Rejected

"When Adam and Eve fell in the Garden of Eden, their perspective (as well as our's) was distorted. Blocked from seeing clearly through eyes of faith, all of humanity sees through eyes of distrust. Since we are not fully convinced that God is completely good, we misinterpret the circumstances of life and adopt a concept of reality far different from God's perspective. God uses trouble to expose our faulty perspective and reveal His corrected perspective. He then empowers us to live from that new perspective by granting us His very life. Everyday becomes a window of discovery as we unpack the treasure of eternal life. Let us examine how God gets us to reality...."

Taken from "When Hard Times Come" by Dudley Hall

 This post was written over several days as our house sits at 90 degrees. Perspective has been challenged and words flow from thought to thought…eventually ending up in what I know to be true and my determination to stick to it at all costs. At the time I was a little outraged, a little cranky and had my mind quite made up that I am completely and totally done. But, I’ve noticed along this journey that I seem to do that quite a bit. I've also come to the conclusion that this blog is a vicious cycle of this little scenario. And at this point it's a bit like reading a broken record. One day I will move forward from this point. I promise. Until then...skip the interim. Each and every time I come back to the simple knowledge that I must stay the course. So, though it starts in a shockingly cranky and pessimistic state of mind, it is undoubtedly the road we are on as we are moved farther and farther out of our comfort zone and into a deeper abiding knowledge of who He is. Something we must know intimately for the days ahead. And honestly...I'm still really hot and really kinda mad. 

It seems I should know such elementary concepts of why and that He is good all the time. But this is proving much more difficult than what it appears. It seems as though I should not doubt Him…as He has undoubtedly proven Himself true and faithful over and again within our life. But still I wrestle. Perhaps this is what it truly means to work out one's salvation with fear and trembling. I refuse to post yet another depressed something. But if I venture past surface posts of pictures and random crass thoughts….we get down to this. I'm tired of feeling so down. But let's go even farther and just say I'm tired of God. Like...does He ever say yes? Ever???? Ever in life at all? I hear it. I know it. I hear that He favors His children. That life in Him is wonderful. But I'm pretty done. I hear that He has good things for us in store. I know in my head everything. I was raised in a Baptist church. I've got the Scripture thing down. But the more I live the more confused I get.....and the more weary I become from just trying. The deeper we go the more I realize the depth of how distorted He has become in the minds of His very own people. Good things in store does not mean that He is necessarily concerned with our comfort. He's concerned about what will bring us closer to Him, and therefore, in the end, bring Him total glory. I think we tend to forget that it's not about us at all. It's about Him. So our comfort is not even close to being a priority. But when walking this path feelings of rejection are so hard to fight off. Feelings of being totally and wholly cast off, rejected, abandoned and forsaken by Him. Issues that root themselves deeply into past. When He ignores, silence ensues, He fails to save and rescue, or change what is.....

And here come the tears....again. And through tears I'm about to cuss. If you have a problem with cussing than I suggest you move on here and now. If you have put me on a pedestal than I didn’t belong there anyway. It’s not about gaining or losing popularity…offending or not offending. It’s about real.

I'm so tired of talking to a brick wall. So so so very weary. As in....I'm just ready to quit. Can you quit God? Cause I think I just did….for the millionth time. And I took his name in vain for the first time in my entire life yesterday...cause I'm just that done. I think I scared poor husband of mine. WHEN does He ever step in and intervene on our behalf???? It's crazy pathetic. Psychotic, really. But there truly is no greater pain in all of life than to feel so utterly rejected and forsaken by God, the only hope you really had....the very reason for all existence saying that I am worth nothing to Him. Because if He's not on our side then what is really left in life? But then it's just crazy and so depressingly self centered and self absorbed and so......trivial......that it's beyond embarrassing. It's actually just absolutely wretched. Because I KNOW the truth. So why do I fight it and wage this battle so fiercely? But I write. Cause I said I would and I said I'd be honest....and it's all I know to do to vent. If I write more than once a week this stuff is bound to come out at some point…because it brews beneath the surface, boiling, bubbling…undercurrent flowing swiftly….dragging down. So here it is. More searching for a God that seems so ever elusive. Heartache runs so deep...brokenness....desperation….undercurrent of a lifetime of rejection all factored into the searching. So I avoid it on here....until now. Cause at one point I had a sense of humor on this blog. At one point in life it was full of funny shit and it was actually a joy to read. But when there's just this left....the hurt of feeling so disliked...so forsaken and abandoned by God.... while I watch the lives flow of those that pray and intercede, prayers answered....and I see my life.

Why? WHY can't he just answer one tiny prayer???? WHERE is He?????? And why has He walked away for so long???? I know in my head all that I should know...but really....it only makes it worse. Head knowledge...it's about the worst thing in the world one can possess, at times. I adore my children's innocence. There is no hidden agenda, no guessing game. Just innocence of life.

