Dry Bones

Dry Bones

I prayed again to the God of all things good, knowing the scriptures that he would surely listen to. Knock and He would answer, so I knocked and I knocked until all flesh from my balled up fist were bare and I still found myself with no answer. Day after day I drug myself to a job I hated. A job that paid bills I began to hate, that helped to put a roof on a house that I began to regret and helped a hard-working man I began to resent. I wanted to quit. I wanted him to work more so I could quit. I begged him to trust God and let me quit. I made myself believe it was his lack of faith and not mine.  Each day more and more of flesh was left at that job until all that was left was bitter, brittle dry bones. I lay wasting away in field of misery with the bones of self-pity all around me. You have not because you ask not, whatever I thought. I have begged and yet my God still allows me to suffer. The God that parted the Red sea has seen fit to give me one failed interview in three years. I praised Him and swore I trusted him, yet with every unanswered resume, my flesh was dying and my true self was showing. Dry bones, untrusting, unwilling to pray for just one hour…. God, why do you keep me here at this job I hate? I would have taken any job He gave me or that I found for myself. Less pay, less hours, boring, tedious, beneath my skill set, anything. Dry empty bones lay wasting away as I spoke words of trust to all who would listen but spoke words of distrust to my God.

The hand of the Lord was on me, and He brought me out by His Spirit and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones.

² He led me all around them. There were a great many of them on the surface of the valley, and they were very dry. ³ Then He said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”

I replied, “Lord God, only You know.”

Ezekiel 37 1-3

Years of working in an industry struggling to keep up with ever changing technology had brought me to a place of insecurity. As my title did not change for 12 years, my job description did and yet I was unable to change with it. In period of 12 months I went from being a top performer to a failing employee. For 5 years my performance reviews reflected new expectations and failed to mention the things I still excelled in. The truth, I didn’t adapt well and my self-confidence was disappearing along with any hopes of promotion or raise. The last three years I was demoted and forced to take a huge pay cut. For financial reasons, I stayed with the company instead of taking a severance package and regret filled my soul the moment I accepted. From that moment my flesh started slipping and I desperately held on to hope that God would make my dry bones live.

⁴ He said to me, “Prophesy concerning these bones and say to them: Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! ⁵ This is what the Lord God says to these bones:

I will cause breath to enter you, and you will live. 6 I will put tendons on you, make flesh grow on you, and cover you with skin.

I will put breath in you so that you come to life. Then you will know that I am Yahweh.”

Ezekiel 37 4-6

The day came that I got a new job. As I began to work in a new environment my confidence started to come back. Most recently, God has used this company as a vessel to send my husband on a mission trip, when we had barely breathed the words, God will provide. This vessel has become like the daily manna that the Israelites experienced day after day. He is just in time with His gifts and slowly I am learning to trust His promise and His timing. I knocked and he answer, I ask and he gave. The timing perfect and everything just enough to get us through day by day.

So I prophesied as I had been commanded. While I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone.

 ⁸ As I looked, tendons appeared on them, flesh grew, and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them. ⁹ He said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, ^[a] prophesy, son of man. Say to it:

 This is what the Lord God says: Breath, come from the four winds and breathe into these slain so that they may live!”

 10 So I prophesied as He commanded me; the breath^[b] entered them, and they came to life and stood on their feet, a vast army.

Ezekiel 37 7-10

This weekend I was riding in my car when I heard a song about God breathing life into the dry bones I started to think about the last few years of my life and how I now feel. The last week at my new job has been wonderful with rewards from executive level to department level. The sense of employment there is wonderful with people smiling and truly happy with the company they work for. For me, I smiled and realized that the years of negative reviews and unrewarded accomplishment, that had stripped me of my flesh, was over. My God had not just given me any job to make me happy, He had given me an opportunity to rebuild me. He is breathing new life into dry bones and the field of despair is alive with fresh green grass, trees of abundant fruit, hanging low to pick and my dry bones have flesh once more. Only a God that loves us, loves us enough to listen to selfish prayers, while making us wait on his perfect plan.

Father, I thank you for breathing on my dry bones. I praise you for loving me in my weakness. You are almighty, everlasting, and on time. Someone today is reading this and they are laying in valley of dry bones. Storms of life have blown them there. Breathe on her, give her hope, assurance, and grace. Amen.

