Something's burning...

So I haven’t posted anything in awhile.  Not sure why.  Maybe life has me too busy.  Maybe I didn’t have too much to say.  Could be because I was down in a hole and just focused on the four people in my casa.  I went through this patch where EVERYTHING I did was wrong, inaccurate, not right.  I’d go up when I should have gone down.  I’d go left when I should have gone right.  You say Black and I’d say White.  Awesome.  That does a lot for your self esteem.  So I kept in my hole and just tried to keep my little peoples wheels on their tracks, going day by day and not looking too much further past that. 

And it’s been summer.  We’ve been lazy.  Our favorite preacher retired.  We’ve skipped church.  Such a weird coincidence that when I start skipping church, I start feeling blue.  Devil creeping in perhaps??? 

The good news is that our new pastor arrived at the beginning of the month.  I think I’m going to like him.  His first sermon was on Calm and Chaos.  He talked about how sometimes God throws a little chaos our way amidst the calm, to stir things up and get us going in HIS direction.  We might not like it, it might make us uncomfortable, it might be scary but it’s divine chaos and part of His will. 

This past weekend, we were up at my parents’ farm.  We drove up Saturday morning, and as we pulled in, the air smelled of fire and we could see smoke billowing from the back pastures.  We pulled up to the house where my sweet Mom (whose bday is today! HBD MOM!) was all a twitter.  My dad was working in the back acres purposely setting his pastures ablaze.


I tried to settle my Mom down but honestly, I was a twitter about the pasture fires too.  In a bit, my dad came in, proudly grinning from ear to ear.  He was so pleased of the work he was accomplishing.  He could see the worry in our faces so he loaded all the women in the family in the golf cart and drove us out to show us, convince us that everything was under control.  In our eyes, it did not look under control.  From our perspective, things looked a little chaotic.  But my dad was persistent in his convincing.  Dad kept saying, “This is on purpose!  It’s going to be great.  I’ve got it handled.  I’m just  burning off the bad to allow the good to come up.” 

Well, the ladies didn’t get it, continued to panic and demanded to be taken back to the house.  (If you don’t know my family, we have quite a history of now-funny, then-not-so-funny stories of things going awry.  Because of said history, the ladies were headed back to the house to start hosing things down! J)  After a little time had passed, I went back out there to just make sure things were still “under control”.  They were and as usual, I was a panicked wreck for no good reason.


It did get me thinking though, about God and His divine chaos.  When my world is spinning out of control, when He’s molding and shaping me and putting me through the fires, can I hear Him talking to me?  Or am I so worked up and panicked and stressed that I can’t hear him whispering to me?  Am I missing His message?  Is He saying, “Courtney, relax.  Don’t be afraid.  Don’t panic.  Quit worrying.  I’m doing this on purpose!   I’ve got it handled”?

And while I’m panicking and freaking out, what does that say about my TRUST IN HIM? 

Sunday's sermon was about New Beginnings.  We are gearing up for the new school year. A time where I’m re-doing, re-organizing and re-working.  New things tend to make me nervous.  I fear unknowns. And this year might be scary.  There might chaos too.  But it sounds like it’s the perfect time for me to RE-LAX, RE-NEW and RE-ALIGN myself with God and His plans for me.  After all, it’s His plan, not mine.  He’s doing it all on purpose.  I may not “get” the chaos but God does.  Maybe it’s a lesson for me to worry less with all the extras and just keep my focus on HIM.  God’s got it handled.  And He has promised that He will take care of the bad so that all the GOOD can come through. 

Thank you, Lord.  I’m so grateful.