Thursday, October 9, 2008

Miracles Despite My Lack of Faith.

2:25 PM by Christi Bowman

The pity party is over if only because I got what I wanted. God is good and He miraculously came through for me and I am so grateful; still their are lessons to be learned from this ordeal, and I want desperately to learn them.

Before this pity party of mine reached full blown status I humbled myself and prayed. I put my face to the ground and brought my needs before God. I told Him that I knew people suffered far worse than I did and that they would consider themselves lucky to have to live with my need forever. Still I confessed my need to Him and told Him exactly how I needed Him to meet it. I was a child begging my Father to do something nice for me.

I had a tremendous amount of peace after I prayed and then the bottom fell out from under me. The phone began to ring and when I answered it my world began to crumble (in a very middle class sort of way). As I reached for the phone I heard God whisper:

"keep it together I have it all under control. I will take care of you in this...trust me"

When I heard my husband, on the other end of the line, tell me what he had to say I lost it. Despite what I had just heard God say I refused to trust Him. I felt very alone and abandoned by everyone. The whole world sucked, in my opinion, in every way. I was all alone. When my husband walked in the door I exploded, and I continued to have explosive bursts all evening long. But even in the midst of explosive bursts I heard God whisper

"I have already got it taken care of...wait and see"

I also heard satan say

"buy yourself a bottle, if anyone deserves it you do"

I went to sleep last night praying in the Spirit. I knew I had messed up. I knew that my anger had gotten the best of me. I wanted to believe God, but I no longer felt like I deserved it. I was mad at satan's silly attack. Just how desperate did he think I was anyway?

I woke up this morning and checked my email to see if anything had changed. Their were no messages from my husband. Everything was as it was the night before and the ugliness found its way back into my heart. Satan was winning as I began reminiscing about how good my addictions felt and how easy it was to self medicate. I imagined how self righteous I would feel as I failed for good reason and how great it would feel to disappoint myself and others. I wanted to make people, especially my husband, hurt and feel as let down as I did.

And then it happened...my husband walked through the door bearing GREAT news, and just like that the problem was solved and in exactly the way I had asked God to solve it...though not as quickly as I had asked Him to in my prayer (and for good reason He was teaching me something). I would like to take down my earlier post and tell the story of God meeting my needs without including all the baggage that went along with it. But that wouldn't be right because that is not the way it happened. I was a spoiled little brat and God met my need anyway. I did not wait on Him and He chose to act. As a tribute to my lack of faith, I had accepted the fact that He was good in spite of not acting and that I had other lessons to learn. But that was not how this situation played itself out. He said He would come through for me and He did despite my lack of faith. I think we need stories like this one too so I will leave it as it played itself out despite how ugly and messy it looks and how vulnerable I feel.

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