Working out what to do...

I'm simply at a loss.  I don't know what I should be doing.

There are lots of boxes that still need to be unpacked, but I don't know where to put the things.  Many of the boxes hold books, but I don't want to load up shelves with heavy books if I am not quite certain that the shelves are where I want them.  Many other boxes have wall hangings and pictures, but we have hired someone to come paint our walls, and we need to get the painting done before we start hanging pictures.

I wish we could do the painting ourselves, but Shawn doesn't want to do it, and I am a disaster with paint.  I can get a nice edge, but I drip everywhere else.

The thought crossed my mind:  Perhaps we should abort the painting.  We purchased a bunch of sample paint, and picked a color.  They say this is the way to do it, the only way to get the right color.  Maybe they are right, but it smacks of marketing by the paint companies.  You buy these little cans of paint, and then you paint chunks of your wall to test the colors, thereby committing yourself to buy more paint.  Also, they never seem to mention paint finish, and I keep forgetting to ask.  So the four color samples we "tested" all came in satin finish, when the walls were previously painted in a flat finish, and I want the new paint to be in a flat finish.  Now I have large, random patches of satin paint in various flavors of pale blue all over my walls.  How are we going to get this mess satisfactorily covered with flat paint?  How much prepping and how many coats will it require?  Should we just try to paint it back to the original color?  Do I have a right to dislike the original color?

My stomach feels sick with anxiety over the money money money.

Why am I so tired?

My eyes hurt.

I don't know anybody, don't have any friends here, don't have a church, don't have a doctor, don't have a vet.  Know what I have?  I have a Walmart.  Yes, Walmart is the one store to which I can confidently drive.  Yesterday it was raining, and I needed a walk, so I drove over to Walmart and tried to do some laps around the perimeter with a shopping cart.  It was the day before Halloween, so the place was mobbed with shoppers, little girls prancing around the store waving neon tutus, moms loading their carts with bagged candy, tweeny boys trying on massive bear heads and posing in the aisles, lost-looking dads with a peck of younguns, nervously thumbing through their billfolds.  I couldn't get much momentum during my laps, but I spent about $100 on things like sheets, doormats and sweet potatoes, so that was a bust.

(When you upsize to a new bed, and the only sheets you own in the new size clash horrendously with your new bedroom, you are highly motivated to keep your bed beautifully made.  This is not a bad thing, is it?  I probably did not need to splurge on a new set of matching sheets.)

We bought new furniture, pretty furniture, I think, but even that is scary for me.  Adjusting to new things is scary for me.  Outlaying money is scary for me.  Owning two houses is scary for me.

Have we made a terrible mistake?

I wish I had some direction, some confirmation, some comfort.  I wish my other house would sell.  Sometimes I wish I could move back to it, but then I feel like crying, thinking about how I tore it all down, like striking a set in theater, selling off so many of the parts for pennies on the dollar, and moving the rest 850 miles across the country.

Jesus is my home.  The Lord is my shepherd, my friend, my advocate, my guide.  I must fight to remember this, because when I start to doubt myself, I also start to doubt His love for me.  My thought process goes like this: If I have been foolish and impetuous, how can Jesus possibly be on my side?  Would He not be against me, annoyed with me?  But really, does God get annoyed with us?  I assume that He would be disgusted and say, "Look at the mess you've created now.  You're just going to have to sleep in the bed you've made for yourself, and I hope you learn a lesson from it!"

Yet, scripture tells me,
As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear Him.  For He knows our frame.  He remembers we are dust.  (Psalm 103:13-14)

God is patient and forebearing.  (Romans 2:4)

God's heart is filled with tender compassion for His children, even when they miss the mark.  (Hosea 11:8)

For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.  (John 3:17)

God's purpose is not to punish, but to save.  He did not send Jesus to crush us, but to lift us up out of the muck of sin.  And, if we make a mistake while we are trying to find the right way, He does not stand by ready to whack us down.  Rather, He stands by to help us get back on the right path, to encourage, teach and sanctify us.  Sanctification can be very painful, but this is never because God has any desire to cause us pain (Lamentations 3:33), and only because He knows that in a fallen world, pain is sometimes the necessary instrument to help us learn and remember what is best.

