Sometimes I have no idea what it is I have to say or where I am going, but I know what I am going to get there. I have faith. This is a very therapeutic process for me. It is time that I take for myself to sit down and think about the things that have happened and to gain some perspective, which is so important especially on weeks like this. It has been a challenging week with school starting back, my oldest is acting out, none of her shoes fit, and about one hundred other small and meaningless things. I am tired and I am stressed but taking a minute to breathe and realize it is not that big of a deal and to really make myself think about how all these little pieces are fitting into God's plan for me helps.
I know that there are some thins working right now and I can feel it and I am actually very thankful that I have some people in my life who are willing to call me out on those whether they know it or not. This does not always mean when the pastor calls me out in front of the church whether he is using my name or not. I have noticed other people more subtly saying things to remind me of where I am in this journey and were it is that I need to be going and I have to take time to realize that God put them there. That God put those things on their heart and I need to be paying attention.
Tonight for instance my oldest was acting out at church so I had to take her out of the fellowship hall and have a talk with her among other things before I could eventually leave her screaming with her sister in the nursery to return to bible study. I was frustrated, upset, and at wits end with tears stuck in my eyes. Then I walk into the fellowship hall late and the first thing that they start talking about is about backstories. Oh and I have a doozy. As related parts of his own backstory I felt like he was looking at and talking directly to me. I have shared bits and pieces of my back story on here before and as he called them its one of the messy ones and for someone who doesn't mind being honest about the messy parts and who talks as much as I do, I manage to have a whole lot to say sometimes without really saying any of the important things. I am trying to do better.
But the funny thing is in my 29 years I feel like I have lived many lives. When I was so young that I barely remember we lived in this cookie cutter house in the perfect neighborhood, where everything seemed like it was the way it is in movies. Then things changed I think its so much harder to handle the messy when it didn't start out that way. I think the sad part is that I am just now beginning to be old enough to truly understand just how messy some of it was and still is. I didn't realize that not everyone watches their parents get torn apart, their sister lose her first child before she was due to graduate high school. Not everyone knows what it is like to see drugs and men destroy one of your sibling and what that does to your mom and the other sister you have that was her best friend. Not everyones best friend growing up had a mother who was an alcoholic and all the things that entailed. Not everyone rushes out of work because their sixth month old baby is getting admitted to the hospital as she struggles to breath. Not everyone hears the stories that my students tell me that break my heart. Not everyone has to look at the doctors and tell them take their daddy off the ventilator, knowing that will be his last breath, because he will never get better. But I also know that not everyone gets to watch their beautiful baby girls that they carried forever sleep at night. Not everyone gets to marry the first guy they started dating at 15 and almost 14 years later say they'd never want to be anywhere else.
These things and so many more things that I can't even think of right now or I have yet to figure out aren't a part of everyone else life; these are my backstory. If I did not have them I would not be able to write these words to touch a life, even if its only my own, just like God has lead me to do. If it weren't for my backstory I would not have some of these things to bring to the table that I don't know if I even realized util now were gifts from God even if I wasn't ready for them yet. Like the one student who's mom came to me when her child would talk to me and not her after returning from the hospital because the little girl tried to hurt herself. If I did not have the backstory that I do. I would not have connected with that little girl and there are so many other students and other people that I would not be able to understand without these life experiences.
I read the story of Gideon tonight and this part stuck out to me even before I knew what I had to say. Judges 6:13 -"But sir" Gideon replied, "if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our fathers told us about when they said 'Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt? but now the Lord has abandoned us and put us into the had of Midian."- God didn't go anywhere in my life, I did. And God let me because he knew that all of these things had to be a part of my backstory to carry out the purpose that he has for me. Sometimes it is easier to feel sorry for yourself because of what you have been through and to feel abandoned by God than it is to realize the messier you backstory is probably the bigger God's plans are for you. The mess is what allows God to use me in the ways that he has called me and how amazing is it to think that even though I may have just figured this out he has had this plan even before I was born.
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