My Fear and Faith Journey

Here is the rest of the story, Friends.

Let me back up a little. One of the requirements for acceptance into the school was a letter from my pastor. I was one of 30,000 members and my pastor didn’t know me from Adam’s horsefly. I had to go to the pastoral office for an interview. I’ll never forget it. I was so nervous!  I was working in the church nursery at the time, and I asked a group of friends to pray the interview would go well. I get to the pastoral office and the lay-pastor says, “Georgia, your reputation precedes you.” Huh? What reputation? He said, “As I was walking to my office for this interview, I ran into _______________.   She said,  'You are about to interview Georgia today and ….” I don’t even remember what was said but when I got out of that interview, my heart was so full! I had never felt the urge to shout until that day. I never felt the urge to dance and raise my hands like I did that day. I'm not a shouter or dancer and  I was not in a place where that sort of behavior would be understood,. So, I went to the church library, waaaay behind the back shelves where nobody could see me, and I raised my hands, waved them in a way that God would hear “HALLELUJAH” from my heart. I didn’t dare speak. Tears stung my eyes. I was not the crying type. I paced the floor with glory-to-God---there-is-NOBODY-like-You,-Lord energy! My God, your God, our Way-Maker had caused the path of the nursery supervisor and lay-pastor to intersect at just the right moment on behalf of little old me.

He’ll do it for you, too, My Friend. I know He already has for many of you, but right now you may be facing a new challenge and the terrain looks like nowhere your feet have been before. That’s alright. If the Father has called you there, He’s already got cleats, sandals, snowshoes, hiking boots---whatever kind of shoe you need to get across that terrain. I have learned that it’s ok if your legs are trembling so long as the feet attached are stepping out in faith. Are you going to go or not?

OK, now for the tuition part.

I had a little money saved for my first class that summer. Earlier that spring, I heard a voice say, “Loan that money to ___________.” I pretended He was talking to someone else. I reasoned that it was the devil trying to trip me up. I rationalized that it was my overactive conscience and that I should ignore it. The impression would not go away. Ya’ll, I went to the mat on that one! How did I know I would get the money back in time? You already know what happened. I loaned the money through tight fists and gritted teeth, and the money was returned in time.

My church had a scholarship program for students back then. Fear said, “That money is for young people trying to pay for college, not old heads like you.” I think I may have talked to a friend about it, and she encouraged me to apply anyway. The amount of money I got determined how many classes I could take. I started out with one class. The next semester, I went to pay for one class. 

“Ma’am, your class has already been paid for.” 

The tears came before I could compose myself. The lady looked a little embarrassed at such emotion. I couldn’t help it. Why would anyone want to pay my way? Who was I? I was able to take a second class that semester with the money I had from the scholarship program.

Over time, I noticed that the checks got smaller each scholarship season.  One time I got called to the office. That feeling was like going to the principal’s office.

“Someone has donated $1,000 in scholarship money-an anonymous donor.” Another student was in the office with me and was receiving the same amount. I remember we both sat in stunned silence and got our lips to move at the same time when we said, “Oh my gosh!” Apparently, that sort of thing happened all the time because one office lady said to the other, “I thought I’d let you have the experience this time.” Imagine what it’s like to be on her side of things; having the joy of sharing exciting news of money falling from heaven to needy students. God bless whoever it was who gave!

I now have a notebook with letters I got in the mail during those years of anonymous donors giving $100 and $500, but that’s not all.

I fear I’ve made this post too long so I will save the rest for tomorrow.

Know this: this is not a story about me. I hope you see, I’m nothing special. I have all the same doubts and fears as any of you. No, this is the story of one regular person’s experience with an extraordinary God. You have stories too! I’d love to hear them!  You may email me: ordinerrygirl@yahoo.com.

My Fight With Fear

I was reading the account of the Israelites when they saw the Egyptian soldiers coming after them. God had just delivered them from 400 years of bondage and they’d witnessed the amazing feats the Lord performed through the ten plagues. Listen to what they said as they saw the clouds of dust from the chariots and horses feverishly advancing toward them: “Is it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? Why have you dealt with us in this way, bringing us out of Egypt? Is this not the word that we spoke to you in Egypt saying, ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” (Exodus 14:11-12)

They were lying through their chattering teeth! They were getting out of Egypt as fast as they could when the time came. Fear will do that to you. It will rewrite your history.  Fear will make the bondage you came out of shine with a glow it NEVER possessed-- all because the blank screen of the future is unclear.  You have to pull yourself together, Girl! Don’t swallow the lies your fake friend Fear tells you. “I’m only trying to protect you from harm and from looking like a fool,” she says. Fear has a vivid imagination. She paints in detail all the things that will go wrong if you trust God. She makes “safe” look like a beautiful, cushy place when in reality it is ugly with disobedience, unbelief, and boredom!

