Simply Help

Nathan Anderson is buying a new car on Monday. Watching him do business has really made me realize I should probably take a better look at my financial state (especially after hearing him criticize himself for, quote, "spending money like a college student would"). Hmm. So, I've just been playing around on Excel for the past hour, raising both eyebrows every time a shocking number arises.

With my measly $8/hr wage (which is actually the highest base wage I've ever earned), I bring in about $585/month. My rent alone is $577, excluding all bills. Then there's water, electricity, cable/internet service (which you have to have these days for school), and speaking of school, there's school. Did I mention school? Yeah.

So, not even counting tuition/books (although let's go ahead and put that at about $9,000 a semester), I need almost $600 more than what I make each month (and that's only if I stop eating fast food, which is almost impossible for a busy college student, and limit myself to $80 of "fun" money each month). I've been floating on an extra loan I took out this semester, but I calculated that out and determined that if I keep the current budget I have, the $2,000 I have in savings will be gone within four and a half months, if that. Conclusion? I need to be making twice as much per hour as I currently am. And I need someone to pay for my tuition. (ha!)

I have a class this semester that is titled "Understanding Poverty". We have spent the better part of this semester researching the effects of having a living wage; mainly, we have focused on the Labor Union's fight against Vanderbilt University for a living wage to its employees. In Nashville, the EPI estimates a living wage (how much money the average person needs to cover basic needs including rent, bills, and food, without asking for government assistance) at about $10.13 an hour.

Funny how students, who have more to pay for than many other categories of people, somehow always get paid between $5.15/hr and $8/hr. It's so disheartening...It makes me wonder if I'll ever break even, much less be able to save for things that are important to me, like a wedding, a family, or paying off the school loans that I was forced to take (and that still aren't enough).

I find it interesting that most students are considered below the poverty line, and yet we mostly all look "middle class" ish. We are poor, and yet we live as if money were no concern. It is as though we are stuck in between two worlds, financially. We are often stuck that way emotionally and spiritually as well, anxiously waiting for 'real' lives to begin. Even our prayers seem contradict themselves.

Father, help me to untangle the mess in my thoughts. Help me to be content with today, and not worry so much about the future. Yet, help me to plan for it as much as I can. Help me to not worry about graduating, and yet help me to do well in my classes. Help me not to worry about when/where/how I begin my life with my husband, and yet remind me to pray for him every day. Help me not to sweat the small stuff, and yet help me to give thanks for every moment. Father, help me. Simply help.

Catching up

People have always told me I'm very mature for my age. My own mother has mockingly called me a forty-year-old midget since I was about nine, which I have nearly always taken as a compliment. But the more I 'catch up' to my mental age, the more I realize how much I never knew, never understood about what it means to be an adult.

I've been thinking about this a lot, in terms of the relationships I have built around me in the current phase of life that I'm in. My friends, for example, are no longer just the social 'hang out' type of friends that I had in high school. My truest friends now are the ones I share more than the surface of my life with--they know the details of my heart. Not only that, but they care about the details of my heart.

I have this problem, though: I don't like people to know the details of my heart. I'm afraid of it.

I don't really know exactly what one thing spawned this whole 'anti-trust' issue, but for the past several years I have clung to it religiously, almost as if I am afraid I will drown without it. I don't really think it was just one thing...but perhaps a category of things, titled "broken promises". Those always do tend to make one a bit cautious.

It's not really fair. The people who are in my life right now have done nothing to deserve my walls, my caution...my brokenness. They have broken no promises to me, have abandoned no trust. And yet, my fight or flight risk takes over time and again when faced with someone who wants to penetrate my heart, if only to better know me and come to love me.

The Lord, He has broken no promises to me either. He has never taken a piece of my heart and returned it in a worse state than it was given. He has loved me, unconditionally, and has given me no reason to hide--and still I do. From Him, and everyone else as well.

Father, forgive me for my hesitation to let You invade every space of my heart. Your Spirit, a great cloud which used to dwell in a holy building, now resides in the hollows of my body. If You are already there, why do I fight against Your loving presence? Why do I resist the presence of my friends in my heart? Why do I run when Nate pries into my thoughts, lovingly and carefully? I have no answer, Lord, except that I am scared. Please help me to trust Your presence in me, and so learn to trust Your presence in the rest of Your children. And help them, Lord, to have patience with my brokeness. I love You.

Exposure

Satan loves to disguise himself, and the Spirit loves to expose him. The Great Deceiver, as Christians often call him, looooves to take seemingly innocent, 'it happens every day' sorts of things and use them to his advantage. I've known this for a long time, but knowledge isn't the same thing as wisdom; therefore, I often look right past Satan and his schemes, seeing only my own faults and blaming myself for his dirty work.

