Our furnace is going out.
Hattie drew this picture of Josh a few days ago. I think it’s quite accurate and explains why the furnace issue isn’t as big a deal to him. You’d be warm too…if hair circled your entire head.
The last few days I’ve been instructed by Josh (who sits in a warm office 8 hours a day) to “keep it turned off until you just can’t stand it anymore.” The high is 19 degrees today. By American standards, it is cold in our nice, warm 60-degree house.
I set out to grocery shop Monday and the van wouldn’t start. It needed a new battery. Josh got it fixed right away (probably feeling guilty for the previously mentioned furnace-related cruelty), but now one of the passenger doors doesn’t open (automatically, that is.) It irritates me.
Meanwhile, the flu has been declared an epidemic, and three out of five of us in the Hall House are in the high-risk categories. I’m pretty sure that we have been exposed somewhere along the way, and I am just waiting for the symptoms to set in and kill every last one of us.
No, I’m not being dramatic.
I’m being fearful.
Incredibly fearful.
And I thought I had that whooped.
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I know I write about fear a lot, too much perhaps, and yet here I am again. It’s embarrassing.
I’m supposed to be speaking on leaving your children a legacy of faith, not fear at a women’s meeting next month, but a short 48 hours ago I was yelling at God that my life and furnace are falling apart and, good grief, the least he can do is protect me and my kids from getting sick.
It doesn’t take much for me to turn on him.
I confess:
My faith is fair-weathered.
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One of the Godliest women I know sent me an e-mail last week after my post about trusting God in the New Year. She asked for my prayers that he would grow her faith in him even in the difficulties she was experiencing. She said, “It’s one thing to say you trust God, but doing it can be hard.”
So true, Friend.
It’s one thing for me to tippy tap on my computer in my cozy house with my healthy children that I’m going to trust God in 2015 and completely another to trust him when things one week later feel a bit more…uncertain.
We probably won’t die from the flu. We might not even get it.
But what if we did?
What if it turned serious and the worst happened?
Could I still trust God?
Could I still call him good?
I am fearful, friends.
Fair-weathered Followers aren’t known for sticking around through the storm, and I am afraid I would run.
Then my worst fear really would have come true.
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So maybe this blog is more a confession than anything else.
Sometimes I get the feeling that people who read me might come away thinking that every scenario I face in life gets tied up with a tidy spiritual bow and logged in my “Nifty Things I Learned About God Today” file, but it’s simply not true.
Though I did learn things through the whole miserable experience this week, most of what I came away with boiled down to some very ugly truths about myself.
There are wide and deep crevices of distrust still residing in my soul.
And, more than once, I have not been able to practice what I have preached on this blog.
I am ashamed of this realization, but, as a friend kindly pointed out today, God is not ashamed of me.
His conviction of my sin is merciful and meant to encourage me to grow closer to him, not to hide from him. He would not waste time on me if he were done with me. Or with you.
He is at work in us. That’s good news.
Even if 2015 doesn’t promise big things or the big things don’t end up delivering, we still can have hope in a God who forgives when we blow it and lets us start new tomorrow. Or now.
I think I’ll shoot for tomorrow.
Assuming I don’t freeze to death tonight.
I’ll let you know how it turns out.
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
Lamentations 3:22-23
What about you? Where are you starting fresh this year? Or this week? Or today?
Oh…praying about your furnace. These trials wear on us. I’m asking God to warm you by his Spirit and fill your soul with joy, even as your fingers and nose and ears are feeling icy.
But asking him to relieve the physical suffering also and hoping that he does that by fixing your furnace, rather than by having you grow a beard. 🙂
Ha! Thank you, Sally. And thanks for the prayers. The furnace is fixed, Praise God, and I am all the more grateful for a warm house. We forget how good we have it…until we don’t. Thankfully, this also means I get to continue shaving my beard. 😉 Good news all around. 🙂
It was 14 degrees in Atlanta last night when I went to bed. And still that cold when I got up. I was wondering how you got along. I’m so glad to hear the furnace is fixed.
I don’t know though, you might have been cute with whiskers. 🙂
I just started following you not too long ago, and I just wanted to tell you how much I can relate to this. Same fears. Same struggles. Same thoughts about the tying of the spiritual bow. 🙂 Thanks for sharing your feelings – I so enjoy your perspective!
Thank you so much, Rachel. It’s always good to hear that I’m not alone…even though I wouldn’t wish those days of overwhelming fear on anyone else. I’m seeing more and more what a vicious spiritual battle Satan wages on us with these “fear” attacks, and I just wish I could recognize it sooner. If I did, I don’t think I’d waste quite so much time trying to control the situation and instead just let God fight it for me.
Thanks for commenting and reading. Blessings. 🙂
Good stuff, Hannah, good stuff. I really appreciate your realness in all your blogs. We all need a good dose of realness around us. Love you, friend. And yes, God is good and faithful amidst our short comings.
Thanks, Merrilee. When you wasted years being fake (like I did), God finds creative ways to get the realness out of you. Sharing how screwed up I am on this blog is all just part of my punishment. 🙂
It’s good to hear from you, friend.
Good stuff Hannah! I will be praying you don’t get the flu, that you will get heat soon.
I have been fearful of what the specialist might say at my visit. With is unbearable pain that is attacking my body in the worse ways at this time.
Today, is a new day! Once again Lord, I want to give this deep pain, ache up to you. Help me not snatch it back as I so often do with the burdens I place in your hands. Help me to be truly content with what you have for me at this time.
I try to have an attitude of thanksgiving. Finding one thing to be thankful for. It’s hard when it feels like everything around you is falling apart. It’s easy to focus on the bad, hard to see the good, it’s there. Somedays you just have to look harder then others.