God answers us through his word

     For about 3 weeks I was struggling with a huge internal problem regarding my son, Logan. He has always been a hero seeking for someone to save. He's always had a heart for people that was deeper than most people, especially for an almost 20 year old. Three weeks ago or so he decided to act on it. 

     Logan had been approached a while back by a Marines recruiter. He had told us he was thinking about it in the spring, but he agreed to wait and give it more time. This fall, he really got prepared to take that step and become a Marine. No other branch considered. End of story. He called me while I was in a department store and basically said I had an hour to meet with the recruiter before he signed. Imagine how my heart sank! We've always been a patriotic family that supports the military, but now we're talking about MY son. I know when people say we should send in troops, those people are someone's children and my heart breaks for them. I understood how important this decision would be and asked him to wait just long enough to tell his father in person when he returned in 2 1/2 weeks rather than after the fact. Logan, being a mature, loving son, agreed.

     In those weeks I agonized over all the what-ifs, what they would do to him, what it would do to his faith, how he'd handle having to perform tasks that were against his personal beliefs, and what he'd be like afterwards - what would happen to that perfect heart that God have given him? I didn't want to say anything to anyone that might accidentally say something on social media. That would not be a good way for Tim to find out. I was determined to go through it alone until his return out of respect for Tim. Also, if we told everyone, that would make it that much harder for Logan to change his mind (social pressure) if he realized it was a mistake to sign up.

     I spent weeks crying, not sleeping, terrified. I didn't play "the Mom card" and smother him or his decision. I refused to use any type of manipulation. Because we have a great relationship, Logain and I were able to keep an on-going, open, honest, fair conversation on the topic the whole time. That certainly helped. As his Mom, I was afraid for him and what would might happen to him. As his friend, I wanted to be supportive in such a patriotic, selfless endeavor to protect our country. I thought of little else, night and day, every day, the whole time. I told just 2 other people so they could pray me through this and give me advice. 

     During this time, I prayed like crazy, but not how you'd expect. I wasn't praying for him to simply change his mind. That would be a temporary situation until the next time he got that feeling again to join. Instead, I prayed that God would give me a clear head and a sense of peace as I work through this with Him and Logan. I know God created Logan for a purpose. I know there are many paths to choose (free will and all that), but only ONE path that is THE purpose God created specifically for Logan - wired Logan exactly for that purpose - we just didn't know if this was it or not. I prayed that if it was the right path God had already chosen before Logan was ever born, then give me total peace and rest and even some joy in this. Help me to be and do what he needs from me. But if this path is NOT of God's plan, then put up serious roadblocks, close doors, and stop him in his tracks before it's too late.

     Logan too prayed for guidance/direction, but of course, he had a biased opinion - still he was willing to listen. Logan and I disagreed about many dreams, signs, apparent roadblocks, but nothing was absolutely definitive. How much was us? How much was our interpretation of things? How much was the enemy? How much was God? Then Tim came home...

     When we told him, he took it harder than we expected, especially since he's always been so PRO military. Like me, perspective had changed because now it wasn't just "the troops" it was our son. He went through the normal emotions:  scared, worried, felt out of control, felt he needed to do something to stop him from making a huge mistake, got angry, but all in one weekend. I felt so bad for having him go through this. And of course, Logan had to deal with not only his own emotions, and trying not to worry/hurt me, but now how to handle this with his father. 

     Tim left to go back out on the road, Logan seemed to have made up his mind, I was feeling peace yet still feeling like this wasn't the right path, so it was quiet for a few day...then God.

     I had seen the movie War Room recently, it's about prayer and its power. If you haven't seen it, you must. It was overtly a Christian movie on prayer yet topped the box office the first TWO weekends it opened nationwide. When does that ever happen?! Anyway, I'd told Logan about it, so when it eventually got to the discount theater a few months later, he wanted to go see it with me. We went Thanksgiving Eve. That's significant.

     We returned and Logan asked me if I'd pray with him over his decision.  I told him I would, but only if he was prepared to really accept whatever the results would be - all the time knowing this was my final, definitive stand on the issue too - if God said Yes, I must surrender to that. I secretly hoped God would stop Logan instead, though. 

