It happened last week. The moment when my flesh was again unmasked and given a face. The very same moment where God spoke His grace over my weakness.
Last week was really, really hard at work. I felt as worthless as I ever have in my life. I just can't seem to catch on to the things that I need to learn to perform my job adequately. Even simple tasks that the "wire lifers" can do in less than a minute take me over an hour of tinkering before my work is inspected and I get shoved aside with a sigh and a, "what the hell are you doing?" I can't stand knowing that working the same shift with me makes someone else's life harder. I hate feeling like a burden that is forcibly being tolerated. Welcome to the perfect description of my childhood with my step-dad.
So as these feelings piled up on my soul near the end of last week, it happened. I was trying not to cry in my frustration with myself as well as how unfair the whole day felt. How does anyone, especially someone as unhandy and generally inept as me, learn how to do something so demanding. Everything really does have to be just right and copper wire is really unforgiving. It'll just break for no reason sometimes. (I know what you're thinking, "there is always a reason." No. For real. Sometimes, no matter how perfectly you do things, it still just breaks.) So instead of crying I decided to pray.
It went like this, "God, I hate this job. Why did you bring me here? Are you trying to destroy me?"
Almost immediately He began unveiling how closely my situation resembled that of the Israelites in the desert. Just weeks ago I was praising Him for delivering me from Egypt and parting the Red Sea. (Seriously, just read my last post.) Not only that, but His peace and a certain baseline of His presence have been consistent throughout. Several times He has sent unmistakable confirmation that I am exactly where I need to be. Just like the pillar of cloud. My needs and those of my family are being met well.
It's just really uncomfortable here. Sand itself is an irritant, and I'm swimming in the stuff. Yeah, I relate to that. Everywhere I turn, it's just more of the same. Rejection, judgment, failure galore. For what purpose? I don't think I've ever understood better how God's people must have felt out in the desert. I've always judged them.
What a bunch of idiots! God was right there with them, visibly no less! God had just parted the Red Sea and they didn't trust him to take care of the giants at Jericho? Man, how could you not trust God after all that?
As God brought this all together for me in an instant or two in my mind I started to feel horribly enlightened. I don't want to die in the desert. How can I go through this and still please God. It occurs to me that all He really wanted was for His people to trust Him and not their fears. I definitely have felt very much like a grasshopper in my own eyes in a land of giants, but God continues to be with me and assure me that I am exactly where He wants me.
Maybe His love is so great that deliverance from all of the lies that make up my horrible self perception is soon to be realized.
Sounds just like God to me.
