Day Three

Dear God,

Feeling slightly hollow today. Reading Isaiah 3 left me a bit...perplexed. I think this was the warning to Israel that because they had turned away from God, all the things they turned to were going to be taken from them. They would be leaderless, a people without a rudder, begging for someone -- anyone -- to take charge. In a way, it's like God was telling them that since their hearts weren't seeking him, he was going to remove all the things that were distracting them, all the false idols that consumed their love.

I guess, Lord, that I could make a loose connection here.  My heart since last May has been far from you. And I see how certain things in my life have fallen to pieces. Ironically, it's a lot of house stuff, which maybe other people might just deal with and move on, but which I absolutely loathe dealing with. Windows, siding, a moldy bathroom that needs to be gutted. Everything a big job, nothing we can really do ourselves, all of it expensive and intimidating. Ugh.

But there's other stuff, too. I haven't felt in sync with my husband in a while. It's hard to pray with him, so we just haven't done it. Sometimes things with the kids seem to have run off the rails.  I think the two of us praying about it would help, but we're not praying together.  And I have felt trapped by the life I have held onto so fiercely because change scares me so much. When I was trying to hide from you last summer, I had a week where bible verses just flooded my mind -- verses were all but dropping from the sky. I recorded them in an earlier post because I hadn't really ever had something like that happen before. Almost every verse was whispering "trust me". Over and over. Again and again and again. But we didn't act. I didn't act. I couldn't. I was paralyzed.

And then it was like I couldn't hear you at all.

God, how frustrated you must get with me. So slow I am to figure things out. So reluctant to pry my crabbed, aching fingers off the steering wheel so you can drive. So cocksure that I know the way I should go that I won't even consider your plans. I waited so long, that the little boy we thought maybe possibly could be you wanted us to go get just disappeared. That, we thought, was that. 

I sort of wanted to see if we could find him, but Tim said no. Only if he showed up on the list again. Then we'd go get him. "Um, you realize that's almost impossible, the least likely scenario in the universe," I said. "Do you think God can't do it?" he shot back. "Of course God could do it" I answered (but he won't was what I thought).

So for nearly 5 months I have lived, grieving my own pigheadedness, my fear, my brokenness, my selfish heart. And I've lived with a ghost child, who haunted my thoughts with such a burden of might-have-beens that it has sometimes been hard to enjoy family activities.

Did I come before you, Lord? No. I dorked around for 5 months until this week. This week I wanted to hear from you. I wanted to know your heart. I wanted to see with your eyes. I wanted all the brouhaha in my head to fall away so I could see and hear clearly. That's what I prayed for.

And yesterday I found him again.

Were you waiting for me to be ready, Lord? To want you more than I wanted my own comfort? Were you waiting for me to finally be still so I could hear you? To take my fingers out of my ears?  I realize that all of this represents a level of trust that I have only rarely (okay, never) aspired to. Step one is going to be getting Tim on board. I know what he said, and You know what he said, but I don't know how he's going to respond when I tell him I've found our little guy again. You're going to have to show up here, Lord. And you're going to have to show up big, because Tim feels the stress of providing for our family at a very deep level. The ability to earn is his greatest insecurity, just as change is mine. This whole process is a trust whammy for both of us, in completely different ways.

Undertake, Lord. There is nothing too difficult for you.

Love,

me