A friend asked, “How can I pray?” and I thought of all the things that I could ask prayer for. There are plenty right now.
1. the slowest moving house deal in the history of America. I’m kind of confused if the sellers really want to sell? We currently are leaving California in 19 days and have no home to go to. It still is in the “this could fall through at any second stage”.
2. the fact that I was minding my own law abiding citizen business a couple of weeks ago and got slammed by another car and because it was her fault, I have to have it fixed in Ca in order to use her insurance. WHICH leaves me 19 days for that whole process to be completed and Jesus birthday falls in the middle of that which is certain to slow things down even further.
3. my dog had 4 abscessed teeth. Pay $650 or let her go to doggie heaven.
4. the library that made an error and can’t correct it, leaving my account in a delinquent status and the branch manager shaking his head telling me that he has never seen this happen and doesn’t know how to fix it. This is right after I informed him about number 1 and the absolute catastrophe that will ensue if this doesn’t get corrected because loan officers don’t like seeing things hitting collections during escrow. Even if just a simple little library book that was an error of the library clerk, self admitted by the library.
5. I have packed 5 boxes. Five. About 195 less then the 200 I likely need to pack.
I could ask for prayer for those things. I could be praying for them myself, but I am not. They seem to0 trivial right now. There are more important things.
I had a friend say to me the other day. Obviously, you are on the brink of something big and Satan doesn’t like it. So much is going down…and on the flip side I am sure someone somewhere could say we are going down the wrong path because “everything is going wrong”.
But you know what I have learned through the last couple of months? My prayers have changed, dramatically.
I am not praying for a certain house. I did not pray for a certain job. I am not praying that I won’t be in a tornado. (ok maybe I am). Rather, I am praying that Jesus is glorified. I am praying that I cling close enough to Jesus to walk the steps that He has for my life in a way that brings Him so much glory. I pray that I know Him.
I am praying that I stay present. That I see His care for me. I pray that with each day, I grow and understand a little bit deeper what this life is all about. I am praying that I live with my arms wide open, collecting no baggage along my journey, but rather leaving it at the foot of the cross.
There are a lot of goodbyes these days. They are all hard. However, last night was one of the hardest. I went to dinner with my girls. Eight years of sharing life together. Over the last four years life has slowly taken us all on different paths and some to different cities and even states. We still get together as best we can and I am so ridiculously blessed with these girls and even now the tears just pour while thinking about it. We are intertwined. Deeply. I am so blessed that they have let me into their hearts. That is a gift. You have to be willing to open your heart to become intertwined and when you do there is not much in this life as beautiful as that.
As I came home at midnight last night and read their letters and prayers for me by my Christmas tree lights, I wept. I really did and I am grateful because too many times in life we try to avoid feeling. It is understandable because sometimes feeling hurts. Last night did…and it is o.k. I am learning. When you go to the deep end of the pool and feel the hurt, I am convinced that there you also find the deep joy. They go together. If you stay in the shallow part, you will miss them both.
Don’t you love when God is working on you with something and then you read the something you’ve been learning in words not written or thought by you. It’s kinda the coolest.
“Perhaps you have experienced your own Bump. And perhaps you have tried as hard as you can to pretend it didn’t hurt. To pretend you didn’t feel the jolt. Didn’t notice the bruises. Sometimes our healing is stunted because we aren’t honest. We don’t know if there’s a safe place to be honest. And we haven’t given ourselves permission to grieve. Don’t minimize your Bump. Feel it. Mourn it. Grieve it. And then allow God to heal it. He will.” ~ Deanna Ramsay
Right now my life is messy and that is where Jesus shines like no other.
Jesus Always.
19 days until our move day. A whole big adventure awaits us.
p.s. and hey, look who decided to get baptized???
