Confident of God's Presence pt2

I wanted to write a continuation of my original post "Confident of God's Abscence".

The night I wrote it I met with two friends who were called in on a "rescue mission". I would like to say that after talking with them I was confident of God's presence, but even after several hours that is not how the story goes. The next night I began reading Angela Thomas' new book My Single Mom Life in the beginning of the book she spends an entire chapter talking about exactly what I was feeling. My Divorce Care group was doing the chapter on forgiveness and the next chapter was reconciliation, but through all of this I still could not feel God. I felt as if I was enclosed in a glass coffin. I could see God on the other side of the glass, but regardless of how much I tried to reach out to God he kept running farther away from me. I felt ridiculed.

One of my closest friends, and one of the two that met with me on the first night talked to me daily about this struggle I was having. I knew he was praying and I knew he was getting frustrated with me because I just could not see it. Josh wrote me an email that week discussing three parables the lost sheep, the lost coin and the prodigal son. In the first two parables those who had lost something went looking for it, but in the last parable the father did not go looking. Instead he sat waiting for the glorious day that the son would return. The decision had to be the son's. The son had to return home in order to reap the benefits that the father was waiting to bestow. I would like to say that at this point I went running home to the Father, but that is not the case.

The next Sunday was baptism Sunday at Blue Ridge Community Church, let me pause here if you have never been to a baptism at BRCC you have missed a taste of heaven! I sat with Josh through the service, through the testimonies, through the lives that have been changed by God's unfailing love and I became more and more angry. I thought if God really did love me then why didn't he touch me the way he had touched them? Why wouldn't he let me catch Him or be caught by Him? The service ended with Amazing Grace (My Chains are Gone) by Chris Tomlin. I love this song and yet I could not sing it. I didn't feel set free. I felt entrapped, bound by chains that were not loosening they were tightening! Josh looked at me after the service had ended and asked what I thought. I asked if I could be honest and told him I was "pissed". He walked away and left me to my unbelief.

I had a job to be done (for church) so I went to complete my assignment. The team leader came to ask how things were going and all I could say was "I'm struggling". She asked for clarification, and again I said "I am struggling." She took me to another room so we could "pray" (that was the last thing I wanted to do), put her arms around me and I began to weep. At this point she told me "no, we aren't going to pray." I was relieved. "We are going to go find Peggy!" Fear and frustration struck me. I had never met this Peggy person, but I had heard stories and I had had three different people under different situations tell me that I needed to talk to her. So Shea drug me around the building looking for this Peggy person.

We found Peggy deep in conversation with another woman. So we sat and waited. After a few minutes, Shea called out to Peggy and told her we were waiting for her. My irritation grew.

When Peggy was able to excuse herself she came over got a quick run down, and I do mean quick! She began by telling me that she believed I was a "believer"--I knew all about God, but I wasn't a Child of God. She kept saying this over and over again. Finally! Something made sense!!!

Not to lessen the impact of the outcome, but we prayed and I became a Child of God. At that moment, while Peggy was holding my trembling body I felt the glass shatter and I felt a vacuum sucking me into God's arms. At that moment I could not be more sure of God's presence and love for me.

Confident of God's Abscence pt1

This was written November 9, 2008

Ok so I have a question…if the answer to life’s problems is “What would someone in my position do if they were absolutely confident that God is with them?” what happens if you don’t know you are absolutely confident that God is with you? Don’t get me wrong I am a believer not because I grew up in church but because I know that I have asked God into my heart and mind. But where is He? They say that if you are a believer that God is with you, but where is he? I want to feel him, I want to know him but where is he? I have felt the presence of God at times in my life, mostly a grave emptiness, a knowledge that there is nothing, that I am nothing, a whisper “you are nothing” then a filling after the emptiness. This harrowing experience followed by a long period of nothing, no fear, no happiness, no feeling.

I am angered by this. I want something. I don’t want that terrifying emptiness, but I don’t want the numbness either. I want to feel God’s power, the kind of power that “super-Christians” talk about. The knowledge that God is ever present guiding them through their lives, leading them every step of their way. I am further angered because I don’t know how to get this. Reading the Bible is just reading words on a page. Prayer?—talking to an absence.

I am a believer. I know God is real, that he sent his son to die for my sins, and I know that I have accepted Him, but what now? I am so tired of nothingness, of emptiness. I want desperately to be loved, to be touched, to be lifted by his never-ending love. I want to feel a relationship with God. I want to cry out and be heard. I want His words to be real to be living to be everything that “super-Christians” say it is. I want my prayers to be heard, to know that he is listening to me, to know that he cares. But how do I get there? Yes, if the answer to life’s problems is doing what someone who is absolutely confident that God is with them would do, what do you do when you are almost positive that God is not with you?

Now what

So I have started a blog! Now what?!?

I have dreams of posting daily the most inspirational and thought provoking posts you have ever read. Dreams of hilarious stories from the life of my precious munchkin. Dreams of posting life altering tips and strategies, recipes that will entice your taste buds. However, being the practical person that I am I will likely not take the time to make this the most tantalizing blog ever to be created.

I am a single mom with a three-and-a-half year old angel (most days), a full-time job, taking classes sometimes, leaning in to God's direction and spending a significant amount of time at a church that is teaching me how to do just that. Need I say more?!?