Well I never finished part 3, but part 4 has to take place! I am in year two of our very own immigration firm in Beaumont! The first year I made a whopping $7,000 working a few hours a week and doing Vanguard (homeschooling 3 days a week). This year the kids went to full time school and I am working 30 hours a week and in November my income is at $70k. Can't believe how God has blessed it. He is so good!
Tuesday, November 21, 2017
Part 4
Well I never finished part 3, but part 4 has to take place! I am in year two of our very own immigration firm in Beaumont! The first year I made a whopping $7,000 working a few hours a week and doing Vanguard (homeschooling 3 days a week). This year the kids went to full time school and I am working 30 hours a week and in November my income is at $70k. Can't believe how God has blessed it. He is so good!
So I think it's time for part 3 of this Contentment series..lol.
We're in a waiting season still...sometimes it seems that it will never end. In fact, it's been a real struggle lately as our dream of being business owners seems further than EVER before...Currently, we have had to move from a home and state (MS) that we live for a temporary and rather unwanted assignment for my husband's job. It's been trying to return to apartment living - a 3rd floor apartment at that...while pregnant! Yes, we are expecting #3 with great joy.
I picked today to write because I felt like the Lord led me directly to this blog which I haven't looked at in 2 years and I opened the first post on Contentment and thought, "wow, we are still struggling waiting for fulfillment of these dreams and we are in a struggle to keep trusting and believing right now like never before...and then I noticed that the date on the first post was exactly 4 years ago today on September 10th. I feel that's more than a coincidence and maybe the Lord really wanted me to go back and read and reflect on where He's brought us from and remind me of the truths of the last two blog posts on this subject.
We're in a waiting season still...sometimes it seems that it will never end. In fact, it's been a real struggle lately as our dream of being business owners seems further than EVER before...Currently, we have had to move from a home and state (MS) that we live for a temporary and rather unwanted assignment for my husband's job. It's been trying to return to apartment living - a 3rd floor apartment at that...while pregnant! Yes, we are expecting #3 with great joy.
I picked today to write because I felt like the Lord led me directly to this blog which I haven't looked at in 2 years and I opened the first post on Contentment and thought, "wow, we are still struggling waiting for fulfillment of these dreams and we are in a struggle to keep trusting and believing right now like never before...and then I noticed that the date on the first post was exactly 4 years ago today on September 10th. I feel that's more than a coincidence and maybe the Lord really wanted me to go back and read and reflect on where He's brought us from and remind me of the truths of the last two blog posts on this subject.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Contentment Pt. 2
My first blog entry on contentment was a while back and my thoughts have evolved a little bit since that. I decided to do a part two just to add some thoughts on what I’ve been processing lately in my devotional times.
So in my last entry I said, “Once we discover that He is what our hearts truly desire and long after, we will be content.” While I still think that’s true, I now think this inward struggle to maintain contentment is going to be a lifelong commitment. I don’t think we arrive at contentment and we have it set. I think there will be temptations until we are in heaven with Jesus by our side!
Recently a speaker, Micca Campbell, came to our church to speak on this subject. I began processing some things she's shared and it gave me a little more courage to write some things down on how being discontent manifests itself as jealousy and envy in us women a lot of times which in turn allows us to wound other women.
Envy is defined as wanting something that you don’t have. Jealousy is the fear that something we have will be taken away.
When we lose our thankfulness for who we are and our place in life or what we’ve been given, we open the door for Satan to tempt us again as he has from the beginning, since the garden of Eden, when he showed Eve what was off limits to her. Eve allowed this discontent to creep into her thoughts and her heart which turned into actions which in turn have affected mankind forever.
Like all of us, I’ve been the object of others discontentment in life at times which has manifested itself as jealousy towards me on occasion in my life. And it’s not pretty. In fact, the Bible says in Prov. 27:4, "Anger is cruel and fury overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy?"
I cringe saying that a bit because I have a fear that the reader might think that I think a little too highly of myself. But I know I’m not that smart, that talented, or that pretty. And I don’t have as many nice things as many of my close friends. Although I am happy with myself in these areas most of the time.
But, I have at certain times struggled to be content with what I’ve been given in each of these departments of my life.
