I still haven't been to bed tonight but I remembered another thing from last night I wanted to get down before I lost it again. (Like that run-on, but wait, there's more sleep-deprived goodness to come!)
Two parts, first one is quicker: Robbie told a story about his little girl and how he went to her one day and saw she was out of milk in her cup but still trying to drink out of it. He said "Give me your cup" and she pulled it toward her and said "My cup." So he tried a different way: "Hey do you want some milk?" She looked at him: "Milk." Thinking he'd won, he reached out "I'll get you some milk, let me have your cup." "My cup."
That's a pretty self-explanatory metaphor.
Part two is the long part:
We sang the song that goes like "Where you lead me, Lord, I will follow. Where you lead me, Lord, I will go. Come and heal me Lord, as I follow. Where you lead me, Lord, I will go. I will go." Well I always thought the "come and heal me" part was a little random and unrelated to the rest of the song but last night it occurred to me that in the times of my life when I was really intensely following Him, there was always some kind of attack that came alongside it.
When I orignally got right with God, I had just started trying to put my time of spiritual darkness (during which time I would pray to evil spirits, and eventually felt and physically saw them) behind me and 9/11 happened and greatly effected me.
As I drew closer to God through the end of High School, I was dealing with emotional damage from relationships with both my parents. One on it's way to better things, and the other to worse (and then better, later on).
At the beginning of my sophomore year of college I had emergency surgery and the physical pain from the year prior and fear of those few days really drove me to rely on Jesus.
Probably the most painful experience (because I dwelt on it so heavily) was right as college was starting to come to a close. Everyone close to me knows that as we all came back for our senior year of college I was on fire for God and planning on applying to physician's assistant school in Florida after graduation and beginning a new season of my life. However, shortly after arriving on campus I became infatuated with a guy and fell in love with the idea of staying in Ohio, getting my paramedic's license and settling down. Luckily (though at the time I would have sworn it was anything but) he broke up with me not long after we started dating. That was hard enough, but in the process of dating him I had changed my entire life plan and had quickly and completely thrown God's plan for me out the window in exchange for a cheaper seemingly easier and faster route to assumed happiness. ("Ha ha", we all say now, looking back.) Also in the process I had managed to hurt his ex-girlfriend-suddenly-turned-fiancee...and all hurt parties wanted revenge. So on top of dealing with your normal breakup I had to rediscover Jesus, re-evaluate my priorities, and do some heavy soul searching to figure out what I wanted from life, and deal with lots of semi-anonymous nastiness (the latter part of which I did not do well.)
Despite the pain (I still find myself picking up pieces of my heart from time to time and going "Wtf??? I thought we were over this! How did I not know I was still missing this piece?!?" Last night was one of those times. Luckily the pieces are itty bitty slivers now, that just brings me closer to God.) and confusion and the space I put between me and God for a time, it all turned out better than I could possibly have imagined.
See, I imagine that the path I was headed down would have landed me in not such a great position. I would have become a physician's assistant and probably not been able to find a job. Probably would have had a hard time gaining experience, and have gone massively into debt just in time for the economy to crash. I'd probably be living with or near my parents, in Washington DC, and knowing myself, be horribly depressed at how far behind my peers I'd fallen.
But there was no convincing me otherwise. PA school was the way for me! I didn't want to be a nurse, I wanted a higher position with more prestige and MORE ALMIGHTY DOLLAR!!!! Because we all know the more money you have, the happier you are. No better plan than that. "MY CUP!!!"
Now, I'm not one who believes God deliberately sets out to sabotage us, or enjoys putting us through crap just so on the other side He can say "See, I did it for a reason and now your life is so much better!" But I think God knew that I simply didn't know all my options and didn't really know what I wanted. He knew that I thought I wanted to be a PA more than anything in the whole world, but also knew I was wrong. So He gave me a chance (or the illusion of a chance) at the one thing I did know that I wanted more: a husband. Security. Someone to pay the bills and let me stay home and be lazy with my kids all day. (Because that is what I wanted. Not to be a wife and mother, but to be a kid pretending to be a wife and mother.) Of course I was willing to throw everything else away at a chance for freedom from worrying about a career or finances or the future (I honestly thought getting married would allow me to live with my head in the clouds. Yes, I really am rather stupid sometimes.)
So I threw out all the sub-par plans, and then my even-worse plan (that I wanted even more) got vetoed and I was left with.....nothing.
Or so it seemed. Fast forward 4 years and I'm giddy with excitement about my upcoming medical mission trips, in the process of applying for grad school and buying a house (AHHH: responsibility!!!!), have a job I really enjoy, in a city I adore, with a Church I couldn't live without, and I get to share it all with my best friend!
And to think I labeled the period of time that gave me all that as the worst months of my life.
Haha, past self, haha.
The Almighty Healer may have pulled a few strings to get me to follow Him (but don't we all do that with stubborn ignorant kids?) but I eventually chose to give up my cup and He healed me.
