Did you wake up this morning and put a problem on God’s
plate? Did you say your prayer this morning and remember to ask God for help
either for yourself or for someone else? How long did it take before you took
that problem back on your own plate and stressed about it?
Did you make it through the shower? Maybe you
got to your second cup of coffee. Maybe you made it all the way to the end of
the day before you were reminded of your problem and took it back. It’s hard
isn’t it, it give it to God and have the patience and faith for Him to follow
through.
God knows me, better than I know myself. He knows that I am
a very visual person. I live for charts and graphs and organizing the data so I
can figure it out. Shoot, I was an accounting major in school! I have to see it
worked out on the paper for it to make sense. So when it came to the first
steps in my spiritual journey, he put the book of Matthew in my hand. Matthew
shares with us, the teachings of Jesus’ parables. For a visual person like me,
this is what reached out to me. And then in chapter 11 (28-30) Jesus says his
yoke is easy and his burden is light, that he will give us rest. This concept
has stuck with me all these years. And it is something that I strive for all
the time.
I hear all the time “just give it to God”, I’ve even often
said to my own friends in crisis. It sure is a nice thing to think, but we all
know that it is actually a very difficult thing to do. You can pray and pray
about something, put it down at God’s feet and ask him take care of it. And
then you wake up in the middle of the night and take it back and mull it around
some more. Then you pray and give it
back to God, then as soon as the situation shows up again, you pick it back up
and put in your pocket and carry it around some more.
Because I am a very visual person, I have a hard time giving
my “problem”, a non-tangible feeling/thing. To a non-tangible being and feeling
like the job was done. So, because of my own need for organized, tangible,
visual problem solving. I created my own visual. A Rubix Cube puzzle. A rubix cube has 6 sides,
that are perfectly color coded. Each color represents an element of my daily
life: Yellow: my business goals. Red: my career. Green: money. Blue: my family/friends
relationships. Orange: my special needs child. White: my spiritual journey, of course
there are so many more elements that I would need for more puzzles to represent
all of my life, but these are the major ones right now.
So these elements of
my life are beautifully color coded, just like I need so that I feel order in
my daily schedule, however….they are not beautifully lined up. They are mixed
up and jumbled together. I don’t about you, but I can’t solve a rubix cube. No matter
how many times I turn these pieces. Sometimes I can get a few things lined up,
but when I go work on the other side, it mixes up the first side again. This thing just turns on so many different axis,
a.k.a. decision making and action. I
sure can’t solve it, but you know who can.
It is easy to get buried under that worry and stress. To
keep pushing your rubix cube further down into your pocket until one day you
pull out your to-do list and everything you have shoved into that pocket comes
out, falling to your feet. I was an
accounting major. I’m sure many of my
friends like to believe that I have a very well thought out and planned budget
and the amazing money management skills. But as the saying goes “ the shoe
makers family walks barefoot” … I am definitely a ‘spender’ not a ‘saver’ and
have a mini panic attack every time I log into my online banking account. I try really hard to give it to God, to have
that unfailing faith that He will take care of it, but it’s difficult. I whip
out that rubix cube, I probably have a whole puzzle dedicated to my money
stresses, and twist and turn it before the page even loads and I see what my
balance is. This year, 2014, I made a silent new years resolution to myself,
that every time I log into my online banking account, I close my eyes and pray
that He will give me a calm and collected eye to understand my finances and
have a clear head in my money spending decision making. It’s mid January now,
and I’m still trying to work on that puzzle, even with my eyes closed, but I’m
working on it.
“Just give it to God”. That sure is a beautiful notion isn’t
it? It has taken me a long time, and a
lot of giving, to keep learning how to do this.
But one thing I have learned, is that God always gives me a second a
chance to listen.
God calls on us all in many ways. We all here His voice
differently. I know God is talking to me when something is continuously on my
mind, it doesn’t go away until I do something about it. Writing these words for
example, I have had these words swirling around in my mind for months now. When
I’m driving, when I’m walking, when I’m getting ready every morning, when I lay
down to sleep at night. So I sat down and started to type it out, I don’t know
what will happen with this but I know that God will make it find its way into
the right hands.
The good Lord started calling me long before I ever even
knew who He was. When I was in high school there was always a small part of me
that felt compelled to talk the special needs students in my class. Being a
very shy and nervous person, I didn’t. But I looked up to the students that did
volunteer with them. Even tho I always
felt convicted to sit with them at lunch, or help them in class, I didn’t.