Probably my biggest lifelong insecurity has been my looks. I was raised in a country where blue eyes and blonde hair were considered much more beautiful than my brown hair and brown eyes. And I have a very beautiful younger blonde haired and blue eyed sister. Everywhere we went in Mexico, she stood out. So you betcha, I had to struggle through this insecurity and come to the conclusion that I am okay with what God has given me.
And not only am I okay with it, I know I am blessed.
I can be blessed in the realization that I am enough to Him. I can be blessed knowing that God created me with a special and unique purpose different from my blood sister and to any of my other sisters in Christ.
It is so freeing to not be in competition with my sister or my friends! You know why? Because competitions have winners and losers. And at some point, each of us is going to come out the loser in some department if we play the comparison game. And as speaker Micca Campbell put it, “Competitive women turn other women into losers to make themselves winners. And that’s a form of idolatry.”
I don’t want to turn other women into losers – and I for sure don’t want to stand before God one day as an idolater!!
One of my most impacting memories from childhood involved my best friend from elementary school turning on me. We had been best friends for 3 years – we did almost everything together. Then one year in sixth grade – we decided to both run for class secretary and we both liked the same boy running for class President and you know where this is headed…..I won both. (Well, sort of. Although I obviously didn’t date at that age– rumor was, whether it was true or not, was that he liked me.)
Then my best friend found out she was moving away, and at that point, things were more than she could bear and she turned on me completely. She decided I was her #1 enemy and her #1 objective in life seemed to be to make sure everybody hated me before she moved away. I can remember her screaming at me hateful things on the playground and me getting so upset that I threw up in class. Talk about humiliating. Just so happened she sat in front of me, so I threw up on her!
This experience both completely dumbfounded me at the time, and to be truthful, effected me deeply for years. It has only been in the past ten years that I have been able to process this experience, identify how it wounded me, and gain healing from it.
You may think this sounds a bit silly to be so impacted by a seemingly harmless childhood encounter like this, but Satan used this to wound my spirit for almost two decades. There are many times I would reflect back on this friendship gone bad and allow Satan to speak his lies into me unknowingly that I must not be worthy of anyone’s friendship and that it wasn’t worth taking the risk to trust other women.
In my twenties, as the Lord was taking me through a healing time, I was reminded of this experience and asked the Lord to completely heal me from this and to reconcile this relationship if He desired. You see, I hadn’t seen this childhood friend in over 16 years. I had known her when we lived in southern Mexico where my parents were missionaries at the time and so were hers. After she moved away, I received one letter of apology from her, but we never reconnected again after that. I had no idea of whether she had married and what her new name might be, but I tried unsuccessfully on and off to find her online.
It was within the year after I prayed that prayer for reconciliation, that I received a call from my mom down in south Texas who said, “You’ll never guess who I heard from today!” Apparently, my childhood friend was living in the same town as my parents in South Texas and had been driving down the road one day and saw my mom’s real estate advertisement and recognized the name. She decided to contact my mom and see how I was doing.
I was in complete awe as I recalled my prayer to the Lord earlier that year and realized that he had orchestrated this for me. We talked and met up at a restaurant a couple of months later when I was visiting my parents. Although I did not need the meeting with her for me to receive healing from this past hurt, it was a beautiful reminder that God cares about the details of my life and that He answers my prayers.
I’ve also taken away from that experience that our own discontentment can lead to us wounding others deeply. I’ve also learned that Satan will use anything he can to wound us and thus hinder God’s work in us.
So you may ask – how do I find contentment? I truly believe it starts with a thankful heart. When you decide to focus on being thankful for who you are and what you have, you have taken a huge first step. A heart that is discontent believes that God is keeping something from them that they deserve, just like Eve did. A heart that is thankful recognizes and trusts in God’s sovereignty over their lives and is able to humbly submit to God whatever circumstance they are in. (I Thessalonians 5:16-18: Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.)
Think what might have happened if Eve had said, “Lord, I am tempted to focus on this one tree I can’t have right now, but instead I THANK YOU for all of these other beautiful trees with fruits and vegetables that I can freely eat from.”
The chapter of James 4 talks about this very issue and also says, “Humble Yourself and He will lift you up.” It is impossible to humble yourself before the Lord, if you are not thankful. Thankfulness is the first step in a humble and meek attitude. You cannot submit to God’s authority if you are not thankful to Him.