 Little home on the prairie. It sits, for sale sign in yard. Nothing. Months and months of nothing. We pray, we intercede, fervency, urgency in words. We need His intervention. We beg for it. I thank Him in faith for the buyers He has. The ones I know He is sending. But nothing. House nears foreclosure. Price is dropped even more. No longer even enough to pay off remainder of debt for which equity was purposed. We were debt free at one point in life...a mere 2 years ago. Business bought after much prayer, seeking counsel from those with more wisdom, peace to do what we felt God calling us to do. Yet in less than 12 months entire business dissipated. Yet more hurt and seeking to understand His purpose for our life. Another story for another day. But now we sit with debt, only hope of paying it off and once again being entirely debt free. Yet like vapor....hope vanishes in the west Texas winds. Price is dropped again. Trip home to gather items left behind no longer even possible. And still house sits. So we continue to pray in faith with good attitudes. It's just not His will. But when is anything ever His will...except for torture? But we'll weather this storm too. Kindness of others saves home from foreclosure at last minute. Blessing, yes. Price is dropped again. Everything we put into it lost. Money, lost. And we wait some more...in faith. And I question. House is saved for now....but that's so not even the point at this moment. It's not about the house. It's not about the money. It's about crying out to Him. It's about the silence.

Birthday morning dawns....phone call reveals that unethically charged phone bill will not be rectified and we owe 700.00 worth of phone bill. I pray fervently for God to move on supervisor's heart...nothing is impossible for Him. I rebuke satan and all spiritual warfare being waged right now....he has no room. We are covered and protected by the blood of Jesus that was shed on our behalf. I plead with God to please just do one thing...ONE freaking thing for us right now....and take care of this bill. ALL things are possible. This bill does not alter life....it's not a house....no one is going to hell or heaven...no testimony jeopardized by whether He pays this bill or not. Surely He must understand that. And so I plead with Him to work on our behalf. So I remain patient and understanding....I explain to numerous customer service employees what has taken place. Hours of my birthday spent on phone with robotic voiced people who clearly don't give a shit about anything taking place in someone else's life. They hear it all and their callousness is painfully evident. They might as well have just stated..."Ma'am...Verizon does not give a shit if you entered one digit wrong into your friends and family list. There is a bill and it must be paid. Have a great day!" So, I pray as pathetic synthesizer notes play and supervisors consult with the cellular god himself. I use many minutes spent on hold to continue to pray. This does not make or break anything in life. It's a freaking bill. God will answer. I have faith. Because it doesn't have to do with heathen landlord going to hell or not. It doesn't have to do with whether I am obedient or not. It was a tiny oversight in detail. Most of all I just beg for mercy....just once. Please.....work on our behalf. Please, Lord. Pleeeeease. This has been a year from hell....and it's my birthday. I know you love me but it would help if you'd show kindness.....just a little bit....and for my birthday. Please????? Little birthday love gift from God. Something so little just to show that He is still aware that we're here. Surely He will have mercy. So I plead through tears that He would show Himself and have mercy. Mercy. Mercy, God.  Please. Tears flow while minutes pass. It's not about Verizon, Lord. It's about me and you. Mercy. Please, please show mercy and just be here now. For me. For my sanity. Please? I have faith. Show me you hear me. Please? Childish, selfish, elementary prayer. I claimed in faith what I knew He could do. I had no doubt in the world monotoned, robotic lady would reemerge and state words I could so clearly already hear in my head, "Ma'am, we normally would not do this at all but given your situation and the fact it was clearly only one digit off we will make this exception just once." God I have faith. I can hear the lady's words before they come. I have faith. Tears flow, words quietly uttered.  Please, Lord.

And....

He doesn't.

