Find Me Here, Speak to Me

I did not plan on blogging tonight and the last thing I need right now is less sleep. Isn't that how it always starts? Well, the best ones do at least.

I'm in debate mode. I was dead set on either not going back to school at all or only going back for one course. I openly declared it in April, sure of my path. Over time I have continued to feed it and feed it, nurturing it, until it has grown into its own entity. Fighting "The Man" out of hurt and fear and anger turned into a life-force of its own. Something that has become abundantly clear to me lately, however, is that any life-force besides Christ-in-me is dangerous and needs to be crushed. It's not that forgoing a year of school is sin, but worshiping its ideology and proclaiming it as a virtue is. Thus, I have been forced to reevaluate.

After a summer of healing, and finding peace in God, and learning to depend on Him above all else, and being with a man who has cared for me without pushing God out of the way; after all this, I am beginning to learn to breathe again. And with each breath, I can see clearer and clearer that my path cannot be staked out with directions from my old handbook "Bitterness and Remorse." God has better for me than that. So here I sit, honestly not sure what to do. There is this huge, overwhelmingly beautiful part of me that wants to go back and live a year of redemption; not to "show" anyone or to receive praise from man, but because my God is the God who redeems the irredeemable. He can take my broken past and use it for His glory, to create a new, glorious future. I want to finish, and finish well. I believe those are good desires, Godly desires.

Then there is this part of me that would rather die than go back. It's humiliating and will bring to the surface a lot that I thought I left behind but will probably still need to be dealt with. I don't want to get hurt again. I don't want to be overwhelmed again. I don't want to fail again, and have 100 people staring at me with the look. The "I knew if we watched her long enough it would happen again" look. I'm not afraid of being who I was, but I am afraid of the sinner I still am. The question is not whether or not I will sin, but if my sins will be deemed "acceptable" or not by those watching. It has become a sad but obvious truth that we accept some sins as natural and something that everyone does, while others are crimes; I promise you God doesn't like either. And I am afraid of my wounded pride that would surely be the by-product of going back on my previous prideful declarations of leaving school behind.

Mulling over that last point, I foolishly realized that I just preached on this as part of my sermon on Sunday. Ha. Isn't that always the way? Repenting of hasty, angry, embittered words is a blow to the ego, and is absolutely necessary sometimes. If my biggest worry is embarrassingly having to tell everyone I was wrong, then I think I may be just fine.

Tonight I was reading in 1 Kings and I came across one of my favourite random stories. In short, it is the tale of an unknown prophet who, after doing God's will to a T, listens to another man's lie that God told him to tell this prophet to disobey a direct order from God. Foolishly listening, the unnamed prophet disobeys God and is then mauled by a lion on his way home. Moral of the story? When God tells you something and you know it's God, do it. Don't listen to someone else, don't listen to fear, don't listen to hunger (like this man did); obey God. Whatever God asks me to do in this situation, I need to obey. If it is to go back to school and swallow my pride, I need to do that. If it is to go work or go to YWAM or sit in my room and pray for eight months, I need to do that. And when, because it is a definite, when people tell me I'm doing the wrong thing, I need to shrug my shoulders, thank them, and continue on the path God has sent me.

Lord, find me here. Speak to me. I need to hear You.