I recall MANY times when fear tried all of the above on me. (She has me on speed-dial. You too?) Her best tactic with me is, “There’s no money for that.” She used it to try to keep me out of seminary. Keith and I didn’t have two pennies to rub together, and I was at home full time homeschooling our three children. I’ll tell you some other time how the Lord called me to go back to school, but God made it plain He wanted me to go. None of it made sense. What about the children? Keith worked days so how was all of that going to work out? Online was not an option for the schools I wanted to attend. Ladies, when all of those questions come up that you don’t have an answer for, you gotta pass the buck to God! He can handle it!

I applied for seminary and was accepted, but I still didn’t know how I would pay for it.

God led me to the biography of a man named George Mueller. I consider him the prince of faith in God. God led George Mueller to start I don’t know how many orphanages with not ONE fundraiser or request of ANY kind to anyone but Him. You heard me right. He only went to God in prayer and every. single.  time., God showed up. For example, one day they had run out of food. Mueller had all the children get up that morning and sit at the table as usual. They prayed for God to provide breakfast. Then came the knock at the door. It was the milk man. His truck had broken down, and he wondered if they could use the milk. Then came the baker. God had awakened him early and impressed upon him to bake enough bread to take to the orphanage. Stuff like that happened all the time with Mueller.

With this story burning a hole in my heart, I asked God if I could trust Him like that. “Lord, may I get Your permission to commit to not take out any student loans to pay for school for me?” Our Daddy granted permission and then the games began!! Was I scared? Yes. Did I have times when I wished I’d done it like normal people and took out loans? Sadly, yes, but if I had gone that route, I would have missed out on all God did in those years.

I gotta get ready for work, so I will continue this tomorrow. Just let me leave you with this. Fear is a thief of godly adventure. She is always telling lies on God and trying to kidnap you from your purpose. Without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 12;6).  So, Girls, let’s get to “faithin’”!

Free Writing: Day 12

Back to the story I began yesterday . I wanted to share what I learned in hopes it will encourage you.

First, I learned that what I want God to do and what God wants to do may not be the same. I cried out earnestly to Him about this problem, and it seemed He was silent. Didn't He care that I was suffering? I assumed that He wanted me out of my predicament as much as I did. That may be true, but the difference was WHEN! Extended time in God's waiting room turns the walls into mirrors where we see ourselves in ways we otherwise might not. Sometimes those mirrors reveal fat rolls of entitlement, and a sagging commitment to trust Him though He slay us (Job 13:15). We discover that we've pieced together a theology that is not in God's size and color. It fits the god we assumed He is, and we must make adjustments. Also, long waits can bring out the spoiled brat we didn't know lived inside. Mine got spanked. It's what happens with a loving Father (Hebrews 12:6). 

The second lesson was more a reminder than a fresh truth:  Convictions are nonnegotiable- so anytime you're negotiating, you have taken a wrong turn. Get back to right as quickly as possible. 

Finally, there is a subtle decay that happens when we start down the road of compromise. This I find so scary. Like I mentioned yesterday, you're not aware anything is happening for a while. You may even be enjoying the time away. Outwardly, you're looking more powerful; however, underneath your heart is growing colder toward God, your spiritual ears are getting more hard of hearing, your soul is getting lean, and you are missing out on your purpose and His presence. It's not worth it! 

Well, that's what I learned through that last storm. I'm not proud of how I handled it, but if YOU learn something from the journey, it takes the sting out just a little. 

Free Writing: Day 11

Waiting is hard, isn’t it? There seem to be seasons where waiting is the only thing happening. Waiting for the check in the mail, waiting for the mechanic to call to say your car is ready, waiting for an apology or for someone to change.

God has brought me through a terrible season of waiting. It was so difficult and frustrating. Some waiting seasons are so long you quit praying for what you want to happen and just try to get through them with your wits intact.