So I hang up in tears because it's not just money at this point. It's Him. It's such a definite opposition to absolutely everything I ask of Him right now. In fact…to be rather honest, I feel as though if I pray for it the exact opposite will occur. I pour out thanks all day everyday. I stay on top of my attitude. I turn around the negativity and pessimism into gratitude and positive focus. I teach my children His words. I instruct them in His ways. I stress the importance of writing His truth upon the little tablets of their hearts. I stay focused on Him continually. I search. I knock. I seek. We seek as a couple. We pray for mountains to be moved within His realm. To use us as a testimony. To pour through us His love. Because I KNOW how much we have been given. Money....it's so overcomeable it's laughable. It's not the money. If the house goes into foreclosure....so be it. If our phones get cut off....so be it. We’re not dying. None of us are in danger. We’re all together. And we can always start over. But therein lies the problem. What good is starting over when God so obviously opposes your entire life? If He is not for us than how can we continue forth with anything in life? Tiny bit of birthday money saved up for camera...so excited. Yet birthday morning comes and even that tiny bit all stripped away by a God that could've had mercy. He could've had mercy in a ton of shit....but He didn't. If we have to pay the bill we just have to. I've given up a ton of shit in life and giving up the anticipated camera is just something else on the sacrifice list. I've done it before. I can do it again. That's just so entirely not the point. The point is....why didn't He move? Why doesn't He ever? After surviving the last 12 months of our life I now officially feel like we're in a sea without a shore. Boat comes, Jesus appears. But instead of haloed outstretched arm lifting up and saying "Come here, sweet girl. I've missed you and I'm not gonna let you drown" instead He reaches down and says "Hey...I need the raft for this dude over here." Raft taken, He pulls up the floating couple nearby, laughs His ass off while waving vigorously and He sails away...in the sea without a shore. And the boat and His waving arm are swallowed up into the sunset on the horizon. Because I didn't get a camera? No. Not even close. It's just not even about the camera, or the house, or Verizon anymore. It's just so personal that the ache runs a thousand miles wide and a thousand miles deep. I can talk on here about the grand epiphanies from God that I have. I can make myself believe for a little while that doing good is His purpose behind it all. That He's stretching me and I'm growing. I can pretend that axing the shit out of trees is why we are still here. But when it's just a bill that I pleaded for mercy….I cried out just to show me He is here, right here, right now, in this place we are in…when it’s just this…there is exasperation, desperation, absolute anger and total bewilderment. Because I've made the best of no a/c in house and van, I've made the best out of ass crack showing landlord, I've overcome the ticks, the mice, the toilets, the carpet, the syrup. I've dealt with the sickness. So I begged for Him just to answer a trivial prayer of making Himself known. To me. On a very personal note. But what the crap good does it do in life if we pray and pray and pray and nothing ever happens? What is the whole purpose of prayer if He already has a will and I'm not gonna change the outcome???? Why did I even pray for the bill to be forgiven if He's not gonna freakin do it anyway?

But it runs deeper. It always does. This page, these words...just the tip of the iceberg. Birthday dawns this year and my little 450.00 is given and then taken away....by a God....that just doesn't give a shit. It's like receiving a little birthday card opened in excitement to find a 700.00 bill signed "Happy Birthday! Just remember....I have called you by name. Love, God. PS. Remember to follow and long for me with a good attitude. Don’t forget the bill."

I seek. I search. I cry out in exasperation. I praise. We worship together...children and I. I teach them as eyes fill with wonder at His works. But then I live in reality...and the silence is deafening….and the blows…they just keep coming. We may just be raising massively little f'ed up people but I seriously cannot imagine parenting using the tactics that God is using with us right now. I don't have it in me to do to my children what He is doing to us. What point is there in life at all if He is not for us? What point is there if He stays silent and does not answer? Was I demanding my way yesterday in asking for Him to make Himself known? Was it being selfish and this is just a massively gargantuan pity party cause I didn't get my way???? I don't know. I just don't know. I do know that I beg. I plead, I cry out for mercy. I need you, God. I NEED you. I NEED to see your hand work just once in this journey right now. Just to give hope I can hold onto. Soul groans for Him. Insatiable thirst unquenched. So I plead with all of being. Answer this one thing and make yourself tangibly real right now....just once to give hope. And I can hang on. I'll keep on keeping on if you'll just give a little bit of hope.  But reality is….He already has and my mortal self forgets so easily. And to think that He is not for us because He is silent right now and that mountains to conquer are a bit daunting is closed minded and such boxed thinking. Why is it so easy to assume that when I don’t get my way or His silence is deafening that He is no longer present or concerned?

Maybe it's just to see if I'll keep on keeping on without the hope. So....will I? Honestly, somedays it's just not looking so hot. I search with all my heart. I seek. He says it's not a hide and seek game. But right now it's just kinda feeling like I go macheting through the amazon for months on end only to find that by the time I break through He’s over frolicking through some frozen tundra. We go trudging through that to discover that by the time I've managed that feat He's taken off to the depths of the Atlantic. So I build myself a submarine with my little scuba gear and He laughs and turbo swims away while shark devours self. And the whole things ends….and I never found Him. I heard Him. I could almost touch Him the entire time. At times, I did touch Him, fabric of garments sliding teasingly through fingers just out of grasp. And then He'd disappear into foliage again.