Losing Control

Losing Control

I stood over my bed smoothing out the 1000 thread count sheets I bought for almost nothing on Black Friday of the year before. As I turned the blankets and angled them just right, my thoughts drifted to the book I was reading during my morning quiet time. I thought about the words of a woman that was sharing her deepest pain and how that one event had shaped so much of her life. As I pulled the red comforter up and tugged it into place, fixing the mangled mess my husband, two cats, and I had left from the night’s sleep, I thought of the moment in time when my own life changed. That painful moment when memories stopped and childhood was erased. Instead of being taken back to the moment I heard my dad say, “She’s gone”, I was transported back to the few times over the last 23 years that I’ve come in contact with someone from that part of my life. A CNA named Stephanie or the man that bought the house my dad was forced to sell because a single income would not support the mortgage or the bills. Those moments were my fragile moments as I was transformed into a young girl that had lost her mother, no….not just her mother, but that lost control. CONTROL! Was that it….was that the word? No, that couldn’t be right. I always felt like a little, lost, crying, unstable girl that had lost her mother, but was that all. The realization of the epiphany I was having 23 years after the most painful time of my life was hitting and the bed was still not made as pillows lay tossed in the center and I reached for my journal.

When my mother died, I sought, without knowing, to stop being that girl. A little girl that lost her mother and could not control the outcome. As I grow older, I see my inability to be spontaneous and the smallest deviation from my plan can send me into a sea of raging anger. I become unglued when we plan a vacation and we or I plan to leave at 9 and we don’t leave until 10. More recently I get angry with my husband when work makes him work late, which is often, or when traffic delays him further. Leave on time, why don’t you leave when your 8 hours are up. That is the plan. That is how it works.

To say, my mother’s death did not affect everyone involved would be incorrect. We were all affected in different ways and I honestly believed that shortly after I accepted Christ, that I had dealt with her death and I was okay. Until this morning, that is,  when I realized that my need to control a situation is rooted in the very pain I long sense thought healed. Not the pain of missing my mother or wishing she had been here to meet my children, but the pain …..just the impossible pain that you experience when you lose a loved one…….

I watched as my mother lay in a hospital bed that was in her bedroom, wasting away to nothing. My family was split as my mother’s family wanted one thing and my dad and his family wanted something else. Horrible words were spoken and as the oldest, I witnessed. I had no control. On my 19^th birthday I got a call telling me my Father had a heart attack.  No control.  The night, my mother died, I listened as she breathed twice…..paused…..gasp for air, repeat…for hours, with no control. The next morning, I was told she was gone, and I heard foot steps leading to my younger siblings…..and I cried, with no control. I listened as my Aunt screamed, when I told her that her sister was gone and told me I was lying and hung up. I answered the phone again, and listened as a CNA called to check on Ms. Brenda and listened as she cried when I told her. LaRita was her name, she cried, and I had no control. I stood in a line that I don’t remember and watched as the three young children were sighed over as well-meaning friends and family cried harder as they thought of how young we were to lose our mother. I stood and watched as my baby sister had to be drugged away from the grave, screaming, “she’s afraid of the dark…..she’s afraid of the dark” and I could not fix it. No control. I packed up my belongings and moved out of my pink bedroom with a view of the pool in the back yard and moved into a tiny rented home, where I shared a room with my sister. I sat and held my 12 year old brother as he lay sobbing, thinking he had disappointed our mother before she died. I could not control his sadness, nor mine. So, one day I stood alone in the tiny rental house and I screamed at God in heaven, that I would never step foot in his church again. Control. This, I could control. Finally, something I could control. For the next few years, I took control of my life. I lived it with no rules and no care of anyone, including myself.

Why, 16 years after accepting Christ, did I have this epiphany, while making my bed? Why now? Why not, for example, while at the altar, during my first months as a new Follower of Christ? Maybe the things I have been through, recently, have prepared me. I just came out of three years in a job I hated, with which I lost complete control and had to depend completely on God, as my mental health failed me. I am still walking through a hurricane as I impatiently wait for God to restore my family and  my mind is constantly roaming to solutions and wishing God Almighty would allow me to take back control. I would say that now, is a good time to teach me this lesson.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving

let your request be made known to God.

Philippians 4:6

To completely understand this scripture, I needed to understand the definition of two words.

Supplication: the action of asking or begging for something earnestly or humbly.

Thanksgiving: the expression of gratitude, especially to God.

To let go of worry, stress, anxiety, control, we must first trust God. To say that I trust God is easy. I do in most things. However, I don’t like it, when He takes control away from me. When I can no longer see the outcome or control the situation I am in. When I found out that my job was coming to an end, I trusted God. When I was offered a job that was a demotion and paid $12,000 a year less, I trusted God. When I started to be unhappy with my job and began looking for the perfect job, I trusted that God would find it for me, but I didn’t like that He got to control the timing. In other words, when I prayed, I did not come to his earnestly believing that He had already found the perfect job , nor was I humble during my period of wait and I certainly was not thankful that God was waiting for the right job and not just putting me in a job.