And let me just take this one step further and apply this to your relationship with your husband and say, it’s gonna be real hard to submit yourself to him as you should if you are not thankful for him….I struggle at times with this command to respect and submit to my husband as I believe God requires of me…but one of the biggest things that has helped me is to stop and remind myself of how very thankful I am for him and what a gift from God he is to my life…and suddenly his little imperfections that make me want to lash out at him or disrespect his authority over my life seem much smaller and much less important than they did a few minutes before.
I truly don’t think the lesson of contentment is a one time decision, but a lifelong commitment that we must come back to again and again. The flesh will constantly pull at us and entice us to give in to it, but we have been given the tools to fight against it. In fact, as we begin to age as women in a society that places such an emphasis on youth and beauty, we will have to keep this lesson in mind so that we can age gracefully with a beauty that shines from within that comes from a heart full of thanksgiving to God for who He has created us to be at that moment in time – wrinkles and saggy boobs and all..haha. (Can't believe I just said boobs in my blog. ha)
And when we learn this lesson of contentment, we will be free to minister to those around us in a much deeper way. As Micca Campbell (can you tell I enjoyed her talk?:))put it, “You can’t minister to women you are competing with.” You can rejoice in the beauty, or accomplishments or whatever of those around you and know that you have been blessed in a different way than them in order for your unique purpose to be accomplished.
You give others permission to be themselves when you are content with yourself. One effect of jealousy is that is could cause the person who is the object of our jealousy to shrink back and be less than God intended them to be. I know I have found myself doing that at times when I have been the object of someone’s jealousy – whether it be because of my job or my education or whatever. If you are the object of somebody’s jealousy, you have to realize that it is not your problem. Pray for them, but do not let their insecurities cause you to shrink back and be less than God has called you to be.
And those are my humble and imperfect thoughts on what I’m learning about contentment. I'm sure there's a lesson #3 for me down the road!
So in my last entry I said, “Once we discover that He is what our hearts truly desire and long after, we will be content.” While I still think that’s true, I now think this inward struggle to maintain contentment is going to be a lifelong commitment. I don’t think we arrive at contentment and we have it set. I think there will be temptations until we are in heaven with Jesus by our side!
Recently a speaker, Micca Campbell, came to our church to speak on this subject. I began processing some things she's shared and it gave me a little more courage to write some things down on how being discontent manifests itself as jealousy and envy in us women a lot of times which in turn allows us to wound other women.
Envy is defined as wanting something that you don’t have. Jealousy is the fear that something we have will be taken away.
When we lose our thankfulness for who we are and our place in life or what we’ve been given, we open the door for Satan to tempt us again as he has from the beginning, since the garden of Eden, when he showed Eve what was off limits to her. Eve allowed this discontent to creep into her thoughts and her heart which turned into actions which in turn have affected mankind forever.
Like all of us, I’ve been the object of others discontentment in life at times which has manifested itself as jealousy towards me on occasion in my life. And it’s not pretty. In fact, the Bible says in Prov. 27:4, "Anger is cruel and fury overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy?"
I cringe saying that a bit because I have a fear that the reader might think that I think a little too highly of myself. But I know I’m not that smart, that talented, or that pretty. And I don’t have as many nice things as many of my close friends. Although I am happy with myself in these areas most of the time.
But, I have at certain times struggled to be content with what I’ve been given in each of these departments of my life.
Probably my biggest lifelong insecurity has been my looks. I was raised in a country where blue eyes and blonde hair were considered much more beautiful than my brown hair and brown eyes. And I have a very beautiful younger blonde haired and blue eyed sister. Everywhere we went in Mexico, she stood out. So you betcha, I had to struggle through this insecurity and come to the conclusion that I am okay with what God has given me.
And not only am I okay with it, I know I am blessed.
I can be blessed in the realization that I am enough to Him. I can be blessed knowing that God created me with a special and unique purpose different from my blood sister and to any of my other sisters in Christ.
It is so freeing to not be in competition with my sister or my friends! You know why? Because competitions have winners and losers. And at some point, each of us is going to come out the loser in some department if we play the comparison game. And as speaker Micca Campbell put it, “Competitive women turn other women into losers to make themselves winners. And that’s a form of idolatry.”
