Sunday, July 30, 2006

Good Morning Granola!

A friend moved to Seattle yesterday, and as a going away present gave me all her food :) So today I woke up with free granola for my yogurt!

God continues to work in my life in very tangible ways. He is providing exactly what I need each day, and I am honored.

What confuses me, however, is my own brain. Something amazing happened Wednesday - a miracle if you will. The Lord orchestrated incredible things in my life in a matter of
minutes that I had been stressing about and trying to take care of myself for weeks.
All I had to do was give them to Him and trust that He would take care of me. So Wednesday I trusted Him and Wednesday He provided. Then Thursday I forgot it all. I'm an right back where I started, worrying about big things and little things, trying my hardest to make it all work out.

You know,
I am a teacher and I should know how people learn.
I should know how to make lessons I learn stick in my brain and how to apply them to the rest of my life...that is what I would be helping children do if I was in a classroom! Why can I not get things to stick in my heart and mind?

I was reading in Proverbs yesterday and it might give me insight into this problem.

"How does a man become wise? The first step is to trust and reverence the Lord! Only fools refuse to be taught." Proverbs 1:7 (The Living Bible)

What I'm ultimately desiring is to become wise. Yes, I want peace and joy in the midst of the stress - I want my problems worked out - I want to grow in my trust of the Lord. But behind all of that is wisdom! Wisdom would apply what I have already learned to a new situation I am facing. Wisdom gives it over to the Lord, knowing He is in control and loves me.

So I must trust and reverence the Lord. In other words, I must fear the Lord. I must view Him as the awesome, almighty maker
He is and trust Him to be good.

Somehow I don't think I am coming to a conclusion that works here, because I'm really back where I started (with some cheesy Christian words in the middle). I would love to Trust the Lord and give Him those things that stress me out, however I simply don't. What changes from one day to the next that dictates whether or not I am going to trust Christ and walk in the power of the Holy Spirit? Why can I not be consistent at this? I tend to be consistent at eating breakfast, checking my email, going to the bathroom, and blinking my eyes. But trusting Jesus is just not one of my things.
And I hate that.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

i am floored...

...by what the Lord has done today.

I woke up feeling really low. I have been very anxious about housing and support and life in general and I finally hit a low point this morning. So I made a plan. I set the timer on my watch to go off every hour of the day, and I assigned a certain, specific thing to pray for at each hour.

By the time I walked in the door from work today, 3 of the things had been answered VERY specifically and several more were clearly in the works!

It's funny how as soon as I began taking things to Him and giving them to Him to take care of He began to meet those needs. And I am not a theologian, I don't even really know what I believe as far as the line between God working in my life and me asking Him to. However, what I have learned today is that 1) I become a lot less stressed when I give things over to Him in complete trust, 2) He took care of three of those things that were huge and stressing me out as soon as I gave them to Him to take care of, and 3) even the things that haven't been "taken care of" are suddenly not so stressful - I have peace again.

Praise Jesus with me for teaching me these things and for answering my prayers!!!!!

Friday, July 21, 2006

unbelief

I thought I would share today about something I am not believing.

Psalm 68:19

"Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior,
who daily bears our burdens."

and Isaiah 46:4

"Even to your old age and gray hairs
I am he, I am he who will sustain you.
I have made you and I will carry you;
I will sustain you and I will rescue you."
I need a housing situation worked out, desperately. I have about a week to find a new place to live. There are three possible places for me to live, however I have one problem with all three of them - support. My support is only at 55%, which means that my paycheck is not sufficient to pay rent. So until my support is raised, I cannot sign a lease. However, I have one week to leave the place I am in.
I am not believing that He is bearing my burdens and sustaining me. I prayed for a long time that I would be able to believe that He is going to take care of this situation, but trust is not coming easily. Will you pray with me for my situation and for my heart?

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

psalm 87:6

"The Lord will write in the register of the peoples: 'This one was born in Zion'" - ps 87:6

This passage floored me today. I was sitting outside of starbucks, enjoying the warm summer night and the lack of noise around me when I came across this verse. I had just been journaling and praying about sin and about grace.