Perhaps if I had known that the feeling I had was God, I would have listened
and acted on it. But, as I’ve learned from Jonah, God gives us a second chance
to act on the things we run away from. Now, 13 years later, here I am with a special
needs child of my own. I’ve also gained loads of confidence that I have now,
and never dreamed of having back then.
When I was about 16 I can remember the thought of God, and
Angels, and Heaven was on my mind a lot. I had several friends who went to
church, and I was curious. I also
remember saying this: “okay God. If you are real, prove it to me. If you prove
to me that you are real, I will find a way to go to church and get a Bible”. No
surprise, I didn’t receive a sign or a miracle or something spectacular to make
me believe. But like I said, God talks
to me to putting something in my mind, at that point my life, I had no idea
that’s what was going on . A year later, I was given a second chance to find
Him. The thought of Guardian Angels was on my mind a lot, I thought about it
all the time. And one day, I changed my question. I said “okay God. If you are
really there, show me how to find you.”
That goes into a whole different story when I met my very dear friend
Kristin, meeting Diana Schuit, Nathan and coming to church.
Right after I graduated from LCSC, I got a job at a real
estate firm. I was there for 2 years and was laid off. I lost that job just
months after I was pregnant with my second child. I did not take this issue to God at all. I
prayed about it, and said all things in a prayer that you might say to give a
burden to Him, but I never really let it go. I shoved down in my pocket. I
shoved it down there with all of my financial stresses, with my stresses of
therapies and diagnosis of my daughter. I shoved it down there with my parents’
divorce. I shoved it all down into my pocket.
About 4 weeks before my son was born, I was in the grocery store. I had
hardly any money, and I was trying to decide what I really needed to get and
what could wait until my husband’s next paycheck. I reached into my pocket to
take out that financial puzzle to try to calculate it, and it all fell apart.
All of those burdens that I had shoved into my pocket fell out onto the grocery
store floor, as if my rubix cube broke into all of those 54 colored pieces,
scattered up and down the isle.
I can remember standing there. Looking at my little girl
sitting in the cart, not having the greatest day, the little bit of food in the
cart compared to the list I had made, and I was standing there in a fog. I felt
like I was standing in the middle of someone elses life, in a 3 dimensional
movie and I didn’t have an answer. I picked up my child, and walked out of the
store. I put her in the car, I drove home and I sat in the driveway and had a
melt down. A week after that we lost the apartment, and had to move in with my
inlaws. Even after all of that, I still shoved it all back into my pocket. 2 months after my son was born, I found a new
job. I was making good money, and we got a new apartment when he was 9 months
old. But I never really dealt with it, I just shoved it down, put a smile on my
face and kept going on with daily life. It took me a good year before the numbness of
that day finally wore off.
I worked at this new job for two years and guess what. I was
laid off. Looking back on it now, I
realize that I was given a second chance to make good of the bad situation. At the time, my first instinct was panic. I
could not believe that this was happening to me again. But for some
reason, I didn’t take the burden puzzle and shove it into my pocket. It was a long two years of being unemployed,
but because I prayed every day and really truly gave the burden to God, I had
the amazing opportunity to spend my son’s toddler years at home with him, and
to start my own business. I had a
consistent bible study every week with a very close friend and really started
to grow and learn where I stood on my path with God.
Even through this rough patch, I was happy. I was doing
okay, and it was because I treated this situation very differently the second
time than I had the first time. I spent a lot of time with my kids, focusing on
them, looking for fun and creative activity/therapies that would benefit both
of them. I learned how to meal plan and budget food while keeping it healthy
and fun for the kids. I dove into research to fulfill a goal I had since I was
in school; opening my own business. In all of this I took with the faith that
God was opening the doors, I just needed to open my eyes and look for the
opportunity.
The jobs that I’ve had since then both came to me. They have
both been perfect timing, with the perfect opportunities, providing just
exactly what I’ve needed. These changes in my life have allowed me to keep my
priorities in check. And even tho I haven’t solved my Rubix cube, I never will,
I do pick it up less often and leave it on Gods plate more often. I’m that
person who has my daily life goals written on sticky notes, posted on the
inside of my medicine cabinet. Every morning, my groggy self, opens up the
cabinet and looks at those notes I wrote to myself. And I take a minute to “give
it to God”. And even tho I don’t always make it through my morning routine
before I pick it up again, I try every day. Because I know that even if I screw
it up once (or twice), God is going to give me a second (or third) chance to
figure it out.