Nathan and I recently decided to change the nature of our relationship to where God is the center of it, rather than ourselves. We had each been ignoring our faith for months, and as a result had not grown spiritually as individuals, much less as a couple. And so we agreed to take one step at a time until the Lord became the glue between us, as He should be.

This is where Satan stepped in. He promptly put fear in my heart for the first week, making me unsure as to what to do first in order to bring God into my life with Nate. The next week, Nate's grandpa died, and he was gone all week attending to funeral arrangements and family. While home, he contracted a cold from his sister and has been sick for the week and a half since.

A little fear, a family death, a common cold--innocent, everyday things, right? I no longer think it is that simple--for two weeks, I have barely seen my Nathan, and for three weeks, nothing about our shared spiritual life has changed.

It finally dawned on me, after spending days on end muttering angry comments directed mainly at myself, that it isn't entirely our fault that nothing has changed yet. Satan had our hearts for the past few months, but when we finally decided to give those same hearts back into the loving arms of our God, the evil one took every effort to keep us from taking any action towards affirming that decision. He knows that our hearts are now in the right place, and that our desire is to love the Lord. He also knows that if we spend any real time together, we'll start to share that love--the holy and pure love of the Lord--with one another. It is Satan's worst nightmare, Christians sharing Christ, and apparently he will do anything to stop us from accomplishing it.

I'm a bit frustrated, especially since I realized all of this a few days ago and have been praying against it since, to no avail. In church today, Tim said something that caught my attention immediately: "heading in the right direction does us no good without the power of God." A decision like the one Nate and I made is useless until we begin to rely on the power of our Almighty God, rather than relying on ourselves. Such a statement would make almost no sense to a non-Christian, but to me it is "the very aroma of Christ."

It is a simple truth that we who belong to the Lord must rely on Him, must trust Him, in order for our prayers to be heard and our enemies defeated before our eyes. Yes, I have turned my heart back towards the Lord after months of apathy. Yes, I have been reading in His word and learning about Him, talking about Him...But, I have not leaned on Him. I have not been witness to His power. In fact, I have not even asked Him to show it. I have not believed that He is truly in control...and for that, it is I who suffer at the hands of sin and the one who brings it.

Lord, let me be filled with belief in You, trust in You, and reliance on the power of Your Holy Spirit!

I Slept, but My Heart Was Awake

I once prayed in deep confusion to the Lord, "Father, how much it must pain you to have to raise a fully grown young woman as a mere babe in Christ. I am nineteen, in my eyes. In yours, I am barely a year old, since that is when I gave my life to you. To see me, far past the innocence of childhood, and for You to be so determined that I should return there...How can it be done?"

I am confident that it made perfect sense to Him, however much it confused me to utter the words. (The Lord in all His infinite wisdom is never far from such prayers.) And, He had an answer....to break me.

The Lord shattered me into a million pieces through my experiences in Abilene, leaving me spent, and yearning. In my three years there, I dealt with a multitude of pains, each molding me and teaching me how to let go of the control that I have so vainly grasped at with clutching hands day after day. I left the tumult of Abilene in May, and by August had learned the simplest and most valuable lesson of my short life thus far: My heart is not my own.

One might think I would have learned this nearly eight years ago, the hour I first believed in the existence of God and His eternally lasting grace, giving Him my acknowledgment. If not then, surely I would have learned it when my face emerged from the baptismal pool, dripping with renewal and dedication three and a half years ago, giving Him my life. But my heart is more stubborn than most other parts of me, and is--regrettably--the only thing I refused to give.

Our Father does not give up until He has captured and invaded every hollow of our souls and lives. He will not settle for only your acknowledgment or dedication; He wants your heart as well. And, truly, there is a piece of each of our hearts that will remain listless and dissatisfied until we give Him what He wants. Unfortunately, it is not as simple to live out this lesson as it is to realize it.

There are moments, days, even months at a time during which I sleep. Yes, sleep. I sleep as one who lacks the strength, lacks the love to rise and face the day and its demons. I sleep as a fitful child, scared to dream of what might be better and scared to wake to what has not changed. Stuck, in the apathetic in-between, for as long as it takes for me to realize I do not belong there.

I slept, but my heart was awake. Listen! My lover is knocking: "Open to me, my sister, my darling, my dove, my flawless one."

The heart, it never sleeps. Even when you do not hear your Lover beating against your walls, your heart hears Him. It hears the One who whispers into your sleeping soul, calling you His flawless one. God created your heart so that it would never be able to fully shut Him out once you have let Him in. He, my Love, never sleeps either.

How right they are to adore you, Oh Lord.