Thursday, August 14, 2008

Taking heart amidst uncertainty

Well, this is just a plain old serious Happy Heather's Hullaballoo entry. I haven't written for a while because I've been camping, but now I'm back home in the books again. Next week I have comprehensive finals for all my courses (one a day for four days) so I'm frantically trying to learn several textbooks worth of information and desperately hoping it will stay in there long enough to pass the tests. Or ace them, if I have to.
After that I have a WHOLE WEEK OFF with NO HOMEWORK although I might get a head start on the next term and start some reading. I fly back to Antigua on September 5th and am there until October 9th, I think. I'll be stopping over in New York for a day or two each way, and I hear there are some big important museums there, so I might go take a look.
Beyond October 9th , to save everyone the trouble of asking, I have no idea where I'll be, what I'll be doing, how long it will take me to graduate, if I will even graduate, what country I'll be in, etc.. In fact I have no clue. Am I bothered by it? Sort of. I wonder if I'm learning to trust God, or if I'm just so darn weary of being anxious about nothing working out the way it was supposed to that I can't fight it anymore.
Last night I was flipping through an old diary and I stumbled across an entry I wrote five years ago at a church conference. A man named Mark had spoken a prophetic word over me: I had just written 'Mark' at the top of the page and then his words underneath. He said, you've laid plans, but God is going to change them all. God knows the desires of your heart and he is going to give them to you, but in a way that is different than you would expect. Just wait for him and trust him.
Last night I thought, if I could remember Mark's last name, I could look him up and borrow someone's shotgun and go and shoot him. Because the truth is, every single plan I have laid in the last 4 or 5 years has been completely overturned. It is hard to believe that God knows the desires of my heart and intends to give them to me when I keep telling him what they are and he keeps giving me the opposite.
I'm not saying this in a bitter way at all; sort of tongue-in-cheek, because I read this great verse in the bible today:
“Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart, and wait for the Lord.”- Psalm 27:14
It takes strength and spirit to wait for God! At one time in my life I considered making a cd- it would be a motivational cd that was full of whoops and hollers and people shouting, you can do it! Keep up the good work! Almost done! Looking good! The cd would go on for a couple hours like that and I was going to market it to students studying for their exams to play in the background. The truth is, we need encouragement to be strong and take heart. We need the slaps on the back and the person standing on the sideline cheering and handing us water as we run by.
So if anyone is reading this and feeling discouraged about anything, you're not alone! Be strong! Take heart! Wait for the Lord! If I can make it through, so can you!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Amen to that. I would suggest reading Genesis. As I've been reading about Abraham lately, I am constantly blown away at how God blessed him and gave him incredible promises and fulfilled those promises in ways that Abraham could never have imagined!

Anonymous said...

oh yah.id buy the cd.then id scare the speedos off my fellow swimclubbers by blasting i6ts contents over the pool loud speakers, jumping up on the blocks,and then after several seconds of meditative silence as i contemplated the present sounds assaulting me ,i would fly off the blocks like a demented olympian and take up my otherwise boring swim routine. it would be momentarily uplifting. mo