     We prayed together for God to reveal if this decision was from Logan or God, God's plans, joining the military which we know is not a Christian organization, direction, and would it bring honor. Logan completely surrendered his will to whatever the Lord would choose to reveal and not question a definite answer.  Then we opened the bible together randomly - yes randomly - without our own bias. He opened to a passage and I read it. It was about giving thanks to God before any requests are made. Remember this was Thanksgiving eve? Then I opened to a passage and Logan read it. The bible's subtitle said, "A prayer of Thanksgiving". Again, it seemed to be saying this was a perfectly timed passage, again it was on how God knows all, created all, and has given everyone and everything a purpose. That's why we came before him this night, after all. It was the 3rd and final passage that REALLY blew us away! I'm glad I wasn't the one to choose it! 

     Logan randomly opened to Isaiah 30. Verses 1 - 3 say this:

Do Not Go Down to Egypt

"Ah, stubborn children," declares the Lord, "who carry out a plan, but not mine, 

who make an alliance, but not of my Spirit, that they may add sin to sin:

who set out to go down to Egypt without asking for my direction,

to take refuge in the protection of Pharaoh and to seek shelter in the shadow of Egypt!

Therefore shall the protection of Pharaoh turn to your shame,

and the shelter in the shadow of Egypt to your humiliation..."

How's THAT for specific, exact answer to questions we answered?! As soon as Logan read the words "stubborn children" he stopped, looked at me, and said he knew, felt it, that God was speaking directly to him in that moment. It says the alliance (signing/joining) is not of God's spirit, there would be sin added to sin, setting out w/o asking direction, taking refuge in a non-Godly ruler and nation (like the Marines/military), it will bring shame & humiliation...it couldn't have been clearer! 

     Logan in that moment knew this was not God's path for his life. He was a little disappointed, but said if it was the right thing, it would be a bigger deal to change his mind. He was almost surprised how easy it was to turn down the military to find a new path. 

     Praise God that He is still a loving God, a good Father, and has given us His Word to help us with the biggest, most important decisions of our lives. Thank God for who He is. Needless to say, we had a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. 

     Believe God wants to help you. Listen for his answers. Come to Him with a heart and mind totally surrendered to whatever He decides. It can happen for you too.

God Prepares Me

     I'm so thankful that God prepares me ahead of time to face things. Sometimes I have a series of dreams about an event that's going to happen. Sometimes it's more symbolic, for example, when something that will change my life, I dream about tornadoes. Whether they're off in the distance, or right outside the building, or crashing through the building, warns me of how close-to-home they'll get. It never fails, and I end up preparing, knowing it's coming.

     I'm also thankful that God prepares me ahead of time by using the bible study I'm in, the church's Sunday morning messages, and what books I happen to be reading. When I see something converge in all three, I sit up and take notice. 

     In this particular case, we're buying a house. It's a good thing, for sure, and I believe God helped us find it on that day, for that price, in that neighborhood, because none of those "should have" happened like they did. Also it fits the exact description I wrote down years ago of the best house for us, right down to the craft room (without losing a bedroom), the fireplace (in Arizona), and an orange tree in the back yard. 

     I'm happy about the house but the process of buying it has been really tough. Tim's away the whole time. Here's some of the stumbling blocks we've encountered yet God found a way to help me move forward:

Tim left on the day we went under contract, and I've needed his signature, which I cannot copy to save my life. 

The seller's weren't budging on giving in on closing costs and we couldn't do it otherwise.

The paperwork! I've had literally hundreds of pieces of paper, emails, documents to print, sign,  and copy, scan, and fax back. Most of the forms I've never seen before, and many are such a pointless waste of time (sign to say you saw this, then the next paper says sign to say you saw and signed the previous page, or some such nonsense).

I had to take a required, online class that took 8 hours of my time and taught me absolutely nothing new - and I had to pay $150 for it!

Reliving the nightmare. One of the tasks required by the underwriter was to write a letter, in detail, reliving everything about our bankruptcy. How it happened, why it happened, how we handled it, etc. I had spend years putting the nightmare of losing my home, leaving our jobs, and having to take government food assistance to feed my kids for a year. I'm thankful that Tim's parents were willing to take us in when we had nowhere to go (although I would've kept the house and just done the bankruptcy if it were up to me), but it caused some things to happen inside all of us that changed us. We definitely aren't who we used to be.

