In Which I Wrestle & Wait

A week ago life started singing outside my window so I slept with it open all night. I don't think I've slept quite like that in months. The sun kissed my face red after a day outside in the country with my adopted fam finishing my little [turned big] chicken house project from last year. It's almost done now and it was a project far to large for my own undertaking, joke's on me evidently!

Today rain and gloom linger and I feel a chill in the air. It's my dad's birthday and I don't quite know what to do with that. Oddly, all I can think about is wanting to hug him tight and for him to tell me it's all gunna be okay. I took a three hour nap and have no motivation to leave this bed. Nonetheless, the grass is gaining color and I am thankful for a resurrection glimpse.

Isn't it good news that the story doesn't end with the crucifixion?

We sang in church today and I wept like a baby. I tried to fight it, but by the time the offering song launched I was a goner. I think it was deep rooted in this weariness I've felt and the way I've depended on the idol too much in this trial. And then there is the trial itself. My applied for job count has topped out in the late twenties this week and my interviews thus far cap out at a whopping zero. It hasn't been the darkness of before, but it's lingered and weeks later I still haven't run the other way.

Why is that sometimes our wounds feel better oozing then they do all stitched up?

These days I look in the mirror and find disappointment in the faded blonde staring back at me. I haven't felt it in months and months but it feeds something of old. I find myself reaching into the back of the closet for the hoodies that cover up a few times too many and I wake up to the hum of relentless failure flowing ear to ear. There is something to be said for getting dressed up for work each day and with that gone--maybe I just need to pretend I have somewhere important to be?

I find myself making excuses to be places and moving my life to the week after next because I am just a little fragile right now and, well I don't even know why. Maybe something will click by then, though. I hope so. Surely I am not bound to a life of sweatpants just yet.

I hear the enemy loud. I open my Bible and the words just look a little blurry. I think it's a season we all know and the timing of it makes sense--tomorrow sums up my forty days of prayer and this last week I've felt the resistance.

But, God is speaking and I am dependent on hearing His voice.

Community around here really has sustained me. From random (rather large) checks taped to my windshield to people meeting me for the fist time only to discover I'm that one their whole family has been praying for these past weeks (which has happened more times then I can count on these fingers). All of my "adopted parents" both local and back home have been a constant flood of grace and wisdom in my life. My bible study friends have loved me well. Sweet ladies from church far more aged and faithful then I have come in close and looked me in the eyes while His words sunk deep. This is the testimony of His bride who have relentlessly pointed me back to He who is able.

And I think I forget it, when I don't see Him doing the abundantly more. I forget He is able. I forget faith is not seeing. I forget His ways are better too. Because let's face it, I have it all figured out stored away, just in case anyhow. 

"...the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead." [Phil. 3:10-11]

I think He is letting some parts of me crumble off. Hammering away.

The fire is thick and blazing these days, and this whole dying thing is a dreadful process. But as I watch this tulip fan open into yellow budded bliss, I remember abundant life such as this requires a cost so great as death itself.

In this case, undeserved death on a cross which burst forth an impossible stone that He who is able might attain resurrection. And here He dwells in the fire with you and me, His spirit sustaining.

I'm not sure what this season is to result in, what He is trying to carve outa me.

So all I can say is such--by any means possible, Lord, by any means possible.