I don’t want to turn other women into losers – and I for sure don’t want to stand before God one day as an idolater!!
One of my most impacting memories from childhood involved my best friend from elementary school turning on me. We had been best friends for 3 years – we did almost everything together. Then one year in sixth grade – we decided to both run for class secretary and we both liked the same boy running for class President and you know where this is headed…..I won both. (Well, sort of. Although I obviously didn’t date at that age– rumor was, whether it was true or not, was that he liked me.)
Then my best friend found out she was moving away, and at that point, things were more than she could bear and she turned on me completely. She decided I was her #1 enemy and her #1 objective in life seemed to be to make sure everybody hated me before she moved away. I can remember her screaming at me hateful things on the playground and me getting so upset that I threw up in class. Talk about humiliating. Just so happened she sat in front of me, so I threw up on her!
This experience both completely dumbfounded me at the time, and to be truthful, effected me deeply for years. It has only been in the past ten years that I have been able to process this experience, identify how it wounded me, and gain healing from it.
You may think this sounds a bit silly to be so impacted by a seemingly harmless childhood encounter like this, but Satan used this to wound my spirit for almost two decades. There are many times I would reflect back on this friendship gone bad and allow Satan to speak his lies into me unknowingly that I must not be worthy of anyone’s friendship and that it wasn’t worth taking the risk to trust other women.
In my twenties, as the Lord was taking me through a healing time, I was reminded of this experience and asked the Lord to completely heal me from this and to reconcile this relationship if He desired. You see, I hadn’t seen this childhood friend in over 16 years. I had known her when we lived in southern Mexico where my parents were missionaries at the time and so were hers. After she moved away, I received one letter of apology from her, but we never reconnected again after that. I had no idea of whether she had married and what her new name might be, but I tried unsuccessfully on and off to find her online.
It was within the year after I prayed that prayer for reconciliation, that I received a call from my mom down in south Texas who said, “You’ll never guess who I heard from today!” Apparently, my childhood friend was living in the same town as my parents in South Texas and had been driving down the road one day and saw my mom’s real estate advertisement and recognized the name. She decided to contact my mom and see how I was doing.
I was in complete awe as I recalled my prayer to the Lord earlier that year and realized that he had orchestrated this for me. We talked and met up at a restaurant a couple of months later when I was visiting my parents. Although I did not need the meeting with her for me to receive healing from this past hurt, it was a beautiful reminder that God cares about the details of my life and that He answers my prayers.
I’ve also taken away from that experience that our own discontentment can lead to us wounding others deeply. I’ve also learned that Satan will use anything he can to wound us and thus hinder God’s work in us.
So you may ask – how do I find contentment? I truly believe it starts with a thankful heart. When you decide to focus on being thankful for who you are and what you have, you have taken a huge first step. A heart that is discontent believes that God is keeping something from them that they deserve, just like Eve did. A heart that is thankful recognizes and trusts in God’s sovereignty over their lives and is able to humbly submit to God whatever circumstance they are in. (I Thessalonians 5:16-18: Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.)
Think what might have happened if Eve had said, “Lord, I am tempted to focus on this one tree I can’t have right now, but instead I THANK YOU for all of these other beautiful trees with fruits and vegetables that I can freely eat from.”
The chapter of James 4 talks about this very issue and also says, “Humble Yourself and He will lift you up.” It is impossible to humble yourself before the Lord, if you are not thankful. Thankfulness is the first step in a humble and meek attitude. You cannot submit to God’s authority if you are not thankful to Him.
And let me just take this one step further and apply this to your relationship with your husband and say, it’s gonna be real hard to submit yourself to him as you should if you are not thankful for him….I struggle at times with this command to respect and submit to my husband as I believe God requires of me…but one of the biggest things that has helped me is to stop and remind myself of how very thankful I am for him and what a gift from God he is to my life…and suddenly his little imperfections that make me want to lash out at him or disrespect his authority over my life seem much smaller and much less important than they did a few minutes before.