You see, the Lord has been teaching me amazing things about grace, which I think I may have mentioned on here before. Today I saw my sin all around me. By the time my starbucks time rolled around I was feeling pretty crummy. I had lied to a good friend about something dumb, I had eaten enough for two people at dinner (I can't wait to be pregnant and be able to use that line as justification! Instead I am stuck with the reality of turning to food for comfort, dang it), I had been lazy and not worked on support at all, and I had checked my email more often than I prayed. Plus about a thousand other things.

So I'm feeling really gross and figured the best solution was to spend time with Jesus. Okay, I really thought the best solution was some starbucks, and then once I was there decided to spend time with Jesus. So I was journaling and praying through my sin and my junk with the Lord, and he reminded me of what I have been learning about grace. He reminded me that I am FULLY loved, even in the middle of all my junk. He could not love me more than he does right now, when I can see nothing good in myself. I don't even have to try harder to be a good person or to make up for my sin - I just have to be with him and enjoy his love and forgiveness. Thank you Jesus!

So I'm thinking through all of this and start reading in the Psalms. I read several Psalms, but spend more time thinking about anything and everything else. Then I come across 87:6. I read right over it, but something grabbed my attention in it and I went back and read it again. Then I got really excited as it began to sink in. "The Lord will write in the register of the peoples: 'this one was born in zion'". Nothing else matters any more. My past - long ago and even the junk from today - does not define me. My family does not define me. Instead, it shall be known that I am a child of Zion - a child of the kingdom of God!! My sin is no longer what I am known by, but instead through grace it is written for everyone to know that I am a child of the King.

And wow what an inheritance!

Monday, July 10, 2006

Here is something I shouldn't have done...

I went through and read my old blog (www.xanga.com/ofcourseiamitalian) and my old day planner. Normally not a bad idea, either of these things, but it made my heart a little sad. I read through the days leading up to my departure to Mexico and the days following my arrival. And it made me sad. It made me sad to remember who I was during that time, and it made me sad to remember Mexico.

I have changed in countless ways since September 10, 2005. The person who got on the airplane that day never came home from Mexico, instead I did. I suppose it is safe to say that who I am today is better, healthier, more mature in my faith, however I am still grieving that other girl a little. Perhaps it is the stage of life that I miss. College was fun on so many levels, but my favorite part was doing ministry my senior year. I loved sharing my faith on campus and helping new believers grow in their faith. My confidence was in the Lord and I knew where I fit in to life. In Mexico my faith was shaken as I lived in this new world, with new people. I could no longer rely on coping mechanisms I knew so well, and I had to cling to the Lord in a new way. Total dependence on Him. It is good for me, but difficult to learn. I would even call it painful at times.

I think I was also troubled by the faith that I had then compared to the faith I have now. That summer I appeared to be full of faith. I was confident that the Lord would provide, I was learning things constantly from Him, and my hope was set on things above. What has changed? I still trust, I still learn, and yet things are different.

I am learning a lot lately about myself. One of those things is that I like to run from everything emotional or feelings oriented. I don't like to admit I have feelings, good or bad, or that something has effected me. I put on a happy face and push past it. Perhaps that is what my "faith" was last summer. (As a disclaimer, this is not a well thought out theory, just some rambling.) What if I was really just running from fear that the Lord wouldn't provide, fear that He wasn't real, sadness and discouragement about support? What if my way of escaping those feelings was to convince the world and then myself that I had faith the Lord would provide?

In that case, what am I longing for when I look back at that time in my life? Am I truly desiring the "faith" I had then, or is my heart longing for the freedom to cover up life? Maybe the second is true. During this time that I am realizing I run from emotions, I am also realizing that I have a lot underneath it all. There is a lot of hurt, confusion, pain, anger, and wounds that have never been dealt with. So, perhaps what I long for is the ability to sweep it all under the rug as I did before, and call it faith. That's what the girl who went to Mexico would do. But the girl who came home knows that only leads to death. I want to face it all, but I will do so with the freedom to feel grief over what has been.

Friday, July 07, 2006