God, "Where are you?" Me, "I was afraid Lord, so I hid..."
Along with learning to live a life of thanksgiving, I am also learning how to not live a life filled with fear. I've started (actually, I've been sitting on page four for a few months LOL!) working on a second book called What Women Fear by Angie Smith. I think she and I are the same age or at least, very close. That is encouraging to me for some reason. Maybe that being young, I can still be filled with wisdom, can still be of great use to God; I don't have to be some magic age, ie. OLD.
I've finally gotten around to finishing the Introduction. In that first line, God gently nudged my heart. I've been angry. I've been afraid. When I am either or both, I "hide" from Him. I shut down and stop talking to Him. I don't pick up my Bible and eventually, I find myself in a downward spiral into depression. I've been depressed and suicidal. I've also seen God in a new way too. My once dead son is alive and well jabbering away in his crib right now. That sort of changes how one views the world, at least, it does for me. But, I still struggle. Meeting God in this new way, the powerful God really hears me, loves me and WILL NEVER LEAVE ME way has impacted me and changed me but certainly does not take the struggle away. Lately, the daily grind of life has been sanding away at me. My husband's job stinks, the pay stinks even worse, me and my husband and all four kids have been sick one right after the other and again and again and again and not just the sniffle sort of sick but natural child birth is easier than this sort of sick. In my effort to become more thankful, I've turned into a spoiled brat whining and complaining left and right about this and that. Part of that has been rooted in fear though; fear of failure, of loosing long carried dreams, of handing those dreams back to God, fear of did I even hear God. Fear leads to anger and who wants to talk to someone they are angry at? I sure don't! But, do I really have reason to be angry at God? I think we can be angry at God. My best friend has even told me that God is big enough to handle us being mad at him. He doesn't get mad at us. He just wants us to tell him, give it to him and then walk away from it trusting in his sovereignty. I'm struggling in that though, the walking away and trusting him part. I have total faith in him. My faith is unshaken. But trusting him? Hmm...that's a whole other thing. I have faith that God can but I don't trust that God will. My husband does though and for that, our youngest child is alive. While God promised my husband full healing for our son, I've been gripped with breath taking fear that maybe God really didn't say that. But, I have to hold on to it or I will never see the beauty of where my son is and that right now, he is doing as he ought to be. I fear our financial situation. A family of six on a single income of less that $37,000 makes life very tight. I want my business, the business that I believe God called me into and thus really is his, I want it to succeed but I fear that it, along with every other attempt I have made to help carry the financial burden for my husband, that it will fail. This failure is very personal though as this is not just another sells position but is art and art comes from within and is a bit of the artist and when that is rejected, for me, it is as though I am being rejected. I fear my kids will get sick with something really bad. That the cancer stories that keep crossing my path are to prepare me for one of my children or myself getting cancer. That because we don't vaccinate, because we believe God has told us not to, that one of our children will suffer greatly and the already critical voices surrounding us will blame us and say, "I told you so" and that we will loose our children. I fear the loss of our children at the hands of DHR at least every week (I can't say every day, though it is always in the back of my mind) with every action taken with my children that could even receive a cross look from an on-looker. I fear thunderstorms with a throat choking fear every time the sky turns dark since those April 2011 tornadoes, the big one having gone right over our house while I stood looking up into it. More bad weather today and I'm to be left alone with all four by myself. Juggling four little ones with impending disaster barreling down on you....it just makes me want to cry. So, it is safe to assume that yes, I am living a life in fear. :' (
I look forward to the next chapters and seeing what God speaks to me and if I can go from hiding from him to basking in his presence with him dancing over me.
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