After this last waiting storm, my spirit was tattered and there was a sizeable hole in a place that had once been air-tight. In order to be as vague as possible, let’s just say I let my convictions slip. Something I had always been careful not to do became a heart-habit. Some soul-searching in hindsight has yielded the following: I became angry with God and got tired of all of that waiting. I had prayed and begged and tried to be patient, but my patience ran out. It didn’t run out in one gush; it was a slow leak and before I realized, I began morphing a clear-cut conviction into a gray area. Do you get what I am saying? My spirit was angry with God so I figured, “Why should I be so meticulous in areas where others seem to have no problem slacking off. Maybe I’ve been too uptight about ___________.” It all sounded so logical at the time. Anger has that way about it. It fuels what your sinful nature wants to do anyway. It leaves the door unlocked so that ugly things can walk in. Believe me, they WILL walk in and have a seat, eat your food, sleep in your bed, steal your joy, and leave you messed up!

This reminds me of the Bible’s account of Samson and Delilah. Remember? Delilah asked Samson the secret to killing his amazing strength. When he finally told her, the Bible says he got up that next morning like always and didn’t know the Lord had left him. (Judges 16:20) Chilling!

That’s how compromise will do you. You rationalize here, side-step there, and ride the fence in another place until you are far away from where you once were, and you don’t even know it.

This is where I found myself. Until Wednesday night. I was at Bible study and the Holy Spirit, with a gentleness that makes me want to hug Him if I could, spoke to me: “Daughter, you’ve got to get back to center.” Then He mentioned that heart-habit. “Remember when this was not a part of your life?” When God shows you stuff, sometimes it makes you gasp. He gives you a glimpse of that spot you used to occupy in the secret place of the Most High…in the shadow of the Almighty. Then He shows how huge the gap is to the desert place where you wound up.

“Repent and come back to Me,” He said, as He patted that place on His lap. That place where I had leaned on His holy chest and cried because I was frustrated with Him in my waiting.

I am so thankful for His grace that called me back. I have confessed and that sin is out of my life. His forgiveness is so sweet and so undeserved.

What about you, My Friend? Are you angry with God? Have you pulled away from Him? Have your convictions in certain areas slipped? Come back.

Tomorrow I will share about some lessons this storm has taught me. In the meantime, I invite you to  bow before Him in repentance, and recommit yourself  to Him. Climb back into His lap and enjoy renewed fellowship with our heavenly Daddy. There’s nothing like it!

Free Writing: Day 10

You would be proud of me. I plugged along at work today and then after work, I went to a place with free wi-fi and worked on my paper. Yes, the BIG paper!

This whole dissertation thing is teaching me some incredibly important life lessons.  First, even if you think something is impossible for you to achieve, try it and prove yourself a liar. If others have done it, then you can't rightly call it impossible, can you? I remember a long while back telling God, "I want to attempt something that's really hard and DO it!" I recall the burn and ache in my heart when I said it. I don't think I had anything specific in mind when I prayed it. Well, maybe I did, but even if the doing wasn't what I had in mind, I wanted to do SOMETHING that fit that description. I wanted to do something I could call to mind on my deathbed that I could look back with pride and say, "I know what it's like to face a challenge and get through to the other side of it. I was not one who only knows what it's like to quit."  I have quit some things that still sting when I think about them. No big deal. Everybody has at least one of them in their closet. I just want to see something beautiful hanging next to it. Something with sweat on it and maybe some scars and scratches. Something hard won. This degree is that to me. The thought of it overwhelms me at times. It has taken working like a dog at a second job and coming home dead tired with aching feet. It has taken out of me what others needed from me.

Still, I have entertained the idea of calling it off. I have made some pretty good arguments for why quitting made logical sense, but my heart won't let me.
I've learned that you get to a point where you've invested too much in a thing to not finish it. Even if the original idea has lost it's luster, it'll dull all the more if you just leave it to die on the side of the road.

  Know what else? When you undertake something hard, you don't do it alone. Even if your feet are the only ones moving, others are traveling with you in their hearts. It's the most amazing thing. Humbling, too. You look up and discover people are cheering you on, wanting you to make it, offering help to get you to the finish line. For a girl who often feels it's all up to her, this has been a beautiful discovery. There is a cloud of witnesses that somehow take on the challenge with you and seem delighted to be a part of it. My heart squeezes with something I can't describe when I think of it. It feels like gratitude mixed with awe mixed with the kind of tears that come before you realize it.

