A distinct answer.

Last night I was driving home from my school after getting papers ready for this week.  I often pray when I am in the car by myself, but it usually becomes a round-an- round type of prayer where I get completely distracted, can't keep my train of thought and I just say the same basic thing over and over.  Last night was different.  I was laser-focused and it was almost like God was putting the words in my mouth to pray (the Spirit praying through me perhaps?).

My prayer started out for my kids.  God please make Yourself real to my children." I almost always pray those exact words.  Same words this time and yet different somehow...like my hope for that prayer was as clear in those words as if I had voiced those hopes too.  Then, I felt a real need to pray for that realness for myself and for American Christians in general.  God, what are we supposed to be about anymore.  Faith used to be so easy because we knew what we were supposed to believe!  Now it seems that there is no more right and wrong...no black and white.  How do we share our Savior when there is no need for a savior? 

Then, with more focus on myself.  Lord, I have not been diligent in seeking You, to the point of not knowing how to hear Your voice or where to look for You.  All of this boiled down to something that has been bugging me for some time.  Lord, I BELIEVE!  Help thou my unbelief! 

With God out of my box, I have not known how to grasp Him.  The box has been blown to bits.  There is no putting Him back, but how does my tiny brain wrap around the idea of GOD?!  I believe.  In the simplest form of faith, I do believe.  It's just that I don't know exactly what about His nature I still believe.

 I grew up believing that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, true and literal.  The day I heard the pastor at the church we were attending say that he didn't believe that Noah's flood was a literal world-wide flood but rather a flooding of the world as-they-knew-it at the time, was earth shattering for me.  To not believe that God is big enough to flood the entire earth, is the same as saying He is not big enough to create the earth.  To me personally, it says that He is not big enough to be Savior and certainly not big enough to be in control.  I literally floundered that day. In fact, for a long while, I ran from anything to do with God, that church and well, any church in general.  I was already pulling away from that church, but that really sent me running away from, not just church, but God.  Not the best thing to do when you have children turning toward agnosticism.  In fact, in hindsight, I see that it was the most damaging thing I could do for my family at that time.

That's the time when I should have been setting the example of firm faith.  What that pastor said was not the only thing that was causing me to question God.  I had been through 2 years of intense political theory classes.  There is certainly no room for God in that.  There are some philosophers that have some very good questions about God and faith that I don't know that I will ever be able to satisfy.  At some point, I had to make a blind leap and accept that some things cannot be known while in this body.  Now I see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.  I still didn't jump back into church though.  I felt defeated with each blow my kids dealt out about their lack of faith which eventually was just that faith is a form of ignorance as is every political view I have ever held  (Did they take those poli sci classes too?  Oh, that's right, they go to public school which is taught by people that took the philosophy classes I had to take.).  I just wanted to leave those parts of me behind and not think about them anymore.  It just hurt too much to think that my precious children were so...lost.  They don't think they are, of course, but without faith, there is no anchor, no moral compass.  They don't even see the need for morals.  They will when they try to raise their own children in this world that say, "you can't teach right and wrong because what's wrong for one person may not be for another."  There has to be an anchor and we, as a nation, have lost ours.  With the events of the last year, however, I have been compelled to return to church.  I have still fought it at times, but I have come to realize that church was not just a place to worship a God that I no longer understand, but it is family.  It is a support.  It is a home.

Getting back into church has been difficult at best.  And my prayer last night was getting to the heart of that.  I don't know all that I said, but for the first time in a very long time, I FINISHED a prayer.  I mean, I did not get caught up in the round-and-round and give up.  I felt complete when I was done.  I felt I had accomplished something.  For the first time in a very long time, I felt like I got through.  Yet in spite of the sense of expectation I had for a real physical response, there was silence in the car.  Still, Hope had taken root.

I am terrible at remembering things so I may not get them all.  God please bring remembrance as I type!  Today all was forgotten.  Routine got me up and off to church even though it has been several weeks that we have not been (Amanda's horse show, Ryan's send-off to Madrid, Amanda's boyfriend's family having us over for his "welcome home from Kuwait" party, and finally, our trip to Florida-gosh, I didn't even realize it had been 4 weeks till just now!). 

Worship:  I don't remember the words, but something about God pursuing us and loving us and calling us Beloved.  Oh sweet words.  I haven't even thought about that in a long time, but issues from the past and a revelation of God as a "lover" from a past encounter with Him came to mind.  (If you go back and read some of my OLDer posts, you might start to understand what that is all about.  Maybe I will try to tackle that someday.)  I guess this is as good a time and place to make this announcement as any, but I am in the process of preparing for weight-loss surgery.  Without launching into a whole new blog post, let's just say I have always had body image issues, but have somewhere along the line, finally been able to accept that I AM loved.  This surgery being possible now, I feel, is God's way of saying that now that I know He loves me the way I am, He is going to let me see myself as HE sees me, or at least how I want to be seen.  The option of surgery was not available to me previously and now that I am able to accept and believe that I am loved, it is not only available, but basically paid for-to be shared at a later time.  I have always worried that surgery of that type would make me a failure, but the way it has come about is like grace has been given as well as a means.  Anyway, the worship wasn't about that, but I heard that as clearly as if God stood right in front of me and spoke it.  You are loved.  You are my Beloved.  You are worthy, and I am giving you a way to feel confident in the body I gave you.  Youth really is wasted on the young and I was as dumb and lazy as you could get as a youth.  Never taking into account that one day I might not be capable of doing what I should have been doing then to be healthy.  Then depression, and life, and more depression, and eventually diabetes left me just that...incapable, or at the very least, unsuccessful.

