A Matter of Days

I just finished re-reading Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge. It was a gift from a friend in high school, an amazing woman of God that I had the pleasure of knowing for a couple years before I graduated and left town. She's one of the few that I wished I had actually kept in touch with. But that's besides the point. I read Captivating when I was in high school and it shed quite a bit of light on my life at the time - for one thing, it lead me to realize that the crippling stomach cramps I would get after breakfast most mornings were actually a form a spiritual attack that I needed to rebuke in the name of Jesus. I know, crazy, right? But I don't get those stomach cramps anymore. Or if I do, I immediately send them packing and feel fine again. But since I read it in high school, I'd never picked up the book again, even though it was gifted to me by my friend.

Let me rephrase that: I've actually tried to read it a couple times, but could never really get into it. Until this week. I realize now what the problem was: I was reading the book before from a position of strength (whether real or imagined, it's hard to say), all skepticism and know-it-all. But this time around, when I picked up that book, it was not from a position of strength, but one of weakness. I won't say that I haven't had a good season here, but I also won't say that I always made all the right choices. In fact, I made a handful of really stupid ones, and at least once I had to cry out to God to come in and rescue me from a situation that I had gotten myself tangled up in. That's when I decided it was time to re-read this book for reals.

And I devoured it. I picked it up on Sunday and read through over half the book in one day. I continued to read a couple chapters each day until I finished it off this morning. I realized that, as much as God wants me to be able to stand tall and make good decisions, he loved that I called on him to rescue me, and his coming through for me was a sort of sign that he wants to be more present in my life. The bike ride that I went on last week Sunday was a gift from God, a romancing of my heart, put there special, just for me. And I realized something that I have had to continue to re-realize multiple times in my life: that I keep staking my worth in others, or in my own damned self-determination, instead of asking God what he thinks of me; and it's in doing the former instead of the latter that I tend to start messing things up royally.

In a matter of days, my time here will be done for the season, and I will be driving across the country on my way home. Much of my time will be spent crossing the desert - some parts of which I have seen, others I have not, and there is one Bible verse that keeps coming to mind, "I, the Lord, will lure you into the desert and speak gently to you." (Hosea 2:14) I can't help but think that God has good things in store for me on this trip, and I'm going to treat it as a sort of "prayer retreat", if you will. Because it's just going to be me in my car, with Jesus beside me, and I think we've got a lot of talking and a lot of listening to do.