After telling us we're approved, paperwork is done, we're ready to close next week, nothing else is needed, it was noticed that Tim's start date at his job 3 years ago had mistakenly been entered as May instead of March. That tiny difference meant they divided our yearly income from then by 2 more months, and with a week to go, the underwriter kicked the whole thing apart. They said we didn't qualify anymore, we lost the ability for the program that paid our down payment, and we couldn't close. No delay date to expect. Just "don't qualify". 

Two days before this news, my middle son who just turned 19 informs me he's going to meet with a Marine recruiter to ask questions. Totally out of the blue. As he's planning to follow his girlfriend out of state if he has to depending where she goes to college. Right after he waffled for weeks about if he was moving in with us or not (requiring us to buy a 4 bedroom instead of a cheaper 3 bedroom). What a tough thing for a mother to deal with in the middle of all this.

The sellers may not agree to an extension without a definite closing date, and I'm afraid we'd have to start all over again, knowing they'd ask for a much higher price or not agree to closing costs next time, knowing how badly we now want this house.

Just a reminder, Tim left on January 27th and hasn't been back since, so all this I'm handling alone.

     

     All that is stressful, causing me to lose lots of sleep, but there's a good side to this too...

     God has been preparing me. I'm in a series at church that's breaking down Philippians 4:8:  Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

     I have been in church for 25 years or more at this point. I don't remember ever having the message stick all week in my mind like this series has. Our pastor is breaking it down, part by part, to really go into what each of these 8 things mean. It's helped me get through so much of this because it's teaching me to think about what's true, not just happening temporarily. I'm learning to be even less reactionary about things that pop up. I do well with this but that doesn't mean I have spikes in stress when I first hear about them. At least I'm learning that they can be a short 1 - 5 minute burst, then I'm calm again, instead of letting it ruin so much more. I can focus on doing all I can to be fair, true, and just. I'm also learning to live according to all I'm called upon to do knowing I'm living out my purpose. I know many women may handle this better than me, but there's a lot that would handle it worse too - or not at all. I've been brought through experiences that have taught me how to rise to the occasion as it becomes necessary. For that I am thankful.

     In my bible study, we're studying the book of James. It would be so easy to sink into the self-pity of all this. I'm sure if I tried, I could (wrongly) blame Tim for not being here, even though he's gone trying to make us the money we need to do this. I could blame the Mortgage Company's assistant for thinking changing the start date would help when instead it killed our whole deal (for now), but I would know there was untrue information and I couldn't live with a lie. If we have to lie to get approved, we shouldn't be buying it. In the end, we're going to use 2014 and 2013 instead of '13 and '12, and we'll eventually get re-approved because our income will have doubled since 3 years ago and we still have no debt. I could blame the underwriter who knows what this year's paystubs looked like and amounted to, knows we qualify, yet is doing this to us a week before closing, but what good does that do? In the end, maybe we'll qualify for a slightly lower interest rate when they see we made double what they say barely fell below the qualification line? Maybe since the interest rate just went up as we were going into this process in January, it will drop a bit and our payment will be lower every month from now on? I'm being told they've never seen it rise twice in a row. So the James study is teaching me not to blame others, not to become cynical, not to judge other people for what they're doing - just act in a way that I'm called to act because of my faith, loving others and trusting God.

     I've also been reading about everything from miracles to answered prayers. I know from my own experiences that God can choose to show up at any moment and smooth the way for us. Do I think He caused the bad stuff? Of course not! People with bad intentions have lied, deceived, and stolen from each other in closings over the years so more and more paperwork had to be build into the process to attempt to stop it from happening whenever possible. 

     So today, I let go of all the bad things that have happened up to this point, I'll work on the things that need to happen, our closing will be delayed but hopefully not for too long. Tim will be home just for a day and a half to help make it happen (then he's back out until the actual closing since he can't just stay home for a week waiting for the agencies to decide). I will trust God like I always do. I will not let it frustrate me every day between now and the new closing date. I will take today off as a "mental health day" and just get outside, go for a walk, pray a lot, and be at peace while I wait for everything to fall back into place, and for Tim to get home in a few days. 

When you don't know where else to turn, turn to God. And remember Jeremiah 29:11 - For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.