Generational Grace

It's no secret that this year at home has been very VERY hard for me.  This weekend was the first time I went back up to Tallahassee after graduation.  Everyone was asking "So how are you?" and with my friends - my sweet, wonderful friends - that means, "tell me about your heart.  right now."  So I had to tell people, "I'm okay.  it's been hard.  three jobs in as many months that I've lost.  but I'm okay." Only I had just gotten fired.  So I wasn't really okay, but I was trying to be, and I wasn't letting myself think about how scared, how hopeless, and how angry I was.

I let myself have a moment on Friday night, with my mom in the car.  I questioned God's motives.  I questioned God's presence in my life.  Cause I have friends who seem to get everything, and I mean EVERYTHING they want or would like to have from God.  And I can't see why God favors them over me for His blessing.  Please notice here the sin of comparison and discontent - I'm SO good at this, guys.  Favorite sin. I questioned God's faithfulness to me.  I never really doubted, but sometimes I just have to let those things out.  I felt like Job - so much like Job.  I was scolding God through my mom, but really I just wanted God to come down from heaven and tell me He is who He says He is.  to prove it isn't just words on a page.  I'm somewhat lucky He didn't decide to prove it by striking me with lightening this weekend.  There was plenty of opportunity.

Anyway, to the point of this post.  Which is basically external processing.  During my fit of jealousy and hopelessness, God did remind me of who He is and what He is doing in my life. 

I went home (actually to my sister's house...) after meeting with some sweet and very dear friends and found out I had lost yet another job through no fault of my own.  That was the breaking point.  I couldn't handle this anymore.  I held it in as long as I could, but eventually that moment in the car with mom happened.  The rest of the evening was spent in complaining and whinging and basically being as morose as I could be again, I'm pretty good at that kind of thing.

Then I woke up Saturday.  I had breakfast with a woman who cares about me, who always tries to help me see beyond my situation and look to Jesus.  I didn't want to, but women you respect and who you know well have a way of making you do what you don't want to do in such a way you don't mind doing it.  I followed breakfast with a meeting with a woman I had mentored and cared for.  This beautiful, sweet woman cared for me without even knowing she was.  She ministered directly to my broken and aching heart by showing me God had used me in her life.  I wasn't even interested in taking the credit - God had done everything.

So I was feeling a little better.  But I was still not up to praising God again or recognizing His power at work in my life.  This was hers - He was working in her.  not in me.  So despite the enormous blessing of seeing the second of the three girls I mentored for a year or more in a more grown-up and spiritually mature place than when I met her, I still didn't see what God was telling me.  Despite the admonition I'd received from my mentor to be attentive.

Then everything changed.  That night, at my sister's AMAZING recital and a dear friend's equally astonishing recital (same recital, two star performers...) my third beautiful and amazing disciple came to me, and introduced the girl she was mentoring.  Christine, the lovely, wonderful girl I was meeting for the first time, looked at me and said "So you're my spiritual Grandma, right?"

At that moment it was like I'd entered the twilight zone and everything stood still.  I processed a ridiculous amount all at once, flashing back to a meeting I'd had with my girls (each separately) explaining the idea of discipleship and spiritual generations.  I took them to Isaiah 54 and showed them the verses that I believed God had used to promise me spiritual generations.Isaiah 54:1-5

In the midst of my craziness, God was telling me He was fulfilling promises still.  And He continued.  On Sunday I met Carrie, and understood my tent is becoming very large indeed.  And it's all God.  For God, through God, with God, by God.

And I have very little left to complain about.