(You) got to have faith!

*This is a journal entry that I typed up the other day. I was going to trim it up and add to it, but I have run out of time before I leave. So read if you want. It is just some rough thoughts about life and God and being still. I would say that I will add to it later or expand upon certain parts, but I doubt I will find the time. So her is a raw journal entry.*

Some observations from sitting and being still. Tuesday, I went to the eye doctor. First of all I have to say that I love my eye doctor! She is the sweetest woman in the world. She remembers all of my family and pulls out all sorts of questions about them and what they are doing. It is amazing. She only works part time now because she has two children. Plus she is absolutely adorable! Anyhow, that aside. I was about to talk about something else.

So they take you back to the exam room and the nurse/aid person tests your eyes and puts in the numbing drops and then the ones that make your pupils really big. Then they leave you so that your eyes will open up. So here you are sitting in a dark room and they have taken your contacts and glasses; so you are completely blind and can't really read anything because your eyes feel all weird and numb. What else is there to do but start thinking. And since I am not in school, I don't have schoolwork to think about. And since I was doing electrical drawings at work and I don't know very much about electrical, I couldn't think about that too long.

Sometimes you have to be forced to stop living your busy little life for a while and sit and think about God and His great goodness in your life and how everything you see is so skewed by way you want and your desires. When you start to think about it, you are so small and God is so big. When you are quiet you give God a chance to speak instead of you speaking all the time. I mean even when we pray, WE pray. When we read the Bible, WE read the Bible and think about it. Sometimes we need to just be quiet and still before the Lord.

He has to take us out of the busiest of life and put us in a place where we can only focus on Him. It is an amazing place to be. It is awesome to experience the way that he strips away everything that clutters up our lives and brings our focus back to what it needs to be on. I'm not saying that it doesn't hurt to have all that we love and have held on to taken away from us (normally torn away because we won't let go). But taking the time to look back on it all, God does what is best. He gives us second and third and fourth chances. It is like we were too busy for him before because we were trying to do everything on our own. And he keeps reminding us what we are supposed to be doing, but we say, "later, we are busy now." So he keeps reminding us and when we don't listen he starts taking away our distractions until we have to focus on him.

He also puts us in places that we have to depend on him. I have never had to say that before. I have always been able to handle my life. I have always been in control and have been able to make everything look great and be great. Not to say that I didn't rely on God for things, but it wasn't anything that I couldn't do myself. So my ego kept getting bigger and bigger. I kept thinking more and more about myself and how great my life was the way I was running it and less and less about what God really wanted. I asked him, but then I did what I thought was right and asked for his blessing on my plans. Funny how he takes away everything that you depend on and leaves you in a place where you have to be on your face before him. You don't look so big anymore when your plans and life are lying shattered in pieces on the ground.

I wonder what it is about life that we don't grow as much when times are good. You think we could learn. But no, we learn through the trials, we learn through failures, and we learn by never being good enough. I just have to remind myself of that all the time. I will never be good enough! It is when we see that we have no strength of our own that we have to go to God to survive. It is then that we see how wicked and small we are. It is then that God has a chance to work with us. To refine us to be what he wants us to be.

It is a wonder that he loves us enough to keep coming after us. You think he'd give us after a while. How many times can a person stray away? But after these trials are finished and life is good again, won't we all go back to our ways of trusting in our own strength? It may not be as fast as last time or maybe not as much. But we will. Even while we keep our focus on God. There is just something glorious about having everything taken away from you. It is a wonderful thing to have a God that cares that much about his people.

I can see God's hand in my life. I can see that he is guiding me to be what he wants me to be. I can see that he is making me more like him. He is strengthening my trust in him. He is teaching me that I am nothing on my own; that I am not as good as I thought. That I am nothing. That he is everything. And that that will never change. So I praise him for the trials. I praise him for the hard times. I praise him for giving me chance after chance to be more like him.

If he had to take away everything that I loved too much, then so be it. It is for my good and his glory. If I am not willing to give up things for him, then that thing is an idol. Praise God for taking away the idols in my life. May I continue to learn to trust in and rely on him for everything that I have and will ever have. I am not good enough to do anything myself.

So while I was sitting in that dark quiet room, it was almost like God said, do you see now why this has happened? Do you see why I took so many things out of your life? You will never be perfect. You can't be perfect on your own. You can't run your life on your own. You can't even run a bit of it. You need me for everything that you have. It was a great reminder of how not wonderful I am and how great God is. It was an amazing trip to the eye doctor. She apologized for making me wait so long. I laughed and thanked her for the time to think.

This all said, my eyes haven't changed a bit in three years... Guess what that means? I am a perfect candidate for lasik surgery, not that I wasn't before, but now I am even more perfect! ha. Yes, I am thinking about treating myself to either a Christmas present or a graduation present next year. :) If I did my eyes at Christmas, then I could still buy that bmw for my graduation present. haha. Anyhow, we shall see about the eyes. I really want to have them fixed. How cool would it be to not be blind in the morning. I would save so much money on contacts and glasses, not to mention the time that it takes to clean them and put them in and out. Man, it would be awesome!