I truly don’t think the lesson of contentment is a one time decision, but a lifelong commitment that we must come back to again and again. The flesh will constantly pull at us and entice us to give in to it, but we have been given the tools to fight against it. In fact, as we begin to age as women in a society that places such an emphasis on youth and beauty, we will have to keep this lesson in mind so that we can age gracefully with a beauty that shines from within that comes from a heart full of thanksgiving to God for who He has created us to be at that moment in time – wrinkles and saggy boobs and all..haha. (Can't believe I just said boobs in my blog. ha)
And when we learn this lesson of contentment, we will be free to minister to those around us in a much deeper way. As Micca Campbell (can you tell I enjoyed her talk?:))put it, “You can’t minister to women you are competing with.” You can rejoice in the beauty, or accomplishments or whatever of those around you and know that you have been blessed in a different way than them in order for your unique purpose to be accomplished.
You give others permission to be themselves when you are content with yourself. One effect of jealousy is that is could cause the person who is the object of our jealousy to shrink back and be less than God intended them to be. I know I have found myself doing that at times when I have been the object of someone’s jealousy – whether it be because of my job or my education or whatever. If you are the object of somebody’s jealousy, you have to realize that it is not your problem. Pray for them, but do not let their insecurities cause you to shrink back and be less than God has called you to be.
And those are my humble and imperfect thoughts on what I’m learning about contentment. I'm sure there's a lesson #3 for me down the road!
Friday, September 10, 2010
Contentment!
Getting married and having my two babies in my early thirties has fulfilled two of my biggest dreams in life and given me a deep sense of fulfillment. Yet still, I struggle with maintaining contentment in my life on a day to day basis. Why is this?
I have realized recently that I am not alone - it's part of the human condition to always want more, to strive for what we don't have.
Part of the struggle for me is I've always been ambitious - looking for the next project to complete, a new something to conquer. It's probably why I've gotten 3 degrees in mostly unrelated fields.
Right now, a dream I'd like to see fulfilled is to be debt free. I also would like to see my husband's dreams of owning his own business come to pass. My third big dream is that I would be able to be a part of an adoption ministry or even start one.
I find myself planning and searching and conniving on a daily basis how I can make more money at home and how I can build a multimillion dollar business (ha ha) all from the confines of my little abode (nothing wrong with building a business, right?). But the Lord has been speaking to me, both through others and in my own spirit, saying, "Learn to be content with exactly where I have you in life right this moment." Reality is, I have my hands full with two beautiful babies that I adore!
If there were anything in my life I wish I could go back and change, it might have been my attitude toward my single life. It was such a struggle to trust the Lord to make my dream to have a family come true, because it just took. sooo. long.
All I had ever wanted since being a teenager was to be a great wife and mom, but God clearly didn't have that in my plans at 23 when I was newly graduated from college. In fact, I took an assignment to do missions work in Mexico for 3 years and there was almost no opportunity for dating.
During that time, He spoke clearly to me and told me that I wouldn't meet my husband for a few years. Of course, I questioned this word and I even told my mom about it - who wants to wait until they're older? I finally rejected that I had heard this and strove to meet the man of my dreams through my own plans. It always happened, either I was quickly disinfatuated or they were just not into me. Through my job as the director of public relations at a Christian college, I had access to meet just about any goodlooking guy I wanted there under the guise of "needing them to attend a photoshoot". hehe. Not that I ever actually did this, of course...ahem. ;-)
I even tried internet dating which was quite an interesting experience. But ultimately to spend hours or maybe weeks on the phone talking to somebody only to know shortly after walking off the plane to meet someone that it wouldn't work out, seemed somehow unfair to both of us. Not to mention expensive for him. So I gave that up after about six months.
I prayed intensely in my twenties. I fasted. At times I got mad at God. Yes, I can remember yelling at God sometimes when a relationship didn't go anywhere or there was not a single guy anywhere in the horizon. What was God thinking? Did He forget about me? Did I do something wrong? Was this to be my trial in life - to learn to be content as a single person forever? "Please, God, no." I remember pleading.
I had times of great faith. Then there were times I was tempted to compromise my values and settle. And there were a couple of times that I dated guys I knew deep in my heart, were NOT for me. There were times in my late twenties when I just got so tired of waiting. So desperate to make my dreams come true. So confused and open to hearing the lies of the enemy. I think the Lord must have been looking down at me at times with pride and at times with great sadness, wondering why I didn't just believe Him.
