Dear friends, it's been an interesting week (or two).
The school year ended (with many conflicting emotions on my part), my summer officially began (with many conflicting emotions on my part), Steve had a birthday, and we completed a step toward adoption. With those things has come a sense of restlessness... a desire to keep moving forward and another overwhelming desire to beg for answers from the almighty.
In all of this, I came across an analogy which has given me some much needed peace and perspective. Not just in my current circumstances, but in my relationship with God in general. (initially it was much shorter than this, but I expanded it) I'm sharing it with you guys because maybe it will help you like it has helped me. Or maybe you'll think I'm insane. Whatever... here we go:
Think of your life as a house you own. Then, think of God as someone you initially hired to do some small repair work in that house, handy-man stuff. Maybe a leaky faucet or a ceiling fan installation. Then, one day you call on him for another small repair and the next thing you know, he's torn down a wall and cut the power to the kitchen. You're pissed. He never cleared these plans with you. You never even saw a blueprint! You're convinced he is out to ruin your house and everything you've worked so hard for. When you call him on this, he just says "trust me, I'm giving you something better than you've ever dreamed of" and continues building seemingly random structures on your property and, in your opinion, making a huge mess of things. Sometimes so much has changed that you fear a full-out caving in of the whole thing.
What's worse, he keeps bringing people in and out of your house. Some of them are awesome and you hate to see them go, others stick around for a while and assist God in projects, while others seem to simply be there to cause destruction and make the mess infinitely worse.
You consider kicking him out of your house so many times. You look at the wreckage and think "I can rebuild it from here" or "I can live with this level of destruction, but I can't risk any more". You yell at God and accuse him of being reckless with your house and being untrustworthy. You rage at him for seemingly ignoring your wishes. You keep telling him "I was happy the way it was" and complain to anyone who will listen about how he is bullying you. From time to time he tries to tell you about his plans, but you're so busy being angry you don't hear him speak.
Then, one day the dust of the demolition and construction starts to settle and you can begin to see the plan moving forward. You get little clues about the amazing things in store for you and you begin to see those random structures and ripped down walls as aspects of a new, amazing house full of features you never knew you wanted. The people he brought in and out start adding decorations to the inside and the gardens that you would have never thought to look for.
You finally begin to understand that maybe God has a better handle on things than you thought, or that the destruction and mess might have been worthwhile after all. Although things aren't finished yet and it's still more messy than you would like, you stop yelling at God so much and even start asking him how you can help every now and then. You may not like the decisions he is making sometimes, but you've started to trust that there is a reason for each ripped out wall or ugly wallpaper print.
Like I said, that analogy brought me a lot of peace. I'm still currently in the middle of the destruction, but think I'm beginning to see some parts of the design coming together. My conversations have started to become less accusatory and more of a give and take.
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