Tag

My day yesterday was filled with Excel sheets, emails, phone calls, and chowing down on baked goods (it’s not even the holidays yet and we’ve had a stash of baked goods at work, I’m in trouble).

It’s also been full of contemplation.  Sadness.

Something that Shawn and I were looking forward to and praying about if we should go, fell through.  Door completely and utterly shut, locked and barricaded.  We were set, but we’d waited too long in some arrangement making.

A trip that would have impacted us in many different ways, including the chance (that had me doing spins of excitement in my office chair till I got really dizzy) to meet a Twitter/Blog friend for the first time.

When Shawn shared the news of what was going on, or not going on for that matter my reply was, “Well maybe this was about us just obeying rather than going.”  His – and probably the more correct scenario – “Or maybe we waited too long to obey.”

Maybe we waited too long to obey.

I’d sent an email to my boss today saying I didn’t need to take the time I’d requested off cause our plans got canceled.  He replied that he was sorry to hear that.  The thoughts that echoed in my mind were me too.

So on top of manipulating rows and rows of our customer’s inventory I’ve been wondering about this.  Were we supposed to go.  Were we supposed to board a giant metal tube with giant metal wings that would carry us to a place that would make big impacts?  Did my pulling a Gideon on God and having Him answer my request (TWICE) and then not having the faith to actually believe it is what He wanted completely mess this up?

I’m trying to to wallow in the did I mess up part, but trying to rectify in my heart and mind what this all means.  If I did mess up, that means confession and growth to move forward next time.

The truth is, I’ll never know what the correct scenario was.  If it was simply about the obeying or if we waited to long to obey.

The haunting…

As I mentioned in my review of Permission To Speak Freely yesterday I loved the book.  The night I started reading it ended up being a difficult night sleep-wise.  I got only about three hours of sleep total.  As I laid there tossed from my left to my right to my stomach and complete 360’s my mind wandered to fears.  Fears I have.  Fears that don’t necessarily keep me up at night but haunt the crevices of my mind.

I wandered down stairs and got my journal.  I wrote out these fears.  I needed to put them down on yellowish paper with black/blue ink. They haunt me.  I don’t know how to escape them.  Some of them are bigger than others.  All of them are real.  They speak to my life right now.

The unrelenting…

I wrote in Monday’s post that after some circumstances that I walked in fear over, that God gave me courage.  However, if I’m going to be honest those circumstances which I haven’t left still bring out tremendous fear.  Even just Sunday night conversations with Shawn brought my fears to the brim.

The problem with fear, is we know reality.  There have been many times that I’ve had to trust God.  There was no other option.  Three weeks before Shawn and I got married I got laid off from my job.  Not usually the way a new couple plans to start their life together.  We spent the first three months of our marriage having to trust God to provide.  It wasn’t easy.  I remember crying on his shoulder because I couldn’t find a job, and should we go get food from our church’s Manna Ministry.  Despite our own fears God provide.  We paid our bills, met our rent on time, and at times had money left over.

I wonder where the disconnect happens.  When we have evidences of God’s faithfulness, yet we still choose to live in fear.  Fear that we won’t be able to pay our bills, fear that God is asking us to do the unthinkable, fear that we will never be healed.  The list goes on and on and on.

Your turn, confession.  I want this place (PrudyChick.com) to be a place that we can be open with one another.  I want you to feel free to speak freely without fear of being judged by me or other readers.  Today I want you to share your fears.  I’m not talking ones like being afraid of spiders or snakes or the dark, but the ones that haunt you and don’t relent.

Also don’t forget to enter to win a copy of Anne Jackson’s book Permission To Speak Freely here.

Fear Part: 1, 2, 4, 5

{photo credit}

If there is one thing that God has consistently been teaching me  is to not walk/operate in fear.  The desire to fear keeps showing up in so many aspects of my life.  Even when we were on vacation I feared what if something happens to the plane?  We’d be out walking and I’d fear what if someone walks up and mugs us?  What if we’re in a car accident?  This is strange because I just don’t think this way.  I don’t fret about being mugged or being in a car accident or being in a plane crash, but fear has been doing it’s best to worm its way into my mind.

God is doing some amazing things in Shawn’s and my life.  He’s guiding us in ways we didn’t know He would or think He’d take us.  In a conversation we had the other evening I said that I’m not fearful, I’ve got a kind of scared excited anxiousness going on but of all the things I could be fearful in I’m not fearful in this.

My desire in life is to be like Peter and step out of the boat onto the lake, but instead of fearing that I’ll drown once uncertainty shows up I want to trust.  I need to always remember what God has done previously.  To trust that steps we’re taking that He’s still there beside us.

About a month and a half ago fear completely grabbed my heart.  Steps that we thought God might be calling us to take literally sent me into a tailspin.  After emails back and forth with a friend and an examination of my heart there was an adjustment of my attitude.  Did that make the idea of what God could be calling us to any easier to swallow?  No, but my focus was taken off of what I could try and do, and put on what He’s done in the past and what He is faithful to do in the future.

So not only am I learning to not walk in fear, I’m learning to trust.  To lean so heavily on Him.  If I’m fearful that He’s not going to hold me us I am going to fall.  So here’s to taking steps and trusting that the next one will appear over that raging chasm.