This Provential Life

Good things, bad things...we let them shape our days, weeks and lives. But life goes on...

They're the things we live for, simple pleasures and daily disappointments - all adding spontaneity and zest to life. Keeping a smile in disappointments can become a science. Disappointments like, Alabama losing to LSU 21 to 24. It's McElroy, I'm telling you - that quarterback is the weak link. But we're not going to talk about that now...

Good things like snuggling on the sofa with my little man (that would be David, my brother, who is seven). We watched Beauty and the Beast. Yes, I made him watch it...and he enjoyed it! However, I felt like I was being swept back into my childhood. I was Belle. I remember every word to the songs and every dramatic movement.

"I want much more than this provential life!
I want adventure in the great, wide somewhere!
I want it more than I can tell!
And for once it would be grand,
To have someone understand...
I want so much more than they have planned!"

The thrill and desire I felt from that has not changed since I was a very little girl. I know now, what did not know then, that God shaped my heart and desires to - GO! I want so much more then the "provincial life" or even the American dream. I have no desire to live the life most Americans are content to settle for. I don't want to go to school to get a degree, so I can get a job that I don't like, so I can pay off my student loans, get a credit card, pay off that, get a mortgage, buy a house, and pay that off, until I am exhausted and unfulfilled with half of my life gone,  or run into bankruptcy and foreclosure and lose everything. In between are all the costs of taxes, insurance, and family life.

I know - it will always cost to live. And God said, by the sweat of a man's brow will he eat. God rewards hard work - but He also rewards those who trust in Him first, and not in money or work or material fulfillment. When I think of America, I think of Ezekiel 16:49 - "Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy." It grieves my heart, that this is direction my country is heading, but I know it is not my calling to fix it. There's an island country, over a thousand miles away, where exactly three years ago I buried my heart. I used to weep over that unknown country as a young girl, "Why God - won't you tell me where you want me to go?" What a relief to know beyond a shadow of a doubt where He desires me - but what a burden to bear.

It is clear and evident, as He keeps pulling me back, that I am not finished here. I am content to let Him finish His work in me here, to sit still and wait, to prepare and minister here however He wants me to. It is too big a burden to always look to the future - to desire what is not His will for this season. What freedom to let Him figure everything out, and rest in my life now.

What a rambling post this became...see how easily my mind and words turn to Haiti. In my world of barbecue, politics, football, family, piano recitals, debate tournaments, church and Bible studies - always on the forefront of my mind is another task, another burden, another life for me...that I know God is preparing.

Map tann...