 One more life lesson: You have to think of mountain climbing in steps. If you look at the whole thing at one time it'll paralyze you, but anybody can do steps. Today as I sat at that table, my goal was to work on just one case study. Whether I finished it out in that sitting or not was not the point. I had an itch that could only be scratched with progress, any sort of progress.
What are you facing today that is too big to look fully in the face? A project at home? Raising a child? Finding a job? Forgiving someone for a big hurt? Peel away at it a layer at a time. You'll get there, and we both can celebrate by planting a flag on Mount It Was Hard, But I Did It.

Are you with me?

See you at the top!

Musings of a Mother With an Empty Nest

I am sad and I don't feel like writing. My last child moved out last night. I knew this day would come, and I am happy for him. I am sad for me. 

I will eventually see the bright side, but not right now. This event marks a milestone and milestones say things about your life even if you're not ready to hear them. This one is saying, "You are getting older."

 I answer back, "Shut up!"

Milestone keeps on talking, "Your kids are all grown up, and they don't need you like they did when they were little." I raise my hand to slap Milestone, but he says, " How will you ever have grandchildren if your children never grow up?" I smile a little.  Milestone keeps talking because my hand has lowered but is still high enough to hit him in the mouth. "Your life is not over, it's just transitioning. You are still needed in other ways, and God has plans for you that you don't even know about yet." My hands meet at my chest in silent hope and delight. 

I sigh. 

This is good news.

My heart still pinches a little as I watch my 6'2" baby walk out the door. I remember bringing him home from the hospital. Scenes flash through my mind: him sitting on my lap as I taught him to read, him sitting on the bench in his adorable Little League outfit, and before I knew it, he was lanking across the stage in a cap and gown. Now he works a real job and has an outlook on life that makes me proud. 

Sigh. Smile. 

  "It's gonna be alright," Milestone and I say in unison. 

Then I go to sleep so I can stop thinking about it all, thankful that the sun will come up tomorrow and remind me to keep rolling and living and transitioning. It's the way of every mother.

Free Writing: Day 8

Today I read about our sister Jochabed, mother of Moses. I love peeling back the pages of the Bible and digging between the lines. There is great theology hiding in those spots! 

First, imagine how stressful it must have been to be pregnant while knowing the government has put a hit out on your baby if he is a boy. I wonder how many premies were born in those communities from that stress. There had to be some amped-up prayer lives as well--prayers to birth a girl instead of a boy, prayers for a quiet baby if he was a boy, and prayer for a reversal of that wicked edict. 

Our times are no different. A new president who said some reckless things during his campaign is enough to make us pray. Will he tick off the wrong country? Can we really trust him? How will his behavior reflect on us on the world stage? These are stressful times. Politics birth a lot of prayers.

Jochabed kept her baby hidden for three months. How did she do it? Babies sleep a lot in those first few weeks, but what did she do to keep him quiet after that? Did Moses have a favorite chew toy? Did Big Sister Miriam learn some tricks to keep him entertained? Did Jochabed teach Miriam to pray  for Moses' quietness when she tucked her in each night? 

It couldn't have been easy seeing her friends racked with grief over their own babies' deaths by crocodile and drowning. What if one of them grew jealous of her getting to keep her boy-child and reported her? 

 How did she know to prepare a waterproof basket on just the right bath day of Pharaoh's daughter? You I believe God spoke to her in whatever way he spoke to people back then. We can ask her when we get to Heaven, but I'm almost certain prayer was an ingredient in the mix of all of it. 

Then that day when Moses was found--don't you know Mom told Miriam to keep watch and that she coached her on what to say to the Princess? 

I love that Jochabed got paid to nurse her own baby. You already know she held her face extra close to him and as he drank her milk, her spirit deeply drank in every cherished moment that wasn't supposed to be. Something about looking in the face of a miracle that makes you want to shout and rejoice. You realize you are a character in a flipped script Whose Director and Producer is God. What are you living that is the result of a flipped script? Are you a cancer survivor? A recovering addict? A survivor of a financial crisis that would have made others jump from a building? Are you simply glad to be in your right mind after grief tried to run you out of it? What's your story of God's divine doings that are marvelous in your eyes? 

Finally, after Jochabed weaned her sweet Moses, she had to let him go. Don't tell me she didn't cry as he was taken away. I wonder what keepsake she handmade for him to take to the palace to remember her by? She had to comfort herself, "Cheer up. At least he isn't dead. You may never see him again, but you know where he is." Sometimes we have to choose to focus on the good that IS even when it's far from what we wanted. We must find joy where we can and hold on until the Lord sets all things right.