I struggled with God through these times, but ultimately I let Him win.
I knew only He would bring the right man into my life. The man who would make me want to settle down, the man who would love all my idiosyncracies. The man who was God's plan for me. And at the right timing, after He had done the work He needed to do in me. After He got us both to the place where He wanted us, we would meet. I'm not going to go into the discussion of whether I think God has just one person picked out for us to marry, but I'll say that I believe with all my heart that Walt was the man God meant for me and vice versa.
Oh, if I could go back and live with contentment during those single years! I feel like I accomplished things personally and lived such a full and exciting life, yet, I always let discontentment creep in because of the dreams that were yet to be fulfilled. I didn't believe Him fully yet.
I'm about to start Beth Moore's Bible Study "Believing God" and it's all about learning to not just believe in God but to believe Him and what he says. I still need to believe. There's still more unbelief in my heart that needs to get out. Until I believe EVERY word He says and it's alive and active in my life, there's more. It seems like every Christian I know has some areas where it's easy to believe God, but then we all seem to have a certain area or areas where we find it hard to trust God.
I don't want to look back on my thirties and think I wish I had been more satisfied with where I was during this time. I want to be content with every single minute of this wonderful life I have. I prayed when I went to law school that even though I was taking on the school debt, He would provide a way for me to stay home with my kids when they were babies one day. And He did. He is faithful.
I think my struggle is typical of many other people's as well. We live discontented with where we are, always waiting until this or that happens, and then we can sit back and relax and enjoy. Only that's not what happens. When we get what we think we really want, we still want more. I think it has to do with that emptiness in our hearts that only God can fill. As long as we believe and try to fill it up with anything besides God, it will result ultimately in emptiness and more vain striving to fill that void. Once we discover that He is what our hearts truly desire and longs after, we will be content.
So I encourage anybody reading that may have unfulfilled dreams that you are trusting in God's hands. Give them back to Him. You really can trust Him with them. And be content with where you are today. Plan for tomorrow, but be content and focus on being all you can be right where you are today.
And, if you are struggling in an area with God, it's okay. Keep struggling and don't give up until your spirit is in tune with God. I think God wants us to work through these struggles. He knows how hard it is. But ultimately He wants us to get to the place where we can rest in Him and His provision and His timing in all things.
I'm setting aside my dreams of us owning a business and being debt free for now. Yes, we are paying off debt, but a little more slowly than we'd like. And owning a business? There is absolutely no way in sight for us to reach that dream. That's okay though, because I know that these dreams are safe in the hands of the one who gave us these dreams.
And right now, I'm focusing on these two little beautiful babies in front of me with runny noses and dirty diapers and tons of kisses. I'll enjoy every single minute I have with them because I know He holds the future, including every single dream I've ever had and ever will have. And He's trustworthy.
I have realized recently that I am not alone - it's part of the human condition to always want more, to strive for what we don't have.
Part of the struggle for me is I've always been ambitious - looking for the next project to complete, a new something to conquer. It's probably why I've gotten 3 degrees in mostly unrelated fields.
Right now, a dream I'd like to see fulfilled is to be debt free. I also would like to see my husband's dreams of owning his own business come to pass. My third big dream is that I would be able to be a part of an adoption ministry or even start one.
I find myself planning and searching and conniving on a daily basis how I can make more money at home and how I can build a multimillion dollar business (ha ha) all from the confines of my little abode (nothing wrong with building a business, right?). But the Lord has been speaking to me, both through others and in my own spirit, saying, "Learn to be content with exactly where I have you in life right this moment." Reality is, I have my hands full with two beautiful babies that I adore!
If there were anything in my life I wish I could go back and change, it might have been my attitude toward my single life. It was such a struggle to trust the Lord to make my dream to have a family come true, because it just took. sooo. long.
All I had ever wanted since being a teenager was to be a great wife and mom, but God clearly didn't have that in my plans at 23 when I was newly graduated from college. In fact, I took an assignment to do missions work in Mexico for 3 years and there was almost no opportunity for dating.