When Jesus saw people grieving under the curse of sin that brought them pain, separation and death, He wept.  Jesus wept.  (John 11:35)

If God is for us, who can be against us?  (Romans 8:31)

And here's the really beautiful thing, the thing I have such an incredibly hard time remembering:  Jesus is not only for us when we ace the test.  Jesus is for us when we fail the test.  His compassion reaches lovingly to enfold those who stumble the most.  He reaches out His hand to take hold of us and gently chide us, "Oh you of little faith, why did you doubt?" (Matthew 14:31).  The high achievers are not the ones in need of compassion.  No, it's me, when I stumble along the way, when I try so hard to find His path, but in my human frailty, I just flat-out miss it.  In these moments of failure, whether it is a spectacularly terrible decision that I made, or a ridiculous assumption that God doesn't love me anymore because I made a mistake, God's compassion shines.  This is what grace is: the undeserving receive favor.  If I deserve it, if I worked to earn it, it isn't grace.

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God... (Ephesians 2:8)

The gift of God.
God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.  (Romans 5:5)

We are frail.  We mess up.  We sin.  We fall short.  Look at Peter.  He denied Christ on the night He was crucified.  Peter needed grace.  And what did Jesus extend to Peter?  Grace, and power, and even the keys to the Kingdom.  Jesus built His church through Peter.  We will trip and fall, and when we do, we need to remember that Jesus still loves us, will still accomplish His purpose through us.  He welcomes us back as fast as our legs can carry us into His open arms.  We need to remember the greatness of God's compassion and forgiveness towards us.  We need to remember this, and treasure it, and turn it outward in the way we extend compassion and forgiveness to those around us.  Remembering, pondering, treasuring God's love for us, this enables us to love others, which is the essence of walking by the Spirit.

The Lord is for me (Romans 8:31).  The Lord is on my side (Psalm 118:6-7).

I am His child, bought with the priceless blood of Christ (1 Peter 1:19). 
He treasures me (Matthew 13:45-46, 1 Peter 2:9). 
He is restoring me, making me new and glorious, like Himself, from one degree of glory to another (2 Corinthians 3:18).

Good.  It is good to be back, writing and remembering.  I still don't know what I should do, actually.  But I feel better, thanks to Him.  He is worthy of all praise.

Still here, still trying

I’m still alive!  That seems a very egocentric thing to say, although it is unquestionably true.

I haven’t been blogging because I’ve been busy.  Of course, that hasn’t ever really stopped me before. I’ve also not been blogging because of privacy issues.  So many privacy issues.  So many people in crises.  So many unsharable things on my heart.  So much need for wisdom that is beyond me.

Also, in the middle of August, I slammed my left index finger in the front door, hard.  It bled for days, and then became numb for weeks.  Just recently, it grew enough to to expose the dead part of the nail that had been under the skin, so now the loose, dead, back edge of the nail is starting to catch on everything, and I have to keep a bandaid over it.  All this, simply to explain that typing is difficult with an impaired left index finger.

We have arrived in NC and landed in our new home, with all our boxes and some furniture.  Precious friends from our church helped us with this process, and it was a true and bountiful provision from God.  We could not have done it without them; yet, here we are, and I even made a batch of gluten free cookies on Sunday.  We are that functional!

Unpacking proceeded slowly, but steadily, until Sunday evening when I began a headache.  It escalated throughout Monday, but I kept chipping away at my list until about 6 p.m. when I placed a dish of enchiladas into the oven to bake, and collapsed in a lupus haze.

Today I sit in bed, resting, thinking about blog posts I want to write (i.e. ideas I want to explore)

(1) The difference between worry and empathy, and also the fine line between them, and possibly how frustrating it can be when people tell you not to worry when you are really only empathizing, and you wonder how they can avoid empathizing, and not only that, but how they can avoid empathizing and experience no guilt for their lack of compassion.

(2) Two kinds of approaches to living: living to win, and living to experience.  Both have some benefits; both have some drawbacks.  Which direction is our culture skewed, and how can we find a healthy balance?  (Also how does the structure of our educational system feed into this?)

(3) Stages in Christian growth and development, and how our cultural abhorrence for any kind of pain inhibits it.  I suspect that one must experience suffering in order to become spiritually mature, but in addition to exploring that, I want to try to figure out what stages of growth may accompany or precede the stage of suffering.  There is also a connection between humility and suffering, in giving up one’s own interests for the interests of others, and yet ultimately this leads to joy.  I need to spend some extended time thinking through these things.

Will I ever come back to these things?  Maybe after some long rest, and after unpacking another bunch of boxes.  After updating my driver’s license and making an appointment with a new primary care doctor.  After many other things, perhaps so many that the thoughts will all have vanished by the time I get back here.

I have to admit, although it is simply lovely here, it doesn’t feel like home.  It feels like being on vacation. The Midwest felt like home... such an odd thing that I have beautiful memories and impressions of my time in the Midwest, even though it is where I experienced the greatest tragedies of my life, so far.