Just thinkin’

Lately I’ve been struggling with some lessons I’m supposed to be learning.   One would think that after the last few years of my life, I would be grateful and full of faith when God is growing me.   Yet, I still find myself fighting, doubting and worrying.

Throughout a good portion of our marriage, Jason and I have struggled with finances.  The reasons for our struggles are not always the same, but the feelings and ways that I respond are.   I am a worrier and money is one of my biggest stressors. 

Last fall, our family business fell into a place that we discovered we didn’t want to stay.  The people we had joined up with were acting unethically and we just couldn’t be a part of such activities.  We decided that even if it hurt our company we had to get out.  Due to this decision, we spent all winter trying to play catch up, financially.  Then, to make matters worse, a local business took advantage of our small start – up company and didn’t pay for work that had been completed.  More mud slinging, and my husband and brother trying their best to act with dignity, essentially continued to hurt our business and family budgets. 

We all prayed, wondering if the company was really God’s will.  And each time we were about to call the game, God would show us that He wanted us to continue on.  My sister and I were extremely creative with our tight budgets and just kept on supporting our husbands.  Bills kept piling up, the phone calls were endless, and the cupboards were starting to echo with each item being removed.  We learned how to negotiate with companies wanting to pass our bills onto collection companies, have fun/entertain children for free, share/swap our food to creatively construct family meals,  and stretch a pound of meat into several meals.  All the while, we were waiting for God to swoop in and save the day. 

Soon we found ourselves resorting to resources we would never have imagined we would need to turn to.  Talk about humbling!  While sitting at an office, waiting for my turn to be interviewed, I kept thinking, ” I don’t belong here.  Where are you God?  Why?”  and His wonderful response was “Why not?” 

I began to play this over in my mind, only to find the answers more uncomfortable than the question.  Have you ever been there?  The place where knowing is far worse than not knowing? 

God will always provide for and love His children.  He has never said how that provision and love will come or what it will look like.  I learned so many lessons at that moment, and not all of them were centered around what I thought my biggest issue was.  It turns out, God was planning to grow me in many of my “issues/weaknesses” that day.

I am no better than the others that struggle.  God doesn’t love them any less than He loves me.   And all of the sudden I began to love those I had spent much of my life trying not to become.   Not just ‘”love my neighbor” because that’s what God tells us to do’ kind of love.  I was truly falling in love with those around me.  And then, like some cheesy moment out of a Lifetime movie, I began to think of different things in my life leading to this moment.  I remembered a professor in college making the statement that we are all just one paycheck away from poverty.  We are all just one life-changing tragedy away from homelessness.   No one (but God) knows what hardship had brought these people to this place.  Maybe they, too, had made a business deal that they were now paying for.  Maybe they had been left behind with a child or two when the marriage got too tough.  Or maybe they were just stuck in a rut with no idea how to get out and no education to lean on.  Who knows?  I also remembered another time in my life when God had taken me through something very uncomfortable so that He could use me and teach me to love a group of women.  And I realized that this season of discomfort was not “all about me.”

Yet, at the same time, it was about me.  Sure, I do believe that God humbled me in order to use me and teach me to love a whole new group of people.  But I also believe God was trying to heal me of a long and painful idolatry issue I had.  I had always idolized money.  Now I’m not saying that I always wanted more, more, more; although it would have been nice.  More importantly I had made money a god.  You might think it is only possible to make money a god when you have a lot of it.  We all know people who care only about money and have no sight of God.  I guess I figured that since I didn’t have that problem, I was fine.  But that wasn’t the case at all.  You can make an idol of money even when you don’t have any.  I thought about it non-stop.  I thought about how to try and control it, how to get more, how to use it, how I  didn’t steward it well, and what I was going to do with it once I got more.   When you think about something as much as I thought about money, it becomes a (little ‘g’) god. 

Yes, I find joy in this season.  God is growing me.  And while it isn’t comfortable, it is so good.

Alright folks, reading comments would be fun.  You’ve told me you’re reading this blog, but no one has left a single comment or thought.  That is starting to make me feel like I’m writing into a black hole – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.