This morning, I also saw the young people who were leading the worship and felt a new hope for my children being planted.  I really feel that I have a new vision for their futures and certainly, a new prayer for them.  Let them see how full and vital life feels when senses are not dulled.  Let them feel the rush of living in the moment and serving the God of Creation!  Show them what an adventure seeking the Hound of Heaven would be!

Pastor Aaron then delivered an answer to one of my prayers, a church in a place where it needed to be and an invitation to the exact person it needed to be for.  Thank you, Lord!  Go get him!

The sermon: all else does not matter, but the takeaway.  Yes, seek Me and you will find Me.  Yes, you have lost the sound of My voice, seek me and hear It again. 

(Oh Lord, bring remembrance to me now so that I can get this all down.  Don't let Satan steal the message from me!) 

To hear(recognize) Me, you must know(know the sound of My voice) Me.  To know me, you must seek my guidance in the small things.  You hear Me now.  I am helping your unbelief. My Spirit is your guide and It is with you always, you just have to listen and remember My voice.  My Spirit will show you My nature.  Through My Spirit, you can know Me again.  My Spirit is with your children too.  They have received It, but like you, they have stopped hearing(reconizing) Me.  I woo them, just as I wooed you.  I never stopped pursuing you and I will never stop pursuing them.  As much as you love them, I love them more.  I created them.  I breathed life into them.  You gave them to Me and I am big enough to hold them.  Trust them to me.  Inside my head, I imagined the worst that could happen to them and at the same instant I realized that I can't stop that anyway and worse than the worst is that they left this world rejecting God.  So I need to just let Him do his thing.

In the midst of all of this, Husband mentions to me that he wishes there was a young adults group at our church that our children could get involved in.  I think, "not that it matters, one is in Madrid and the other is off to college in a couple of months," but I say, "maybe you should start one.  We have been talking a lot lately about it being time to commit to being involved at church, not just showing up for meetings.  I have mentioned a couple of areas that I thought I would like to see happen.  In fact, I was just telling Husband 2 days ago that I would like to see some sort of casual, Bible centered, but food oriented home group.  Like sitting around the table for a meal talking about the ways of God-kind of a early church type of thing.  What if we could do that for young adults.  Neither of us feel we are prepared to teach, but host?  I don't know, our house is crappy and it's embarrassing to have anyone over anymore.  But we LOVE to have people over!  We love, love, LOVE having people over.  It is so depressing that we feel we can't do that anymore.  Lord, what are you trying to do?  Why do you plant seeds in my heart that Husband would never want to cultivate?  As embarrassing as our home is, I would still do it.  Husband would not.  I would also adopt every kid in the world too.  Husband puts the brakes on me.  Sometimes I hate it and I feel like we are missing God because of it, but there is as much wisdom in having brakes as there is in having an accelerator.

For whatever reason, I feel that I am missing something.  If I recall it, I will add it later.  I really do need to get some planning done for the week.

My purpose for writing this is simply because I want to remember what God does.  I have been an Isrealite too many times by forgetting what He has done and complaining.  I want my ebenezer, my marker, my reminder of what He has done.  One last thing He said today.  Take your eyes off of your children and set them on Me.  I will give you a new vision and a new hope.  Several years of bad habits are going to be hard to redirect.  Please let that new vision be one shared by Husband and me!

An empassioned post written on my phone, in the car, on the way home from vacation.

I am going to hire a carpenter.  I am going to make sure he is well educated (having used his own money and time to get that way), good with wood and other materials, creative enough to make really good plans (even though I have my own plans for what he is to do).  I am going to give him enough work that for the next year, he will only be working for me, putting in as many as 70 hours a week.  I am only going to pay him about $15 per hour (which is what many want the minimum wage to be).  Oh he'll get 2 months off during the cold months cause there's no work to do in the cold, but I expect him to go to training for at least half of that.  I'll find someone who will do it just because he loves what he does. 

The job will be done with me looking over his shoulder.  I will take account of every nail that is dropped, every screw that is stripped. Every knot in the wood that I give him to work with.  He has to work with those knots and make it perfect!  All knots; warped and cracked boards; and every scrap has to be made into useable material using, for each individual board, the same technique that I, who know nothing about wood, have created. 

Now my plan calls for a curved wall. I gave him boards that are all straight except for a few warps.  He may know of a product that will make those curves smooth and precise, but no.  He must use the wood I have.  I mean, after all, everybody else is using that same wood!

Not only will I make him use that straight wood, but he has to make it curve the way I tell him too or I will fire him and call Angie's List and the Better Business Bureau so he never works in this town again. Some pieces of the wood are perfect and will curve nicely with a little pressure, but I want him to force every piece into that curve, even if it stresses the perfect boards to the point of cracking or breaking.  If one board breaks, the carpenter is responsible.  All boards must be perfect and look exactly the same when the job is complete.  If he gets frustrated and throws a board, I have cameras around to catch him and I will send the video to the news media. He will be tried and convicted of vandalism on the news and social media the very week it happens.

(Well that last part is a stretch.)  Anyone want to apply?  

Let carpenters do the carpentry.

If you don't get the analogy, contact me.  If you wanna know what to do for the poor wood, I'll be happy to tell you.