A new season

If I end up with a professor who is prone to talk for long periods of time I sometimes have a wandering mind.  As I sat in Imaginative Writing this week I got stuck on a part of the lecture.  My professor was discussing how a writer's work was never finished.  Revision is a constant.  A work may seem finished but if it is picked up a week, a month, a year, or ten years later, the writer's eye will find errors (and arrogance I think).  I smiled, remembering old papers, journal entries, and blog articles that I read over the break that made me cringe.  Especially cringe-worthy is one I wrote only a week or so ago.  This is going to be a long one, so please forgive me.

From last week: "Every new year I choose a new Bible verse...This is not my verse for the year, but it is along the lines of what I will choose...I am naming 2011 The Year of Truth.  I want...I must know... It is funny how the simplest of things can be so hard for my mind to wrap around.  To trust I have to let go of my notions and rely on God."  

It doesn't seem bad at first glance, but as I end the day...a day of listening to God instead of telling Him what I want for this year...I find it arrogant.  It was all about "I" and my plans instead of being patient and waiting to hear what His plans for me were.  

Let me tell you a bit about the past year or two.  Before being diagnosed with asthma in the spring of 2010 I had struggled for quite a few years with bronchitis that had finally become almost a constant in 2009, interspersed with bouts of pneumonia that did not want to end.  Pair that with a serious vitamin D deficiency that had resulted in depression.  I did not feel good.  I was not healthy.  I was not happy.  

During this time my relationship with my grandmother was deteriorating.  There are many things that had been ongoing since my childhood that I did not see until after I had children. As I had children and I saw her transfer her affection from one to the other I had to discuss things with her, discuss how my children could not be treated badly in favor of the new darling.  How she must never tell my children their parents did not love them as much.  How she was not to talk badly about my cousins and their children in front of my girls.  It always ended in tears and emotional blackmail concerning what a poor parent I was and how she was so mistreated by me.  Things worsened as she developed dementia and all pretense of love and kindness evaporated.  In early 2010 we severed ties as I would no longer allow her to be around my children without supervision. If she could not have free reign she did not want to be in our lives at all.  It was a painful decision, but one I do not regret.  

2010 was a difficult year for Cole.  Her thyroid and hormone problems worsened and we did not understand the full implications of that.  Increasing panic attacks and uncharacteristic behavior had made things tense.  She then decided that she would stop taking her medicine.  Which, we found out later, could have killed her.  This came immediately after an old friend lost her first born child who was Cole's age.  Her loss drove home all the harder what my loss could have been.    

It has also been difficult for Barry.  While his job had been a good one for this area, the yearly winter shutdown had grown from two weeks to months on end, and for most of last year he was off work.  He went back for a short period of time and then in October of 2010 he was on lay-off for the last time.  No more job.  No more insurance.  He had forethought this might come and had gone back to University, graduating in 2009.  Eighteen months later and not only had he not found a new job, he lost the one he had.    

Through most of this (except the episodes of depression) I remained optimistic.  Things could be sorted out.  I was sure of it.  I made plans, I expounded ideas, I poured my energy into them.  It would get better, I knew it.  But it did not. 

I thought that I just needed to get closer to God.  I started making plans and schedules for that too.  But, the thing is, I cannot schedule God.  Do not misunderstand me.  It is not wrong to want to desire things in the Lord, or to set aside time to spend in prayer or in the Word.  But that does not feel like what I was doing.   It felt more like I was trying to bend God and wrap Him around my needs and my plans.  Perhaps that is why I never could settle on a verse for this year, why I never felt peace about it.  

This morning I was thinking about a sermon my pastor (and dear brother...well, Barry's brother, but I claim him too!) had preached concerning Psalm 121 " ¹I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. ²My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth."  The choir was singing and I was thinking about how he had discussed the grammatical construction of the sentence and his study of the verses.  First, notice the comma.  It causes a pause between the two thoughts in the sentence.  Instead of assuming that the Psalmist is saying his help comes from the hills, he is looking at the hills and making an entreaty that he then answers.  Hills were not friendly places for travelers.  Think of the parable of the Good Samaritan. The Psalmist is looking at the hills and perceiving the danger and asking where his help will come from.  Then, he answers himself.  "My help cometh from the LORD..."

That is when it dawned on me.  Even in the midst of my smiling and professing optimism I was looking at the hills and worrying in my own subconscious way.  I find it so unacceptable to not be optimistic that I buried my worries.  They seeped out though.  Nights I could not sleep, waking between dozing to feelings of terror, days when I could do nothing but cry but did not "know" why, headaches, stomach pains, and nervousness.  I was looking at the hills that were full of dangers but instead of saying, "My help cometh from the LORD," I  kept making plans for how to fix things, even at my darkest point when Cole was at her worst.  

As I stood there in my tender moment of realization the Lord spoke to my heart in a still, quiet voice and told me, "I am the only one who can free you from these things.  I am the only one who can fix them." Tears filled my eyes.  Then the choir came to the chorus of "Days of Elijah"

Behold He comes
Riding on a cloud
Shining like the sun
At the trumpet's call
Lift your voice
It's the year of jubilee
Out of Zion's hill salvation comes

And then I knew why I never figured out my verse for the year.  You see, it is not The year

of truth.  It is the year of Jubilee.  The year of Jubilee was a special time 

for the Jewish people.  It was a cyclical event in which land reverted to its original owners,

debts were forgiven, and slaves were released. 

So I asked the Lord, is this what You are trying to tell me?  That I need to be freed from 

these things, that I need to take possession of what is mine?  I tend to ask a lot of questions.

I think I got my confirmation from the evening sermon, "A New Season." 

I am ready for a new season. 

There may be things that are completely out of my control, but they are not out of God's 

control.  I may not be able to change my grandmother, but God can give me peace 

about the situation. 

I am healthier and so is Cole. 

I believe that God is working in Barry's future. 

God does require things of me, but I cannot work myself away from problems and 

closer to Him. 

I CAN be released from the bondage I have been in.  The worry, the fear, and the 

belief that my plans are going to see me through. 

Perhaps my verse this year should be: 

Psalm 62:1 Truly my soul waiteth upon God: 

from him cometh my salvation.

I'll let you know...after I pray about it.