As I followed.
Two parts, first one is quicker: Robbie told a story about his little girl and how he went to her one day and saw she was out of milk in her cup but still trying to drink out of it. He said "Give me your cup" and she pulled it toward her and said "My cup." So he tried a different way: "Hey do you want some milk?" She looked at him: "Milk." Thinking he'd won, he reached out "I'll get you some milk, let me have your cup." "My cup."That's a pretty self-explanatory metaphor.
Part two is the long part:
We sang the song that goes like "Where you lead me, Lord, I will follow. Where you lead me, Lord, I will go. Come and heal me Lord, as I follow. Where you lead me, Lord, I will go. I will go." Well I always thought the "come and heal me" part was a little random and unrelated to the rest of the song but last night it occurred to me that in the times of my life when I was really intensely following Him, there was always some kind of attack that came alongside it.
When I orignally got right with God, I had just started trying to put my time of spiritual darkness (during which time I would pray to evil spirits, and eventually felt and physically saw them) behind me and 9/11 happened and greatly effected me.
As I drew closer to God through the end of High School, I was dealing with emotional damage from relationships with both my parents. One on it's way to better things, and the other to worse (and then better, later on).
At the beginning of my sophomore year of college I had emergency surgery and the physical pain from the year prior and fear of those few days really drove me to rely on Jesus.
Probably the most painful experience (because I dwelt on it so heavily) was right as college was starting to come to a close. Everyone close to me knows that as we all came back for our senior year of college I was on fire for God and planning on applying to physician's assistant school in Florida after graduation and beginning a new season of my life. However, shortly after arriving on campus I became infatuated with a guy and fell in love with the idea of staying in Ohio, getting my paramedic's license and settling down. Luckily (though at the time I would have sworn it was anything but) he broke up with me not long after we started dating. That was hard enough, but in the process of dating him I had changed my entire life plan and had quickly and completely thrown God's plan for me out the window in exchange for a cheaper seemingly easier and faster route to assumed happiness. ("Ha ha", we all say now, looking back.) Also in the process I had managed to hurt his ex-girlfriend-suddenly-turned-fiancee...and all hurt parties wanted revenge. So on top of dealing with your normal breakup I had to rediscover Jesus, re-evaluate my priorities, and do some heavy soul searching to figure out what I wanted from life, and deal with lots of semi-anonymous nastiness (the latter part of which I did not do well.)
Despite the pain (I still find myself picking up pieces of my heart from time to time and going "Wtf??? I thought we were over this! How did I not know I was still missing this piece?!?" Last night was one of those times. Luckily the pieces are itty bitty slivers now, that just brings me closer to God.) and confusion and the space I put between me and God for a time, it all turned out better than I could possibly have imagined.
See, I imagine that the path I was headed down would have landed me in not such a great position. I would have become a physician's assistant and probably not been able to find a job. Probably would have had a hard time gaining experience, and have gone massively into debt just in time for the economy to crash. I'd probably be living with or near my parents, in Washington DC, and knowing myself, be horribly depressed at how far behind my peers I'd fallen.
But there was no convincing me otherwise. PA school was the way for me! I didn't want to be a nurse, I wanted a higher position with more prestige and MORE ALMIGHTY DOLLAR!!!! Because we all know the more money you have, the happier you are. No better plan than that. "MY CUP!!!"
Now, I'm not one who believes God deliberately sets out to sabotage us, or enjoys putting us through crap just so on the other side He can say "See, I did it for a reason and now your life is so much better!" But I think God knew that I simply didn't know all my options and didn't really know what I wanted. He knew that I thought I wanted to be a PA more than anything in the whole world, but also knew I was wrong. So He gave me a chance (or the illusion of a chance) at the one thing I did know that I wanted more: a husband. Security. Someone to pay the bills and let me stay home and be lazy with my kids all day. (Because that is what I wanted. Not to be a wife and mother, but to be a kid pretending to be a wife and mother.) Of course I was willing to throw everything else away at a chance for freedom from worrying about a career or finances or the future (I honestly thought getting married would allow me to live with my head in the clouds. Yes, I really am rather stupid sometimes.)
So I threw out all the sub-par plans, and then my even-worse plan (that I wanted even more) got vetoed and I was left with.....nothing.
Or so it seemed. Fast forward 4 years and I'm giddy with excitement about my upcoming medical mission trips, in the process of applying for grad school and buying a house (AHHH: responsibility!!!!), have a job I really enjoy, in a city I adore, with a Church I couldn't live without, and I get to share it all with my best friend!
And to think I labeled the period of time that gave me all that as the worst months of my life.
Haha, past self, haha.
The Almighty Healer may have pulled a few strings to get me to follow Him (but don't we all do that with stubborn ignorant kids?) but I eventually chose to give up my cup and He healed me.
As I followed.
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