January 12, 2005

  • Reading: The Secret Life of Bees (needed a bit of fiction) but still doing the Kay Arthur Revelation Study as well.


     


    How does one find out where God was in your past? I search so hard for a hint of God’s presence. Is God in the nots? I did not get pregnant. I did not get killed. I did not get a STD from my father even though he was sleeping around with other women. I did not go insane?


    I wanted to have God present. To feel his presence. On one of the Xanga sites I checked out today there was a picture of Jesus with a child on his lap. I almost cried. How I would have loved, as a child, to have been held on his lap.


    Sometimes people say that the “footprints” poem is where God was. Perhaps I am an oddity, but that poem is like fingernails on a blackboard to me. I do not find comfort in that.


    I am poised for running away right now. I don’t know what is going on, but emotional rollercoaster is a good description of where I am. Just riding it out. But wanting to numb out somehow.


    If you had trouble finding God in your past, please share how you found out where He was.


    Someone on an Xanga site said that God’s eye view sees all of our lives. We can see the past and the present, but the future is blocked from our eyesight. I don’t clearly see the past either. Kind of feel like a butterfly pinned on a speciman board.


    Thanks,


    Heather

Comments (15)

  • I love that way of putting it… God is in the nots. I recognize His being in the nots before I knew him. When I was searching I did not accept a friend’s offer to see her guru and get a personalized mantra (or something). I did not get pregnant at age 17 and age 23 when I should have. There are more nots. There is a saying that goes something like, “Mercy is not getting what you do deserve, and grace is getting what you don’t deserve.”

    Regarding the “footprints” poem: I believe finding comfort in the things that give you comfort. Just because someone else, or even if everyone else, finds a great deal of comfort in the poem, doesn’t mean you should. You are you, not odd, but unique. You bless me with your sharing.

  • Sometimes Joshua cries in his sleep – maybe a nightmare, maybe he’s not feeling well.  I will go in to comfort him, but sometimes it takes a while.  Most of the time, he doesn’t wake up right away, even when I pick him up and rock him.  It breaks my heart as I rock and sing, and he continues to cry.  And then he will finally open his eyes, see that I am there and holding him, and it is only when he sees me that he stops crying and I can calm him down enough to put him back to bed. 

  • “Is God in the nots?”  I never thought about it that way, but it’s brilliant.  Sometimes it’s so hard to see Him there… maybe that’s a good place to start looking.  I wish I could have just known His presence as fact from the beginning.  It’s so devastating sometimes to not know.

    Most people I know take comfort in “Footprints”, my grandma having been one of them.  I’m glad to know there’s someone else who doesn’t find comfort there.  I’m not sure what it is, but the words bother me immensly.

    Thank you for the encouragement; it’s greatly appreciated.  I hope I can be rested tomorrow too.  Math may be less of a problem if I had time to spend working with it.  Always on the move… makes it difficult to keep going when I finally get a chance to sit down.  I haven’t gotten very far in The Pearl, but I’ll have to have the first half read by tonight, so I’ll let you know what I think of it sometime shortly.    I agree that sometimes picking a book apart in forced study ruins it entirely, but I’m trying to stay optimistic.  I’d like to learn how to keep that attitude with everything else…

  • Knowing God is a process. It doesn’t happen overnight. What the footprint poem is trying to say is that He is with you even tho you may not know it. I’ve always believed in His love. If God isn’t love what is He. So even with all the circumstances in our lives I believed that God loves us and wants the best for us. I can’t answer the question about why bad things happen except to say that there is an enemy who is the author of evil, not God. Ask God to reveal Himself to you and to heal you.

  • He did it again tonight.  This time, as he had done a couple of times before, he tensed up as I held him and tried to push me away.  And again, he only stopped crying and fighting when he opened his eyes and realized who was holding him.  Then he immediately went back to peaceful sleep.  I wonder if he realized I was holding him the whole time, or if he thought I just started holding him the moment he opened his eyes.  I wish he could tell me.  It really is heart-wrenching to see him suffering like that.

