This I Know: Part 2

Okay, so this is what God has been up to in me from a spiritual perspective...

Being diagnosed with A-Fib has been a wake-up call for me.  Here I was planning, and planning, and preparing, and working, and planning some more for the biggest summer I had ever had since the kids were born, and God pulled the plug on ALL of it.  He sidelined me.  At first, I felt like I had got my legs just taken out from under me.  I was just stunned.  All I wanted to do was be back at VBS and back at church.  I have always been that way when something serious or life-changing is happening.  I remember the day my Dad had a heart attack when I was a sophomore at Enid High.  Bass Hospital is right by the high school and I was so upset that I had to leave school that day...I just wanted to go back to school.  It was my way of coping with it...I just wished it wasn't happening and that I could go on like it wasn't.  This time it was happening to me though.  I remember looking at the clock on Tuesday morning, the 2nd day of VBS and crying when it got to 9:00am because I knew the Worship Rally was starting and I wasn't there, but I was supposed to be.

Here's what God told me though..."Wendy, I don't need you there right now...I need you here."

Wow...that was humbling.  God told me, "Wendy, I run the world, not you. I cause the sun to rise every day, not you. The world doesn't revolve around you. This isn't about you, it's about me and about my glory being revealed through this situation, so you better stop looking at yourself and start looking at Me."  As my Sunday School teacher would say, "God just knocked me over the head with a 2x4." and it was just what I needed.  :)

Here's the thing, this is what God has been teaching me.  I don't claim to know everything, but this much I do know...every human being on the face of the planet has obviously been created and been born...and every human being on the face of the planet will one day die.  I don't know how that makes you feel, but it brings comfort to me.  When the doctors first told me I was born with a hole in my heart and it took 33 years for me to find out, at first I was a little scared, but then I thought, "Nothing has changed Wendy, it's just that you're just now finding out about it..." and God told me to simply celebrate the way I was made.  Here's the thing...God made me.  God formed me in my mother's womb...fearfully and wonderfully...He doesn't make mistakes.  How can I argue with what He's made? I barely made it into the world on Christmas Day 1978, but I believe that God was there on that day and that He alone breathed breath into my body.  He alone started my heart to beating when I was in my mother's womb....and He alone knows the moment, the day, the time, the second that it will stop....He's already chosen it.  So again, who am I to argue with what He's chosen?  My purpose is to find out why He lets me live another day...every day.  When I die, I don't want to have wasted the life He saved just living for me.  The purpose of this life is to share Jesus with as many people as I can.  That's it.  "Knowing You Jesus, knowing You...there is no greater thing..." yes, this is true, but it's not enough for me to just know it...I want everyone to know it.

There is so much inside my heart that I want to share.  I get so frustrated so many times because I feel stifled half the time and restrained and like I can't say what I want to say.  I'm the type of person who would rather be serious and sincere than sarcastic or joking.  I've always been that way.  Yes, I can joke and be silly from time to time and I like to let down and have fun as much as the next person, but the majority of the time I'd rather be sincere.  I'd rather say what I need to say now and tell you how I really feel in case I don't get another chance.  I'd rather tell you what you mean to me now than wait until one or the other of us is gone and I wish I would have told you sooner.

At this season in my life I feel God telling me to wait...He's still working on me.  He's got some very real, literal work to do on my heart before I'm ready.  Ready for what?  I'm not sure, but it's gonna be awesome.  So, I feel like I'm in some sort of a holding pattern...just waiting...I'm in the middle of the valley or passing through the mountains now...I'm in the middle of the fire...I haven't reached the other side yet.  I remember when I saw the Rocky Mountains in Colorado for the first time.  I remember asking Justin, "What's on the other side? Can you actually cross over to the other side?" and he said, "Yeah, there are passes that get you there." and that's where I am now...journeying on a pass.  When I get to the other side I will find my voice again and God will give me the words to say then.  Until that day...when my heart flutters, shakes, hurts...I look to God.  In my mind, that's why it's happening...to bring me closer to Him...to cause me to look to Him.  There's nothing "wrong" with me...this is the way He made me.  If anything, it causes me to just exist in awe of Him and His power and what He can do.

Our pastor said it best this past Sunday when he talked about his experience of jumping out of a plane this past weekend, "You better be ready to go before you go..." and "In God's eyes, in the grand scheme of life, this world, and creation, it's all small stuff compared to God's plan..."

I had planned to share some journal excerpts while leading worship for Falls Creek and although this isn't one of them, this one came to mind, "Show me, O Lord, my life's end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man's life is but a breath. But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you." ~Psalm 39:4-5, 7

I heard this song shortly after I got out of the hospital and it has encouraged me. Click on the title of the song below to hear it:

You Are My Shepherd by Tricia Brock