Reassured

Sometimes I just need to be reassured. For the past year or so I've been living month to month. Sometimes I've been able to pay all of my rent by the first of the month, but more often than not, I've had to write multiple checks. During those particular months I was constantly thinking about money - how much I still owed my landlords and how much I'd need for bills, followed by how much I had earned towards next months rent. It gets to be a tiresome cycle.

When this first started I became very concerned about how my landlords viewed me. Would they think that eventually I'd stop being able to pay rent altogether? Would they feel like I was taking advantage of them? Personally I started feeling like a failure because I couldn't pay on-time. Being the product of a banker and the church treasurer it was ingrained in me that you pay every bill on-time. I've yet to tell my parents about my rent situation or my credit card situation (that will probably end up being a separate post).

Anyway.....this month is another one of those months where I'm short on my rent by $200 or so. I'll get paid in a couple of weeks and I will pay them the rest, but I've found myself in the cycle again. The summer is quickly approaching and I'm still not 100% certain how I'm going to make enough money to pay the bills. I'm also still uncertain as to my fate in September. At the moment I may be able to get my job back, but I have to wait until May 18th for the public to vote on this new budget proposal. Even then I'm not sure if my job will be given back to me or not.

In the midst of these uncertainties I've often wondered what God is doing. Will things get so desparate financially that I'll be forced to move because I can't pay rent? Where would I move to? Although I often long for something new and to be able to move out of the garage I also know that I have one of the best deals in this part of New York. I know that God will continue to provide for me, but I also know that it may look very different than what I think.

Last night I ran into my landlord. Honestly I've tried to avoid both of my landlords because of my rent situation. I especially try to avoid them the day before rent is due when I have to give them another note along with my check saying that the rest will come in a couple weeks. However, my landlord was in a talkative mood when I met him. He asked me about my job situation (gulp). I was honest with him....it is in the paper after all. He told me that both he and his wife were in similar situations with their jobs. He made a comment about how "fun" it was to "always live life on the edge". I agreed....then told him that if it weren't for my faith I honestly didn't know how I'd get through this rollercoaster. He then asked me how long I'd been living there. Not quite knowing where this was going I responded "It'll be 3 years in August". I also apologized for not always being able to pay my full rent on time. His response "Don't worry about it - you've always been very good about the rent. In fact you've been the perfect tenant and my wife and I are very lucky to have you here." I was really humbled....but it was also the reassurance that I needed that I wasn't going to be asked to leave my home anytime soon.

The Horizon Question

I absolutely love the ocean. Nothing speaks to me of God's awesomeness, power, and strength better than watching the waves crash upon the shore. I spent this past weekend in Cape May, NJ for a women's retreat. The room where we stayed at had a direct view of the ocean. There were a couple of times during the weekend where I remember sitting on the couch looking out at the ocean....staring at the horizon to see what was just beyond. It was almost hypnotic.

During one of the talks our speaker gave, she asked us to leave thinking about a time we could remember God meeting us. For the life of me I still cannot remember the exact wording she used, but in my mind I will forever remember it as "The Horizon Question" because the horizon is the place where the sky meets the sea.

My desire is to have future posts describing "Horizon Moments" in my life....those times where there is no doubt in my mind that God and I have had some sort of encounter.

Mountain Building

Earlier this month I visited the Red Rock Amphitheater near Denver, Colorado. Despite the frigid wind which made it hard for me to really enjoy being outdoors, the sheer magnificence of these "rocks", as it were, simply amazed me. I have to be honest though, I didn't really value the significance of these rocks until the other night as I was viewing my photos. As I looked at and really studied these landforms I began to wonder how such things entered into existence.

Thank goodness for the Internet! In a matter of minutes I was able to ascertain the details of these rocks creation. According to the "all trusty" Wikipedia I found out that the Red Rocks are made up of sandstone that had first been eroded and then lifted up by "mountain building due to plate convergence". Um, ok..."what the heck is that?" I wondered. It's been longer than I thought since I last tutored high school earth science apparently. Back to the wonderful search engine box. I found a site called geocraft.com which described plate convergence like this: "Spectacular mountains result from the collision of continental crust as tectonic plates collide, buckling and bunching continental crust along their impinging plate margins. This movement is slow - only a few centimeters a year, but these forces are so powerful that some of the largest mountains in the world were created by this process."

Wow!! It hit me that this magnificent structure was built by first being torn down and then by being built up again and the whole process was torturously slow, if not downright violent at times, in my opinion. Which sounds remarkably like my life at times. I have times where it seems like my life is eroding. The world as I know it comes figuratively tumbling down around me. During these times my faith is being tested....sometimes it seems completely shattered....but it never totally disappears. The process feels rather turbulent, though in hindsight it is completely necessary to break down my previously held misconceptions about life, about who God is, and about who I am in Christ.

Then there is the process of mountain building. Those times when God uses others along the way to encourage me, when the Bible or a message specifically speaks to me or the situation I am going through. The days when I clearly see my prayer requests being answered and when I feel a strength inside of me that only God can give.

This whole process seems long and arduous to me. However, when I take the time to stop and look around me I've noticed my perspective has shifted over the years and that life looks very different now than when the sands first started to shift. Maybe, just maybe, I'm standing on ground that is slightly higher than it once was.

"Great is the Lord, and most worthy of praise, in the city of our God, his holy mountain." Psalm 48:1