On Quarters and Unbelief

I am wonky and off-center, stressed about money and nursing a headache and cramps and a pink-eyed daughter today. I am waiting for too many things that are suspended in air, aware that nothing easy is around the corner, and I'm cranky. I am too little already to be minced up so fine, scattered to the dizzying tasks of making life in a world that is not my home.

It all feels so worldly and more than ever, I'm longing for fresh life, for a break in the rain. Out the window there is a tree tower leaning crooked, ever closer to our roof than the day before and I watch the tree suspiciously, envisioning the break line…sizing up just where and when it might crack right through the middle, splinter and split and sever and crush whatever lies beneath it. And I might be more like that tree than I'd like to believe.

I, too, am precariously leaning.

But I watch the clock in the meantime and cling desperately to absurd ideas and anxious attempts at control and count quarters, again. I click-clack on the keyboard 'cause it's my job in life and it's the only thing I know to do when I don't know what to do, when I've gotten myself in the same mess that comes around more often than I can stand to admit. I contemplate less, so much less, and don't know how it's possible at the same time.

I balance and re-balance and the numbers topple like the tree will someday. I order mistakes in my mind and fine-tune on do-overs that will never be done over. So I say it, methodically, word-by-word to myself over and over, that Word, that reminder, the instruction of what to do with our anxieties and focus this time on the part "transcends all understanding" because I am ever and always trying to make sense of the senseless, trying to give God an "out" on His promises.

If I could trust, I would know He needs none. If I could trust, I wouldn't be gut-deep in this. But my pretending has got me here, and so I grasp quarters like a lifeline and rehearse verses like a lunatic, over and over to find new life in the words, to make myself believe them.

Linking to: Imperfect Prose on Thursdays at canvaschild.com.

On Valley Girls and House-Shaped Idols

Have you ever wanted something so bad that you were sure God was withholding, just to watch you squirm?

Or that maybe He was teaching you a lesson about longing and the desires of the heart and the things that really satisfy?  But you just wanted to learn the damn lesson already so you could just go on and have that thing you really want – the relationship, status, job, move, baby, trip… or that shiny new widget with your name all over it?

And maybe you sorta have a little bit of an attitude about it, and you cock your feathered bangs and side ponytail to the heavens and whine like a teenage valley-girl, "Hey, God, did you, like, forget about me?  What about what I need, here?  Have you ever thought about that?  Furshur." 

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No?

Only me then.  Except I'm (thankfully) a few decades post feathered bangs and side ponytails.  It's that pissy missy attitude I still have trouble shaking.

Right now, for me, it's a house.  The great unattainable. 

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And not even my own house.  I'm not even asking to be able to paint the walls here, just a nice neutral bungalow with a dishwasher and a garage and a backyard where my kids can play.  Something without shag carpet, please.  

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I did my time in Seventies Haus (the ranch) and Eighties Haus (the children's home), and now, just maybe I can graduate up a decade.  C'mon Craigslist – hand me a nice Nineties Haus this time around.  We're not talkin' granite countertops here.  I'll rock an art deco lampshade, if I have to… maybe some flesh-colored stucco or a brass-trimmed fireplace.  

Wait, how about Fifties Haus or Turnofthecentury Haus with some cute built-ins and hardwood floors… doorways I have to duck into with glass doorknobs and hazardous wiring.  Oddly shaped bathrooms with subway tile and piles of character, maybe a sun porch off the back for good measure.

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 You see the problem, don't you?

This thing I want?  This house?  This fresh chance to make a home? 

I want it too bad.  I daydream and night-dream about what our eventual rental will look like, where I'll put the black hutch or the distressed coffee table.  About what color the throw pillows should be, and I've logged thrice the hours on Craigslist than in my Bible, of late.  And every time I shiver 'cuz this house is always freezing cold and I can't go flip on the heater in someone else's house, I cringe and shoot up a snarky "thanks a lot, God" while I ruminate on what I deserve.

It's a problem, friend.  And confession is good for the soul.

Because I don't think that God withholds good things from His children. 

I think He withholds idols when we're in danger of letting them destroy us.  And I think he protects us from the desires of our flesh when our bank accounts and the size of our faith aren't ready to bear the weight of those desires.

We're one paycheck deep into new jobs.  We're six weeks out of a whole former life.  And man, how impatient I am for the world to spin as I would have it.

But right now, God is telling me to quit wiggling and wait.  Sit still for awhile.  Rest in His provision – his purple-carpeted, 42-degree, love and laughter and garlic-bread filled shacking-up-with-my-in-laws provision.  He protects me from myself, and in the middle of my stubbornness and the living room that isn't mine, I'm grateful for it.

And so, so sorry for the valley girl impression.

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