During that time, He spoke clearly to me and told me that I wouldn't meet my husband for a few years. Of course, I questioned this word and I even told my mom about it - who wants to wait until they're older? I finally rejected that I had heard this and strove to meet the man of my dreams through my own plans. It always happened, either I was quickly disinfatuated or they were just not into me. Through my job as the director of public relations at a Christian college, I had access to meet just about any goodlooking guy I wanted there under the guise of "needing them to attend a photoshoot". hehe. Not that I ever actually did this, of course...ahem. ;-)
I even tried internet dating which was quite an interesting experience. But ultimately to spend hours or maybe weeks on the phone talking to somebody only to know shortly after walking off the plane to meet someone that it wouldn't work out, seemed somehow unfair to both of us. Not to mention expensive for him. So I gave that up after about six months.
I prayed intensely in my twenties. I fasted. At times I got mad at God. Yes, I can remember yelling at God sometimes when a relationship didn't go anywhere or there was not a single guy anywhere in the horizon. What was God thinking? Did He forget about me? Did I do something wrong? Was this to be my trial in life - to learn to be content as a single person forever? "Please, God, no." I remember pleading.
I had times of great faith. Then there were times I was tempted to compromise my values and settle. And there were a couple of times that I dated guys I knew deep in my heart, were NOT for me. There were times in my late twenties when I just got so tired of waiting. So desperate to make my dreams come true. So confused and open to hearing the lies of the enemy. I think the Lord must have been looking down at me at times with pride and at times with great sadness, wondering why I didn't just believe Him.
I struggled with God through these times, but ultimately I let Him win.
I knew only He would bring the right man into my life. The man who would make me want to settle down, the man who would love all my idiosyncracies. The man who was God's plan for me. And at the right timing, after He had done the work He needed to do in me. After He got us both to the place where He wanted us, we would meet. I'm not going to go into the discussion of whether I think God has just one person picked out for us to marry, but I'll say that I believe with all my heart that Walt was the man God meant for me and vice versa.
Oh, if I could go back and live with contentment during those single years! I feel like I accomplished things personally and lived such a full and exciting life, yet, I always let discontentment creep in because of the dreams that were yet to be fulfilled. I didn't believe Him fully yet.
I'm about to start Beth Moore's Bible Study "Believing God" and it's all about learning to not just believe in God but to believe Him and what he says. I still need to believe. There's still more unbelief in my heart that needs to get out. Until I believe EVERY word He says and it's alive and active in my life, there's more. It seems like every Christian I know has some areas where it's easy to believe God, but then we all seem to have a certain area or areas where we find it hard to trust God.
I don't want to look back on my thirties and think I wish I had been more satisfied with where I was during this time. I want to be content with every single minute of this wonderful life I have. I prayed when I went to law school that even though I was taking on the school debt, He would provide a way for me to stay home with my kids when they were babies one day. And He did. He is faithful.
I think my struggle is typical of many other people's as well. We live discontented with where we are, always waiting until this or that happens, and then we can sit back and relax and enjoy. Only that's not what happens. When we get what we think we really want, we still want more. I think it has to do with that emptiness in our hearts that only God can fill. As long as we believe and try to fill it up with anything besides God, it will result ultimately in emptiness and more vain striving to fill that void. Once we discover that He is what our hearts truly desire and longs after, we will be content.
So I encourage anybody reading that may have unfulfilled dreams that you are trusting in God's hands. Give them back to Him. You really can trust Him with them. And be content with where you are today. Plan for tomorrow, but be content and focus on being all you can be right where you are today.
And, if you are struggling in an area with God, it's okay. Keep struggling and don't give up until your spirit is in tune with God. I think God wants us to work through these struggles. He knows how hard it is. But ultimately He wants us to get to the place where we can rest in Him and His provision and His timing in all things.
I'm setting aside my dreams of us owning a business and being debt free for now. Yes, we are paying off debt, but a little more slowly than we'd like. And owning a business? There is absolutely no way in sight for us to reach that dream. That's okay though, because I know that these dreams are safe in the hands of the one who gave us these dreams.
And right now, I'm focusing on these two little beautiful babies in front of me with runny noses and dirty diapers and tons of kisses. I'll enjoy every single minute I have with them because I know He holds the future, including every single dream I've ever had and ever will have. And He's trustworthy.
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