I just made a cup of hot chocolate. I am drinking it out of a skinny pottery mug that is artistically more comforting than the beverage. It stirs up the image of potter’s clay and I try to concentrate for a moment on what God is trying to do inside of me. I don’t think it is possible to feel more broken.
I received a call today from a close friend, who without a doubt believes God made me for a mission, a definite purpose, a great work. I try to be convinced and yet my human frailty cowers at the idea of God’s mighty plan for my life.
Today was a day of shrinking. As the one year anniversary approaches, I find a part of me disappearing. What will life be like on the other side of the first year? I have determined that I have the stamina to survive one year, but what about two or five or nineteen?
Another good friend encouraged me to work out tonight, advising that it would help relieve some of this enormous stress. The physical exercise seems to parallel my mental training. In exhaustion, I began to realize that I must daily surrender my weaknesses to God. Surrender isn’t a one time event. I am beginning to sense that the only way to enter September and make it through will be on my knees.
Tonight I had an unexpected visitor. My neighbor stopped to see how I was doing. I expressed honestly that I wasn’t doing well. She sat with me on my front step, dimmed by one lonely street lamp and said she had something to read to me, a devotion she had been working on. The verse she quoted was Jeremiah 29:11 "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
A phone call, an encouraging recommendation, an unplanned visit…God wants me to hear him. He contacted me three times today. I need to listen. As my son Jordan often reprimands, pretending he’s the parent, “You need listen a me, Mom!”
I need to listen.