So, I decide I'm done. Because he cut husband's income for 4 weeks? Because I didn't get a camera I wanted? Because house didn't sell? Because we have to pay Verizon 700.00? Maybe. But maybe cause He's just gone. Or even worse...He just doesn't give a shit. Am I anxious? No. Not even a little. I don't doubt the fact that he provides. We have a roof over our heads and He's been faithful to give food and provision without fail. We have each other. I have all 11 of our babies. Which makes this post even more pathetic. We have health. We have a roof. We have food. But what happens when we don't have Him? He's just tossing bread crumbs out there enough to keep us alive? What happens when He stays silent, when prayers are an entirely huge waste of time? When seeking is fruitless, searching is vain, knocking is answered by a door slamming in face? I should be grateful for the roof, the food, the health. And I am. I really truly am. But that makes it even worse. I do pray and I am so overwhelmingly thankful…..humbled, in tears when I try to tell anybody of the last year of our life.

I don't know. I confuse myself. On my gravestone it can read "She finally rests in peace from her own head." Maybe..or I definitely should have....been focused on not what He could give me for my birthday in making Himself known but focusing on the vast amount of what He’s already done. Health. Absolutely beautiful children. 11 of them.  A husband that has the patience of Job with me and the inner war that rages.

It’s not about money. It’s not about whether a house sells or not. It’s not about a camera or a 700.00 phone bill. It’s not about a 90 degree house or mold so thick I can write in it. It’s about Him and a prayer that did not make or break life. It’s about a prayer He chose not to answer and searching for the why. It’s not about whether somebody was healed or not healed, lived or died, was saved or lost. It’s about a trivial 700.00 phone bill and pleading with a yearning, soul searching heart to see Him work….and He walked away.

Church…ain’t happenin. I don’t want to go and be greeted by smiles of people who pray and he answers. Who quote scripture, wrapped up in their comforts, and I sit tortuerd by turmoil of own head, heart yearning. Desperation to see Him move consumes all of life....yet reality being that I am so cynical at this point I'll shoot down everything that is said.

But as this post was written as dryer completely died, house rose to 90 degrees, window units began to freeze from weight of trying to cool entire house, as pay check decreases to worker’s comp pay and working husband is told to heal for 4 weeks, little dream house sits unsold, and life snowballs…..He is still good. Not because I feel it…but because I know it and I choose to believe even when I don’t feel like it. Because He is truth and does not contradict Himself. I know I’m not seeing the bigger picture with my finite, minute, human, fallible mind. I know that I’m completely missing the forest for the trees right now. And this walk….it’s not based on emotions. It’s based on fact and what I know to be truth. And WHY would I let one period in our life affect my walk with Him after all that He has done. Yep….I’m uncomfortable. Have been for awhile, actually. But I KNOW His goodness. I live it every single minute of every day. Of all people I know grace and His freedom. And when I get past the emotions of discomfort and the ensuing anger I remember how much mercy I have been shown. So, at this point in life it’s not about how I feel about Him. Because this is not a journey even remotely based on emotions…but about the diligence and determination to follow Him at all costs. At. All. Costs. It’s about being battle hardened and raising children who at early ages know the importance of this journey not being an easy one. Accept Him and you’ll be blessed and have the comforts of this world….cause, after all, ask and you shall be given, pressed down shaken together and running over. He will give you the desires of your heart. Right???? No. It has been so misconstrued by the church that it no longer even remotely resonates what the words really mean. It means sacrifice…a lifetime of it. And it means following Him even when every fiber of being screams in anger, cries out in His silence, pleads to hear His voice, and lies crumpled on floor in total desperation of feeling forsaken and abandoned…..rejected. Because I know I am not. And, in fact, am favored and He is allowing this to grow us, stretch us and toughen us up. Days come that I wonder why….why He chose us for this house. Torture? Maybe. But maybe it’s because He knew we were the ones that could handle it. We were the ones that could rise above and conquer….despite the kicking, fighting, screaming, being drug along way I tend to do it. How much easier I could probably make this journey if I just submitted early on knowing He has a purpose.

So I avoid church right now cause I just don’t feel churchy or like being churched. I follow when I don’t feel like it. And I trudge on because I walk in truth and this is not a journey of emotions when one grows tired, weary or just plain mad. It’s not always fun but it will always, always be worth it. “I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. I’m saying it’s going to worth it.” The very meaning of my name means I have been chosen to overcome. I will rise from this pure and victorious. Katherine Nicole. He has called me by name. I am an overcomer. I am victorious. I am a warrior. He IS good all the time. Without a dryer, in the 90.2 degree house, with a 700.00 birthday bill, and in the midst of an unsold house that is being practically given away and the debt that it leaves. He is good and I will choose to  believe it even when I don’t feel like it. Let me never become the sensuous Christian.

"The sensuous Christian is one who lives by his feelings rather than through his understanding of the Word of God. The sensuous Christian cannot be moved to service, prayer, or study unless she feels like it." R.C. Sproul