Lately, I've let an attitude of entitlement creep in and it has taken root and grown into full-blown discontent with God and with everything else in my life. It started at my recent college graduation when I looked up into the stands and was so thrilled to see my family there cheering me on. At the same time, there was a big old lump in my throat because the one face I wanted to see the most in the crowd wasn't there. I think it's a perfectly normal reaction to miss your "person" in those big moments but I have held onto those thoughts, nurtured them and allowed them to completely cloud my whole Christmas.
Most of my conversations with God these past few weeks have started with "This really isn't fair God..." "Surely you didn't mean for this to be this hard for this long" and most often, " I really didn't deserve to lose my old life, God" "I deserve to have someone taking care of me instead of having to take care of everyone else". The more I have allowed this to go on, the uglier my heart has become.
Today I was complaining out loud, kind of half yelling at God while I was shoveling the piles of snow from my driveway. "Well here is just one more thing I shouldn't have to be doing for myself, I deserve to have Dave here to do these things for me," In the middle of this temper tantrum, my eyes fell on the brand new snow blower that has been sitting in my garage for two years now. It has been sitting there because I have been too stubborn to learn how to use it. At that moment I thought, "Well I am sure I can't even figure out how to start that dumb thing either God because as YOU know, I am terrible with mechanical things!" But the longer I shoveled the madder I got until I finally marched over there, yanked it out, pumped the button a few times and pulled the cord... and it started right up like I had just used it yesterday.
I stood there in my driveway with tears pouring out freezing to my face, laughing at my stubborn ridiculous, ungrateful heart and marveling at God's faithfulness to me time and time again. It's amazing how quickly I can become so unbelievably selfish and short-sightedly when I focus on what I think I "deserve". The truth is... I deserve nothing, but He has given me abundantly beyond what I could ever deserve. I cried the whole time I cleared my driveway thanking God for using such a simple thing to reveal the ugly condition of my thoughts and for his relentless desire to win back my ever wandering heart.
This is a an ironic question for me. We live in the overwhelming abundance of a virtual world. Texting, Skype, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. These are terms that are thrown around our house on a daily basis. They haven't meant a whole lot to me and I don't really have the patience or brain power to learn how to use them, although I do use email and have a Facebook account. Technology is really not my thing so publishing a blog isn't something I have pictured myself doing. In all honesty, it has taken me way too long to just figure out how to get my words onto this page and now I am not sure if anyone else will ever actually find it to read it. I love the face to face time I get with family and friends. I love to look into their faces while we talk, hear their laughter and their stories. I treasure every word we share. I think this is even more precious now that I am widowed. I live with a seventeen year old who while wonderful is not always the most thrilling conversationalist and let's face it, seventeen is an age where things revolve around you and only you. So my days are sometimes so quiet, the silence is suffocating so talking through a computer screen is very unappealing. But yet something has been calling to me for a while now to find a better way to preserve the details of this unfolding life.
A few months after my husband died a package arrived in the mail. In it was a little book. A sweet journal with shiny flowers and comforting words on the cover. A friend had slipped in a note with it that said 'You probably can't pray- can't breathe- can't think, but write- write to God- He will answer. It began in reluctance at first, mostly in anger and questions and anguish. But the answers have come. He has spoken over and over through seven additional journals since the first arrived in my mail box. In the midst of this journaling has come a precious gift. A refuge when the winds of pain howl and the dark clouds of grief over take me. This blog is a record of some of the most pivotal conversations between God and I from those journals. And hopefully more conversations to come. But these are not just thoughts and ideas and prayers. Those are in there. But it is first hand view of the unfolding of God's grace in my life. Of a new relationship with him. After walking with Jesus for 20 years it was obvious to me that I really didn't know him the way I thought I did. This is the story of a broken, bleeding, aching woman learning to really humble herself for the first time in her life to really know her God and to be known by him in the deepest places and to experience love like never before.
