An Unexpected Week

If you had walked through the hallway in my house this weekend, you probably would have seen the door to my bedroom closed and heard the subtle songs from IHOP’s Prayer Room streaming through my speakers.  Last week was quite unexpected.  The things that occurred, that is.  Unfortunately, some for the bigger things that happened aren’t quite official yet, so I must restrict myself to vagueness.  (For those of you whose minds immediately go there: no, not a boyfriend.)  I did learn a bit about what I’m made of and what I believe amidst those “unexpecteds”.  Let’s journey back through my week.

Just for a bit of context: I’ve been doing a bit of freelance graphic design and quite overbooked myself on accident.  That combined with school work and my internship culminated in an intensely busy week for starters.  Keep that in mind as you read.

I went for a walk with a friend on Tuesday morning. (Our weather has been gorgeous.  Just rubbing it in a bit.)  We began to talk about identity and knowing who we are.  That is something I have been ruminating about quite a bit lately because I have found myself in an new territory in that area.  I have a good grasp of who I am and my giftings and talents, etc.  However, I’m discovering lately that there are many things within me that I’m not aware of. Those discoveries have come in the context of conversations with other people.   And they are a bit uncomfortable.  Even when they are pulling out good, quality things in me, it has the effect of sandpaper.  This is just another part of community.  I’ve come to this place where I know who I am, but to become the person I’m supposed to become I need people to help pull me in that direction.  I’m not talking about sin or anything (though accountability is important), but about potential.  One of those conversations happened on my walk.  My friend (metaphorically) stuck her fist in my chest, pulled out some gold and said, “Hey, what are you going to do with this?” She saw an attribute in me that I was created to walk in.  God showed her how I was made to be and how it was deferred.  She saw what I didn’t and told me.  Now I am working with God on that area.  This is why I love the prophetic.  All it is is seeing what God has to say about someone, who they were created to be, and telling them.  The prophetic tells us that those little hopes and gleams we’ve seen in ourselves of who we want to be, God declares, “Yes!  Yes!  I did create you to be that way!”  Identity.  Good stuff.

On Tuesday, something really good happened that I can’t tell you about yet.  Sorry.  That got me pretty excited.  Thursday was the opposite.  I was running around church trying to get a DVD burned and ready to show in the afternoon.  Then there was an emergency meeting and some things started to fall apart.  Yup, can’t really talk about that either, but the direction things are heading are pretty disappointing for me.  It would have been easy to get upset, to point fingers, to cast blame, but I didn’t.  I just sat and thought, my mind telling me I should be mad.  But the closer I get to God, the less things shake me.  All week, through the good and the bad, I kept thinking, “It really doesn’t matter how any of this shakes out.  I know that I’m where I’m supposed to be, I have God, and that’s all I really need.”  He’s taken me on this journey in the last week, months and years of being grounded in Him and knowing that nothing can shake me.  I can have peace in the storms because I’m with the one who calms the storms.  There’s an old fable about King Solomon and a jeweler.  King Solomon had a ring and he wanted an inscription put on it, but he didn’t know what he wanted.  He did know that he wanted to wear the ring all the time. He handed the ring over to the jeweler and let him decide.  The jeweler came back.  When the king looked at the ring it said, “This too shall pass.”  The jeweler explained that in the difficult times he could find courage in knowing that it will pass.  Also, when things were going well he could find humility in knowing that it will pass.  I don’t want the good things to pass particularly, but in the long term all of this is temporary, whether good or bad, and we are left with the One Thing.

The highlight of my week came on Thursday though.  I was at church and had just dropped off the DVD I had been working on.  I knew that Georgian and Winnie Banov were in first year.  Holy Spirit whispered, “Just pop in for a minute.”  So I did.  I ran into a few friends and then sat on the bleachers.  All of a sudden I heard my friend Chelsea laughing across the sanctuary.  Holy Spirit whispered again, “Go find Chelsea.”  So I did.  She was laying on the floor amidst a mess of people.  We said, “Hi”, and I joined her on the floor.  Well, I didn’t get up for over an hour.  Lots of laughing and encouragement and fun.  Just what I needed.  I love the way God encounters us.  Sometimes it is fun like that, other times it is intense and I can’t wrap my mind around it.  But either way, I love interacting with Him.

The rest of my weekend was thrown off by a last minute babysitting job on Friday night, so no bar ministry for me.  On Saturday, I spent most of the day in my room with God, which I hadn’t planned at all.  Sunday was ended with an amazing night at church.  Banning Liebscher talked about what I had been learning on Saturday.  He talked about how the foundation of everything we do is our time in the secret place with God.  It’s the things that no one ever sees or knows about.  All of a sudden, it didn’t matter that my week was crazy, that I hadn’t gone to bar ministry or church at juvenile hall, but God was pleased that I had chosen to take my day off and spend it with Him.  He’s the only one who is worth it anyway.

 

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