3 Important Points

Last Saturday, God took me to Psalm 37 and gave me three instructions. I’ve been focusing on them all week:

1.Delight in the Lord. He will give you the desires of your heart. To delight in the Lord means to focus all my energy on him. It means I should stop worrying and scurrying – just enjoy my time with him. He knows the desires of my heart, even better than I, but my greatest desire is to delight in him.

2.Commit everything to him and let him take care of it. It’s so easy for me to plan what I’m going to do, then forge ahead and do it with gusto. But God wants me to relax in his arms and let him be my Husband and my Maker. He’ll take care of the job, the finances and every other desire I have.

3.Be still and wait patiently. It’s been almost seven months since the lay-off. I thought surely I would have a job by now, but it hasn’t happened. For some reason, God has me living in the “pause” button when I would rather be on “play” or “fast forward.” He knows why and he knows where. I just need to be still and wait for him to work it out.

George Mueller once wrote that although the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, so are the stops. So I need to take his advice and focus on the three points God gave me. Then the future steps as well as this stop will be a blessing.

More & More Praise

Discouragement surrounded me this week. It had been a long time since the last interview – no calls, no answers, no job. It seemed as if my life was on “Pause.” I asked God, “When do we get to ‘Play’ or even ‘Fast Forward’?” No answer.

So, in the privacy of my living room, I did a scarf dance. The scarf dance is something I taught several years ago to my women’s Bible study in Lawrence. Each of us had a colorful scarf, and we used it as a tool of worship. We danced around my house to the music of “Celebrate Jesus”, swirling our scarves and swaying in praise.

This time, I was alone, except for the Lord. I sang my own version of the song, draped one of my silk scarves around me and just danced in worship. The discouragement left, and peace enveloped my soul.

The way to stay in hope is to praise God, over and over and over again. As King David reminds us in Psalm 71:14, “But as for me, I will always have hope; I will praise you more and more.”

3 Powerful Verbs

“…Hope in God and wait expectantly for Him, for I shall yet praise Him, who is the help of my countenance and my God” (Ps. 43:5b).

Almost every day this week, God has reminded me in his about 3 powerful verbs. These verbs seem to be the action I need to take as I look forward to a job. One verb is Wait. That doesn’t mean I just sit around, eat chocolate and feel sorry for myself. I’m still going to job fairs, looking on the web for openings and making sure my resume is the best it can be. To wait on the Lord means to let him take care of the details, move his puzzle pieces around and open a door for me.

Hope is the 2nd verb. Staying in hope is important, because without it, the enemy throws discouragement down my throat. Hope is the action word for the foundation of faith. Because I know God has a good plan for me and still wants me to be his servant, I have hope that some day that job will appear.

The last verb is Expect. Although I’m doing everything I can to search for a job, prepare for interviews and listen to my network; I fully expect God to surprise me with something only he can do. He is the one who has gifted me and decided which works I would do “…Since the foundation of the world” (Eph. 2:10). I expect him to open doors that no one can shut, to help me be a witness wherever I go and to place me where I can serve him best.

Wait. Hope. Expect. 3 powerful verbs that I’m living with and focusing on this week. The only other verb I need is Praise.

Caring for Mothers

During the past couple of weeks, I was in Oklahoma, caring for my mother. It was a strange experience, because it was actually my sister who was in need of care. Kris had an extensive back surgery that required a 360 operation – front and back. She was in ICU for a while, in the post-op ward for a couple of days and then in rehab. Thankfully, she has now returned home and will do follow-up rehab from there.

But Kris lives with Mom and helps to care for her. So someone needed to be there, to help Mom with her confusing issues and be her comfort during the evenings. Since I don’t yet have a job, I volunteered.

Why is it so difficult to switch roles? Perhaps because mothers are the strength and the heart of the home for so many years. They are the ones who fix our meals, wipe our tears and bandage our boo-boos. We owe them a great deal of love and respect.

Yet now, my mother is losing some of her short-term memories. Time and space boundaries are disappearing in the fog of early dementia. It takes an incredible amount of patience to just be around Mom, to answer the same questions over and over, to make sure she doesn’t follow her confusion rather than reality.

I do not understand why this is happening to my mother, and I don’t like it one bit. After watching Dad suffer through Alzheimer’s for 10 years, I don’t think it is fair that his care-giver now has some of the same difficulties. But that’s just the way it is.

All I can do is pray for her, continue to honor and respect her, send a card on Mother’s Day and pray like crazy that I don’t do the same thing to my son.