crazy reactions to being vulnerable.
So I ended the night with a quiet thought as I started blogging, “Hey, I think I am actually becoming healthy.”
Right now I feel so divinely protected. This afternoon it was as if God had deserted me. I sure am glad that whether I am aware of God’s presence has nothing to do with whether He is present.
This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” – Jeremiah 29:4-7
All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. – Hebrews 11:13-16