A here while back, I will confess, I was very frustrated and angered ~ and sad, and mad, and confused, and worried, and exhausted, and anything else you can say that would mean a very-unhappy-discontent-and-hard-to-get-along-with-individual ~ about my life in general.
I wrote a post during this time that – even more than I knew – exposed my feelings perfectly. I didn’t mean to make myself so open, and have since a little regretted and a little appreciated it, and a very great deal learned from it.
I’ve never sought or desired to be one of those blogger’s whose life is a fairy-tale. So many bloggers I’ve seen only put the cheery, good parts of their lives up for inspection, and when you visit their blogs you get the feeling that these people never have anything wrong, never struggle, never worry, never argue.
I certainly don’t support laying all your problems out for the world to see; just to cry on someone’s shoulder so-to-speak. But I think a certain degree of the real-world is necessary.
I guess this is the writer-side of me talking; the one that likes the reality, the darker characters, the troubled stories.
I just want my blog to be real – show the real, sometimes faithless, jealous, struggling person that I am, instead of always the happy, joyful, full-of-praise part that seems to naturally come out whenever I’m around strangers.
I want people to see that, though I trust in the Lord Jesus and always try to seek Him in my life and depend on Him for Breath and Nourishment in each step of it, there are those times when I just sit and cry and wonder, “What for? What am I doing this for? What’s the purpose? Why!” or “Why do they treat me like this? What have I done?” or “What’s wrong with me?” or a dozen other questions we may ask ourselves in times of pain and trials.
I am human.
Not just a fairy-tale-live-in-a-mushroom-blogger.
So…enough of what the Lord taught me about blogging through A post with a rather different tone.
A few weeks after writing that post, I was still struggling with the same thing.
Of course, our situation had changed, jobs had come and gone (and not at all like I had expected/predicted), and life had changed.
But I was still struggling.
See, I was raised from about nine years old to when I was about twenty, with a family who all stayed at home. We did our schoolwork at home, Daddy worked at home because we would buy a run-down house, live there while he and Mama fixed it up, then in a year or at most two, we would sell it and move on. We never lived in the same place above two years. We’d use the money from the house we sold to buy another house of lesser value, have a little money left over, and then fix up the house we had bought.
None of us dreamed of ever working away from home – even when things got tough, we just prayed and trudged on through. Eventually the house we lived in would sell and we’d move to a new one with money enough to live on and keep the lights going – that was enough for us.
My sister and I didn’t worry about moving, never thought of the pain of leaving our friends, or not being able to be where we loved being anymore. We didn’t go to public school, the only friends we had were each other and our animals. Of course, we did occasionally meet girls our age (at one house I remember this; some girls who lived across the street took to coming over every day and riding bike for a while), but they were never like us, many of them were unbelievers, and we never really got along. So…it didn’t hurt our feelings any to leave these places. It was more an adventure – moving to a new house, seeing our new rooms, the new yards…new everything.
But I’m off the subject.
This constant at-home-ness inbred in me a feeling of place; of belonging. I belonged at home. I dreamt of one day marrying, staying at home caring for the house and little ones, and living on a big farm where my husband’s work was in the fields or cattle yards.
I hated the thought of college. As a young girl my happiest wish was to say I made it through life without the world’s so-necessary education. (I still feel this way.)
But we’ve lived here, at our home, for six years now.
We tried to do the same thing we always did, and sell the house after fixing it up, but due to unforeseen problems (including the economic slump) our house never would sell. We tried for two or three years, and it never would sell.
Of course, that led us to a problem. Our source of income was zip. And we still had as many bills – and more – as when we came here. We had to find a way to make a living somehow. We all fought it for a very long time, but eventually we knew, if we were going to keep our home, we’d have to go out and make a living – away from our beloved farm.
If you have been following my blog for very long, you should remember when my Dad passed his General Contractor’s exam and got his NC Contractor’s license, and then went on to get his SC license as well. That was the beginning of the long road we’re now travelling, becoming contractors for the City here near where we live, renovating low-income homes for the government.
Ever since work started I have kicked and balked against it. Not because I didn’t want to work {who does though? 🙂 } but because I didn’t like how much it changed our lives, and how it seemed to bring us back to our old life – the life we had before we knew the Lord.
(Daddy was a licensed General Contractor years ago and ran a business etc. We were born into that world, and it consumed our family in such a way that I hate all the memories of my earlier years.)
I didn’t want this to drag us back into what we were before.
I still fear this, and pray daily for the Lord’s Hand upon us and upon our work.
But, since my frustrated post of last November 27th, the Lord has been teaching me about my own view of our work, my own out-look on it and on life in general.