I honestly don’t know where this epiphany is going to take me. I don’t know if I will loosen up and stop trying to control everything. I do hope that I am able to release my need to control. I think I am still shocked that 23 years ago a young girl of 19, lost control of everything she knew to be her world, and unconsciously started a journey of control. It didn’t happen overnight. I don’t know when it got so bad that I can’t get up in the morning a just drive to where ever the road takes me without planning it out. I do know when it started. Unconsciously, I made the decision that I never wanted to lose that much control of my life, again. It was a painful time and to this day, pieces of my life are gone, because I have blocked out so much. As God heals me, my prayer is that some of those pieces will come back to me.

When will your epiphany happen and what is it? What is it in your life that keeps you from being completely happy? What controls you? For me, the need to control every situation, controls my happiness. My prayer for you is that you will allow God to reveal to you, the way He has revealed to me.

Father, I am thankful for revelations over an unmade bed. I pray for all of those reading or not reading this that they are able to pray with supplication and thanksgiving to you. Let their request be made earnestly before the creator of the world. Amen

New Year Resolutions

New Year Resolutions

 

 

As with most New Years, I silently create a list of resolutions in my head. The number one resolution, to lose weight. You see, I have struggled with my weight from the time I was a little girl. I first noticed in Junior High school. (Middle School for those too young to remember Junior High) While all of the cool girls were wearing size 2 Guess jeans, I stuffing myself into size 7’s. By the 9^th grade (still in Junior High, because High School did not start until 10^th grade), my weight became a huge issue, in my own head. I, at the urging of another friend, started skipping meals and basically spending my days hungry. Thankfully, I have a very attentive Dad, and he noticed very quickly what was happening. One evening, while sitting in his chair, facing the TV, as I was walking behind him, he said something to this effect.

“Rhonda, I don’t know what you are doing? I don’t know if you are taking uppers or downers, or whatever you are doing, but if it doesn’t stop, I’m taking you to the doctor to be drug tested.” I had a healthy fear of my Father, still do, so thankfully that was all it took.

So with this story in mind, I wonder, how long have I hoped for the perfect size and what is that? If a size 7 was not the perfect size, then what is or was?

…….There is no one righteous, not even one.

Romans 3:10

The truth is, I have never been happy with my weight. I have never had a goal, only that I am smaller so I look like the perfect girl. We all look at the woman on the cover of the magazine or the woman advertising the newest health craze and long to look like her. Truth, we don’t want to put the hours in to look like her. It takes hours of working out, dieting, and dedication to look like those women. Or, photo shop. I am a real person, with a 40 hour a week job and an hour and a half round trip commute. I leave my house at 7 and get home at 5:30 if I am lucky. I cook dinner, wash clothes, help with homework, taxi kids to various events, and then try to relax before doing it all again. I love when someone says, you need to make time for yourself. Just carve out an hour a day, or 30 minutes, wake up earlier…..  Sigh…and deep breathe….

Like the scripture above, that reminds us that not one of us is righteous, not one of us is perfect. There was only one. This year, instead of making a New Year’s list of resolutions, how about make a prayer list of things you need the Father to help you with. Make it realistic.

For example, I am drinking black coffee this morning with a calorie fee, sugar fee, and fat free splash of caramel. I have a prayer request into the Father and removing certain things from my diet may help. I’m not trying to lose weight, although if eating a healthier diet, sheds a few pounds, I will not complain. I will need God’s help and I know that only He can.

For all have sinner and fall short of the glory of God.

Romans 3:23

Seek God’s advice when setting a resolution this year. Is it God’s will for you or is it your will for you? Last year, 2015 Rhonda, wrote a silly note for 2016 Rhonda. In the note I told myself the things I hoped that 2016 would bring. There were 4 things listed and God provided one. The other three, He is still being faithful, and I am still trusting. If you create a list of things you hope to accomplish in 2017, don’t get to down on yourself if you don’t achieve them. We all seek to have a perfect life, instead of just enjoying the life we have.

This year, I started with black coffee and it’s not too bad. Once I got past the first cup, the second one was better and number three is about to be even better. God will see you through. Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and the rest will fall into place.

Heavenly Father, Thank you for 2016. A year of growth, knowledge, and failure. I praise you for giving me the courage to start a blog and for seeing me through a very dark time. Just in time you provided a new job and I am forever grateful. We all have expectations of the new year, Father, I pray we seek you and let our expectations, be your desires. Amen.