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Monday, August 20, 2012

Faith Recharge?

Last Friday I got a check in the mail.  $88.  I was dumbfounded.  After quickly making a needed purchase for school I was putting off, I decided the rest was to be a cushion until the end of the month.

Mom and Dad visited yesterday and worried when I asked for advice telling them how my car battery had died 2 times in the first week of school - and twice more since. I worried the alternator was going bad.  If what I thought was true, batteries only cost around $50.  I'd be okay.  There'd be enough left over for gas money until pay day.  Surely.





We stopped by the Auto Parts store to pick up a new battery and have it installed.  Simple.  Right?!?

umm...no.  It turns out my sweet little car is a teeny bit high maintenance when it comes to things like batteries.  The guy at the auto parts store said he couldn't put it in.  It'd take too long and was above his skill range.

Oh. 

After all the damage they've done, I couldn't take it to CarMax and I worried about being overcharged at the VW place.  So I called Richey Automotive.  The people who helped me  with my Mazda so much.
They found a battery for around $70 ... but then found them to be out of stock.  The 6 year battery was going to be 95.  I knew I wouldn't have any gas money left if I got it.  In addition, it would take an hour to put it in.  ....  which would mean a $55 more.


I asked the secretary if she thought the solar panel would help until September.  She didn't know and gave the phone to Chris.  I explained my situation and asked if he thought it would be okay to jump it when/if the solar panel thingy didn't work.   


"No.  That wouldn't be good on your alternator.  Can you pay 1/2?"

you know me....I cried.  


-not tears of relief, but ones that were rejoicing for Abba's provision, and at Abba's tenderness to me. 

 I could pay 1/2.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

The Filling is the Best Part

"During these long years of waiting the father cried many tears and died many deaths.  He was emptied out by suffering.  But that emptiness had created a place of welcome for his sons when the time of their return came." Henri Nouwen 

I was cleaning out my email inbox and found an unread Henri Nouwen email from earlier this summer.  I'm not thinking it was an accident that I found it today...I *so* get what it is like to be emptied out by sufferings.  I too have cried MANY tears and died many deaths...but I'm thinking my deaths have been more like when Eustace became a dragon than anything else. Learning to die to myself so that Christ could live in my heart.  




...or learning to be emptied out like an eclair - because it's the filling that's the best part!



Because the thing that excites me most is the 'newly created place of welcome' Nouwen talks about.   I am rejoicing in the love I now have for others that is more supple and embracing and *empowered* than I used to be even before Kip's excursion into the tar pits. 



The last two mornings I put a song from my iPod on repeat for the duration of my drive to work.  Yesterday was a Chris Tomlin song about putting down idols (Give Us Clean Hands) and today my heart *overflowed* while singing "Day after day our God is reigning/He's never shaken/My hope is in the Lord/Time after time our God is faithful/Trustworthy Savior, my hope is in the Lord"  (Kirsten Stanfill - Day After Day)  My drive to school was the sweetest time of worship and supplication.  

Just 2 months ago, I struggled to pray and forced myself to sing.   I laughed, but it was like a dampened bell with a rubber stopper on the clapper.  My laughter didn't ring out with joy.   My tears were sometimes endless, as was my despair.  

Lately, I have caught myself singing because my heart is overflowing.  My laughter, at times, seems to contain sunbeams that fill my heart.  The bliss of the moment cascading out of my heart's cup.  You might have even catch me driving (top down, of course) with one hand stuck straight up in the air in worship.  

Another beautiful thing about this filling is that scriptures have become alive to me again.  
Doesn't the Holy Spirit *ROCK*?!    I'm loving Hebrews currently, just as much as I have adored Zephaniah, Haggai and Habakkuk! (before, I struggled to read anything more than a devotional email) 


My journey to Hebrews came when a friend shared Hebrews 12 with me.  I told him I would have preferred to erase the part in Haggai 2 that speaks of the Lord shaking everything that can be shaken.  I had forgotten that Abba has my best interest at heart.  I had forgotten that Abba's purpose of shaking me was to remove the fire ants from my body.  I didn't want anything else to be shaken or disturbed. (I really wanted control - which seems silly.  I mean:  taking control from the Creater of the UNIVERSE! Laughable!  Right?!)

What are you being asked to let go of?  How are you being prompted to empty yourself of..yourself - so that you can be filled?  Want to share?

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Bathroom Reading

I'm growing to love the bathroom in my counselor's office. :)


He has a mess of reading material on a table in there. In the moments where I am waiting for my time with him I pop in to shuffle through the stacks to see what gems lie there. The last two sessions, I've stumbled upon a passage that was *right* where I was in this journey.

Yesterday, it was "good old Fred" , Frederic Buechner's book called The Magnificent Defeat that I picked up. I flipped through and the heading "The Two Battles in the section entitled "The Challenge To Surrender" caught my eye.

Fred spoke of and brought to light the battle I've been having with God to let "my" life work out the way I thought it should. I felt entitled to having a sweet marriage, bearing or adopting children and raising them with my husband. It was, in my mind, the only way that Abba could fulfill all the desires of my heart after I sought him. I would sing "No one but you Lord, can fill the deepest longings of my heart" , mean it, and yet wait for him to do his part. I had it all wrong - even while knowing truth that my deepest desire was supposed to be Him. All this time, I've been seeking Him as though He were my middle man, my supplier.

The night before last, I read in Crabb's book Shattered Dreams, the chapter entitled "Desire or Addiction?" and realized my addiction to my way of living, my plan. I was missing my pets: My Harris Teeter, my husband, my normal way of relating to people, my ______ .

Crabb said "Sam saw his resolve as godly determination. I saw it as IDOLATRY, as an addiction to a lesser desire. He had not yet discovered the quiet place in the center of his soul where *all* he wants is God." (emphasis, mine)

As I was leaving, I asked for homework. I'm a teacher, it makes sense.  My counselor suggested I get a book called Aftermath that helps people with PTSD. I winced. He noticed. I don't wear my heart on my sleeve...it takes over my whole outfit. That wince was like the other shoe dropping for me. When I asked "Are you saying that I have PTSD?", and he exclaimed "How could you not??", it all made sense.

I've always been so good at handling adversity. It was my role as a little girl in a violent household to be the "trouper". Some very *hard* things have come into my life, and I've dealt with them. I used to get giddy with excitement waiting to see how God is going to work things out. Maybe because the praise I so desperately longed for came when I played the role of the "trouper". I chalked it up to faith and trust in Abba's redemptive work in my life. True, there is a bit of that in my joy. But, in that simple, almost afterthought, reading suggestion, he was saying that I failed at being a "trouper"- that what happened with my Nabel was too much for me too handle.  Somehow that made it okay for me, and everything clicked.


Finally, my heart is broken in such a way that I can't be a "trouper". I am shattered, and the pervasive sorrow that has followed, even plagued me, makes sense. Thank you Abba for removing the life sucking leech that used to look like a helpful soldier wannabe.

This morning, for the first time in as long as I can remember I woke up with a little energy to move forward. You know the trigger on a push mower that makes it easier to push? I feel as if that trigger is engaged. I don't feel like I'm fighting against quick sand or holed up in a trench covering my head afraid to come out.

The song that has been playing in my mind as I have been typing out my thoughts is Misty Edward's "Finally I Surrender".   http://youtu.be/AHdEK2rpW3s 
 
Do you also have a new or remembered truth in your life that you are surrendering to?