I used to think that I embraced change. I thought change meant rearranging your bedroom, eating supper in the living room instead of the dinning room, or washing dishes by hand instead of the dishwasher.
My idea of change was ever so wrong.
I do not take life changes easily – at all.
That I’ve found to my great sorrow. I fight against anything that changes my schedule or my routine, I argue against anything that rearranges my life (not my room), and struggle with anything that takes us away from home.
I still think that home is where I belong; cleaning, cooking, sewing, working with the goats, planting gardens (however poorly), writing.
How can I write when I’m painting!!!
This is where the Lord’s lesson through my November post came to me. It came slowly – ever so slowly.
Remember a few Thankful Thursdays ago I thanked the Lord for leading me to read Nehemiah?
Well, this is what I had reference to.
In Nehemiah, the author has led the remnant into Jerusalem and, despite adversity, they are rebuilding the wall of the city. They toil night and day, weapons in hand, to rebuild the wall of the city of the Lord.
The part the Lord blessed me with was the work of the priests. The most holy segment of the Lord’s people at the time ‘picked up their hammers’ (so to speak! 🙂 and worked with their hands to build the wall of the Lord.
He spoke to me as I read this.
If they worked thus, why shouldn’t I?
I’m sure they didn’t like what they did. They didn’t enjoy building that wall. But it was the Lord’s will for their lives at that given moment in time -just like His Will, so it seems, for our lives just now is to work in renovating these homes for the under-privileged.
I mightn’t think its where I belong – but its where the Lord Jesus has placed me.
Reading the story of the priests in Nehemiah strengthened me to His Will so much. I realized that life changes, and though it isn’t always easy at first, sometimes these changes are His will. Sometimes the challenges – the things we think are too dangerous – are His intent for us. When we think its against our nature; its according to His nature.
I still don’t like construction work – I’m a girl, for heaven’s sake! – but I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else. I’ve begun to see the blessings in this work; like I mentioned before. While the goats were kidding K and I didn’t go to work for a whole week – didn’t loose our jobs because of it. If we’re sick, we don’t have to call in sick; we just don’t go. If something happens and we need to be somewhere else, we just all pick up and go – no worrying about the boss.
There’s still responsibility. We have a deadline to meet. We have work that must be done in a certain length of time. The money isn’t tops, per se. We bid a round sum; none of us are paid by the hour, Carra and I individually don’t get paid, as paying goes. We all work for a common cause, if there’s anything to spare, we two may get some – and it goes immediately to supporting the goats. There’s no hoarding funds in this family. But there’s also no room and board paid to parents either.
Without forth-pouring our entire financial situation, are you beginning to get a small picture?
Though I hope one day to make money through my stories, and Carra and I hope one day to have a working farm to support of family(s) through, we still must make money now.
And since we can’t do it at home (or rather, by selling our home!) anymore, we must go out and make it, in the same profession we were raised in.
I’d rather do this than be bound to a 9-5 schedule on someone else’s time, doing work I don’t really like to do – getting yelled at each time I send a text, or check-in on facebook because I’m on the clock. 🙂
Though I don’t like the work, I like it better than anything else I can see just now, and the Lord has created this way for us.
Like the priests in Nehemiah, He has called us – or me, rather, since I’ve had such a fight against it – to pick up my hammer and accept the change He’s given me in this new time of my life.
Childhood is over – days of sitting and just writing and playing piano are gone. In my early twenties its time to pick up and ‘move’ in my mind – to a different pasture; where I have to browse instead of just graze around my feet.
And actually, since Jesus has shown me this, I am more and more enjoying this new life.
Actually I found myself looking forward to work beginning again after the goats had finished their kidding. I look forward to the weekends when we’re at home, but then I look forward to Mondays – the Lord has given me a set time for writing now; mainly on workdays! I never imagined my writing time would improve through having to be away from home!
I still have my fears. Particularly about this work dragging us back into what we were before.
Before we had a business, we worked to build that business, and be successful.
Now, we only have a business because its necessary if we work in the city to have some sort of name to go under. Our business name is Yeshua’s Builders – Yeshua being Hebrew for Joshua, which is Greek for Jesus. We’re working under our Lord’s name. Not building a business, or trying to be successful Just trying to pay the bills and buy groceries, and goat feed.
I pray it stays this way.
Just as I have seen that this bane is actually a blessing from my Jesus for my life personally, may we all see that this work is for Him, not ourselves. Not for the business, not for expanding, not for being contractors, doing good work, or making a name for ourselves. Its for honoring our Jesus, we’re working under His Name. He’s given it to us to make a living by. And that’s all.
May Jesus bless everyone this beautiful Sunday!
My Life in Him 