  • i’ve always been aware of God. even in dreams. sry. can’t help. my hubby could, maybe. i call him a ‘christian agnostic’……he challenged my faith more than anyone! i couldn’t encourage him with scripture, i couldn’t comfort him with God’s love, and on and on…and he was the pastor!! ‘lord i believe…help thou mine unbelief’ was his verse!   never could understand him………….we’re still working on it..   :)

    gonna try to check in on ppl more frequently…ttyl

  • HaveFaith in God Have Faith in God Have Faith in God Have Faith in God Have Faith in God    Sometimes there is just nothin else   If we keep trying to figure it out  then we will have ALOT of doubt…the exact opposite of faith So do what the holy spirit tells you  not your mind (I am sure you know how reliable that is)

  • He didn’t have to.  It’s obvious from this post that you were already seeking Him.
    He had your attention, as you always have His.  That was what mattered.

  • “He knows what He’s doing and how the events of our lives fit into His overall purposes for us, and those around us.” This is why we must have faith in God. We must trust what He can see from His “God’s eye view” rather then what we may or may not be able to see whether it be the past, present or future, through our own murky view.

  • I somehow have come to the conclusion that brings me peace in this area.  It is just a fact that God and Satan have different agendas for our lives.  It all comes down to the choices of people.  You know I have struggled with where God fit into my daughters cancer.  I just dont see him in the forming of her cancer.  I see him in the intellegence of the doctors, the strength he gave us to get through it.  But I see Satan and sin in her cancer and in the pain.  I believe so strongly that we are not puppets and so I accept the fact that the world is filled with people who are causing others pain and the sin of this fallen world that causes illnesses.  I know I have said this before, but it is how I can make sense of the world around me.  My dad wished we hadnt been born, he said that to my husband once.  We were a hassle and expensive and not worth it.  That was not God, that was my dad taking hold of sin and selfishness and running with it.  His choice, my wounds.  God was there, wounded also that my dad would feel that way.  But if God ran all of our lives than nothing makes sense to me in this life.  God uses pain, he grows us, he knows that we can grow from it.  But he is not the cause of sin.  He cant be.  He is too Holy to sin.  He cannot go against his nature.

    So for me I have come to accept that there is sin and pain and free will..and yet God is always with us.  Even though God is in the world, it does not exempt us from the pain of sinful and bad choices of others in this world that have free will.  Because we have free will, he cannot treat us like puppets.  But because we have free will we can choose him.  It all comes back to his holiness.  He wants to be worshiped by choice, not by force.  This is the only way we can choose freely, is to be able to choose.

    “I have told you these things so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have suffering. But take courage! I have conquered the world.” John 16:33

  • Heather, the more we search for God and the closer we come to Him, the harder Satan fights to pull us away from the Almight One! Hang in there and don’t depart from Our Father, He will give you strength and send people to help you. Keep on keeping on in our Lord! Huge Hugs, Sandy

  • You might like my satirical version of “Footprints” instead, here.  It is meant to show some of the weakness of the original.

    Meanwhile, try Psalm 124.

    Peace.

  • continue to seek to build your relationship with God in the present, it may be that His timing to show you things of  the past is not yet.  He has the wisdom to know the when of  revealing where He was in your past, though it was not possible at the time to see Him.  He was there , is with you now, and will be in the future.  He pursues us as His beloved, and does not give up on us even when we want to give up on ourselves.

  • Thank you for supporting me in this quest. It is good to know that I am not alone as I seek this relationship with God. Marlene, I know that pain and sorrow are a part of this world, it just seems that some have this to a greater degree than other. I guess I want some peace in that.Leigh Ann, I sure hope I wake up enough to recoginize Him, but if I don’t I sure hope He doesn’t give up on me. I guess you are right, the Footprints poem is a great comfort to some, and Pass the Aura, I liked your version as well. I think for me, the Psalms are the “poems” that provide more comfort.

    Shade, hope you are having a better day today.

    Leigh Ann, to carry your child analogy a bit further. You know when a two or three year old gets tired, they get so upset at times that nothing can really calm them, they don’t know what they want or need. I am sort of like that right now spiritually.

    My computer was down last night. Sorry it took so long to get back to you, but I wanted to get this out before i woke up kids for school.

    Heather

  • Very true.  Even when they know we are right in front of them to offer comfort, they still sometimes act as if we are not there or as if what we offer is not what they need (as if we don’t know better  )  We aren’t called the “Children of God” for nothing.

    BTW if you visit today, I recommend you scroll past the “chocolate” for something pretty.  I just needed a little chocolate rush after work. 

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