Going All In: Security and Possibility

I wrote the first part of this post the other day, and I was interrupted part way through by my mom, wanting to pray with me and my husband. Remember that: it will be important later.

The last few months have been… beyond taxing. I genuinely don’t even know how to describe it. Hell on earth, perhaps. I’m falling apart emotionally, and I know it. I’m running myself into the dirt trying to find work, and my nerves are completely fried. My anxiety about losing everything is out of control and yet is the only thing still keeping me going. I got a default notice for my car today. My husband is a delivery driver. We are already completely screwed financially, already, and if we lose the car… that’s it. I mean, that’s like, it. No money, no health insurance, no vehicle, no jobs, and only a roof over our heads for as long as my mom can keep barely making it by.

I have 2 dollars in my wallet. I’ve been scraping change and returning bottles just to have enough money to put food on my son’s plate. I’ve been pulling 36 hour days just to try to handle everything, and I have no idea how much longer I can do it.

For my entire life, as far back as I can remember, I have been a Christian, and I’ve also been the Doubting Thomas. I’m the skeptic, the black sheep, and I keep my faith on my own, having never found a church that could fully accept me for who I really am.

My mother is a mountain of faith. I have always respected, admired, and honestly, envied that. She can take on faith so much that I cannot.

Now, the money is gone, and everything is different. The one area of my life that I have been able to put in God’s hands and completely trust Him with has been finances, for about the past 5 or 6 years. My husband and I were out on our own, and my son was very young. We were heavily in debt, afraid of losing our apartment, and in constant threat of having utilities shut off. I discovered that our last remaining source of money was gone, save for roughly 100 dollars. I was terrified, crying and praying, no idea what to do. I didn’t know how to let God take control over anything (eternal control freak that I am), and I knew I needed His help. We were beyond any saving that we could ourselves make happen.

God kept (metaphorically) smacking me upside the head with the same thought over and over. Did I really believe that He created this entire universe, in all it’s magnificence and majesty, with a personal interest in every one of His children, just to be shackled by incapability when faced with the prospect of affecting the movement of small green pieces of paper? Could I really believe both of those things simultaneously, that the God of all creation was somehow so weak that He couldn’t help when it came to money?

So, I went all in. I tithed the last of my money. My pitiful 100 dollars, not enough to pay a single one of the bills hanging over my head. “Your will, not mine, Lord.”

The next day a friend brought me groceries for no apparent reason. The day after, another friend asked me to drive her somewhere, and instead of giving me the 5 bucks for gas for the trip, she filled my tank. A few days after that a friend I hadn’t talked to in a while got in touch with me, with cash for me to repay a debt I had long since forgotten about. Each day, God showed me that His capacity for provision was limitless. I’m sure I will always have troubles with acceptance, in any form, but I finally was able to trust that He would provide.

Now, here we are again, except for instead of it being me and my husband, it’s me, my husband, my son, my sub/best friend, my mom, and my uncle.

__________

This is where I got interrupted. Mom came in, wanting to pray. I didn’t want to pray. I wanted to keep having a mental temper tantrum at God, feeling lied to. Feeling like I had put my faith in Him and He had abandoned me, and I was stomping around like a two year old who can’t believe Mommy would be SO MEAN to not let them have a cookie. But I didn’t want to make my mom feel worse than she already felt, and I’m not used to being the one encouraging her to have faith when she feels doubt (it’s quite a role reversal for us), and I didn’t want to shatter her tenuous hold on hope. So the three of us sat, and Mom prayed out loud, asking for Him to provide for us and for Him to give us the strength to trust in Him. My heart prayed with hers, though my mind was still riddled with doubt.

And that’s when he decided to smack me down like the hand of God. Well, literally, in this context.

Multiple friends, both online and in real life, all began to offer support of one kind or another, whether it was material or not. Problems began to resolve, and several imminent crises were averted.

I sat back, laughing and crying at the same time. I could “hear” God gently laughing with me, His knowing smile warmly radiating into me, and somehow pointing out how ridiculous I was being while still showing me love, as only a Heavenly Father could. Did I really think he was confined to probabilities, that the Creator of everything played with dice? And did I really think that my temper tantrum was going to make a difference in the plan that He set out before the dawn of time itself?

I don’t know how all the bills will get paid. But I know Who does. And He’s who I am putting my faith in. I don’t need to have it all figured out when I have the God of all creation as my Dad. He will provide for me, and guide me to where I need to go, as long as I trust Him.

“Oh ye of little faith, why did you doubt?”

An Anonymous Outsider