This Should Be Easy

A piece of cake - all dandy and rosy

When the choice of high school came around for me in 8th grade, the Lord allowed me to be introduced to an amazing all-girls school that wouldn’t have even been an option if it weren’t for the Junior High I was attending. It never would have crossed my path. But girls came to my school one day, talked about this Duchesne Academy of the Sacred Heart, and painted a picture of Christian growth in an atmosphere of wise freedom. Eventually, I found myself and two other girls from school sitting with our Principal regarding an opportunity: we had been offered scholarships.

Several weeks later my parents and I visited Duchesne and thus continued my love for learning and study through commitment and responsibility. It was there in such a learning environment that I gained my confidence and a lot of other life-lessons God knew I had to learn. I’m so thankful.

When I was searching for a college, I knew God would make a way so that it was clear where I would end up. I had my heart in Texas, my mind on seeing snow, and my interest in being immersed in a Christian culture. Like a selfish date, I picked and tried them all, got to spend time at each of my universities, even check out the cafeterias and interesting groups to see if this would be The One to propel me into the rest of my life. After all the acceptance letters came in, God’s provision stopped short at my heart’s, Baylor University. I remember crying at school in the hallway just devastated at the fact that I hadn’t been thought worthy enough of the sufficient aid I needed to attend.

Days later, Trinity’s financial aid packet came in. God opened the door to four years of growth and learning in a beautiful city with so many amazing people from such different worlds that I will forever be grateful.

When guys eventually came into the picture, God had a way of using distance as a teaching tool. There was a gentleman I met in church one morning (like destiny!) who was from the army base. Not only did stars align, but my car ran out of gas after church just as he was walking by the gas station on his way home. He “allowed” me to pull him over and wait in the car as I pumped gas, while he could have easily made the distance home without my “help.” I remember it was an awesome day outside. Thus began a pretty cool time of seeing myself valued through a guys’ eyes. Unregrettable and lovely. So when months passed and God moved us apart, there were some more ways of growing. Distance and faith made life a little easier when his heart began to change and mine stayed. Our faiths were no longer consistent and the distance served as a literal breaking point. Things indeed fell into place, and eventually, I was grateful.

Praise God He knows His child and how to give me never more than I can handle because my heart thinks all too often that this should be easy. But I’m not promised a life of ease, or blinking arrows. Or no pain. Things fall into place, but my heart doesn’t always follow suit. The Bible reminds us in Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is deceitful…who can know it?” Who can know it? Christ alone. 

So God works with me still. I’m not sure how much weight to put on this but in my morning study, I opened my Bible and it landed on the introduction to Hosea. Man. How prone we are to wander. Just as Hosea’s wife had a good thing in a secure love, we miss out. We turn the other way and take too long to be thankful. While, in every monumental life process – school, relationships, family – God proves to the faithful that He is with us, we wait and want our hearts to coincide when sometimes it’s been in the wrong place to begin with. 

My heart is in the wrong place this morning. It’s following a path that God has separated me from more than any physical distance. And I’m praying that He helps me during this time to return to Him, to let my heart line up with where He is. Like the opportunity He so graciously presented to Gomer, I pray that He helps me return to Him with a better promise than an easy life: a changed heart as a blessed, joyful child of God. I would be forever thankful.

David and Bath Mats

 (David)                    (bath mat)

I was reading 1 Samuel 22 earlier this week thanks to a little Bible study that makes reading a little less daunting. 1 Samuel has been pretty interesting. To begin, you have a man who is clearly set out to be God’s prophet since his birth from an infertile woman, Samuel. God moves in the characters in a very obvious way. Later, God will answer the Israelite’s pleas by giving them a king who will blatantly go against explicit commands in war. And He will still answer. 

But one of the things I found pretty interesting as of late is the character of David before he takes the throne. Saul has already proven himself ineffective, and Samuel has anointed David as God’s next chosen king. Before David can have this right, he has to wait for Saul’s death. Saul, the guy who David would play music for to calm his headaches. Saul, the guy who has thrown spears at David in broad daylight to kill him. He’s the same guy who allowed David to fight a giant after seeing God’s heart in the boy. No wonder we see such a conflicted David in the Psalms – content in one scene, then angry and confused at God in another. He’s had poor emotional leadership to follow.    

Anyway, God allowed David to spend time waiting for his promise as king. He had to run away, even hide his family while waiting for Saul’s anger to calm down and the time when he would finally take the throne. Like Moses, Abraham, Noah, all the patriarchs of the Bible, David had some serious waiting to do. What did he do in the meantime?

He fought. The man who protected his sheep from lions and decapitated a giant was fighting to protect his people while waiting for God’s promise to come to fruition. He physically fought against tribes: the Geshurites, Gezrites, Amalekites (1 Samuel 27:8). He didn’t slow down or back away. He literally fought the good fight. He sought God’s wisdom, and David waited for his answers actively.

Application? If we want to live according to God’s plan, we’ve got to wait. And, we’ve got to be active. Actually moving around and seeing this life as a blessing from God requires me to fight against everything that says it’s not.

Turn the page. So what have I been actively doing? Watching HGTV. Yeah, home decorating, home buying, home selling, home renovating, houses, houses, and more houses. I watched how you can completely change the style of your living room with just a few dollars by sewing bath mats together to make a floor rug. Do you know what it looked like? Like bath mats sewn together to make a floor rug…

What are we actively doing with our lives? Two completely different cultures - one of kings and prophets, one of a Do-It-Yourself economy – yet we have the same promise: God is with us and shows himself in amazing ways for those who will wait on Him. Actively fight the good fight. I got rid of my remote control (not because I had the brilliant idea), but I’ve gotten off of my bed and I’m not just getting up to change stations. We are expected to be deliberate in our decisions, in our actions, in what we say and don’t say, what we do and don’t do. I’m getting up and seeing how God looks when I wait on Him and commit to fighting those concepts that sneak in and tell me that waiting isn’t worthwhile.

Waiting

Been thinking about waiting. I was reading 1 Kings 8 and remembered a talk a while ago. It was about the resurrection of Jesus and the point was made that Mary, in all her helplessness, simply waited for Him at the tomb. I can imagine the hopelessness, the worry, the exhaustion. But God asks us to wait. He went through the same thing. He goes through it everyday – with me, with everyone. Just wait for me, I can imagine He insists. I have a plan. I am better. I have called you out and separated you. Wow.