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| Moving day! |
Yep, boxes
and bags.
Target and
Walmart sacks.
Bare walls,
bare shelves.
Wiping our
feet because the yard is dirt, but the carpet is new.
Heavy
furniture, heavy for my hands, heavy enough to make me worn out, heavy enough
to make me extra grateful for a brother who is strong, for a brother to boss
around. “Dave, what are you doing? Can
you carry this? Hey, can you pick this up?
Will you go with me to their house to load up my bed? Dave, I think I
want it over here instead.”
But tonight
I’m sitting here, finally sitting in my house.
For 5 months, I walked around the house without a seat to rest on, walked
around with the pressure to critique the details and to make the decisions. But tonight I’m sitting, and I wouldn’t make
another decision even at gunpoint.
I picked up
my pen and prayer journal, but what else can I tell God tonight besides Thank You? I opened the pages of the journal and instead
of writing, I started reading prayers I had written in 2012 and 2013.
Yep, 2012
and 2013.
Questions
and dreams,
Prayers on
pages,
Tears and
fears of those years,
Millennial
girl, millennial music, millennial friends, this is my generation.
It’s a
heavy time, heavy burdens, heavy in my hands, heavy enough to make me worn out,
heavy enough to make me extra grateful for a God who is strong, for a God who
moves me and moves in my life. “God,
what are you doing? God, can you carry this? God, will you go with me there?
God, I think I want that instead of this.”
My friend
Samantha told me that she keeps a journal that records all the answers to
prayers that God has given her. Her
prayers aren’t like a Christmas list of stuff she wants; her prayers are asking
her heavenly Father to do miracles in her family, to equip her to be all that
He created her to be, to teach her new things, to help her love others deeply. When she asks for God to work in her life in
specific ways, she can see how He shows up in those details. So she writes down
these answers to prayer in a journal.
She calls
it a “Yes Journal.” Whenever she’s
discouraged, she looks back at her Yes Journal, and she can see the unseen ways
that God said,
Yes, I’m here.
Yes, I care.
Yes, I love you.
Yes, I hear you.
Yes, I forgive you.
Yes, I’m working in your sister’s
life.
Yes, I’m going to provide.
Yes, I’m going to give you something
better than you asked for.
If Samantha
is low on faith, she reads each Yes after Yes after Yes and remembers that God
is good after all, after all, after all she’s been through. So many prayers she hasn’t seen answers to, so
many questions to still seek out, so many hopes to still wait for. But she looks back at the Yeses, and her
faith increases.
Yep, I look
for it too.
Each Yes
after Yes after Yes.
Faith will
increase, increase.
Teasing out
my timidity,
Trumping my
passivity,
Tearing
through the trails of my twenties.
Slap me if
I ever hold back again, if I ever forget what God did, if I ever fail to see
the yeses in the midst of the messes, if I ever dismiss the Yes after Yes after
Yes that came with building my house.
God built my house; God built my trust.
I’m sitting
here tonight. For years I prayed for God
to provide a place for me, and I felt discouraged each time the places didn’t
work out. For 22 months, I didn’t think I’d make it through the financing
process to build, and I prayed for God to make a way. Now I’m sitting here
tonight in my 2000 square-foot Yes. And
you can see this Yes from the road. And I
get to live in this dry walled and painted Yes, a daily reminder of what God
did for me, a daily reminder that I can trust Him to always be loving and
faithful. The God who gave me a Yes
yesterday is the same God who hears me today and who provides for me tomorrow.
Yep, boxes
and bags.
Target and
Walmart sacks.
Bare walls,
bare shelves.
Wiping our
feet because the yard is dirt, but the carpet is new.
The carpet,
the cabinets, the sinks, the windows,
It’s all
new.
It’s all
new—new joys, new challenges, new tools.
There will
be new No’s, but new Yeses too.
New Yeses
in the midst of new messes.
Yes after
Yes after Yes.
This is the
God I trust.
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| My grandma came to see my house! xoxo |
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