A Year of Brokenness
Oh, you thought this was about spiritual brokenness before God. Well, it sort of is. But mostly it’s about the results of everything breaking. First, the vacuum cleaner. Not really a big deal. After holding it together with duct tape (yeah!) and wood screws, it finally quit. Result: paying for a new vacuum cleaner. Then, the car. At 168,000 miles, some things begin to break. In this case, several things. $528 later the air conditioning functions again (a necessity in Florida). OK, so we swallow some unexpected bills this month. But wait (like the commercial), more to come. Next came the hot tub (still broken) and then the big one – our central air conditioning system. Shorted to ground. Compressor blown. New system – with lots of help from JT and the people at his company – $6000. Oh my, I don’t make that much in a month or more. Now what do we do? Then my son returns to college after knee surgery – $2500. Then several appliances quit. Fortunately April is about over. Maybe May will be better. There’s not much left to break.
So, by the time we get to the end of April, we are upside down by nearly $10,000. Not so bad if you can spread it out over a long time, but what is broken can’t wait to be fixed unless we want to live in a tent in the summer heat. Physical brokenness leads directly to spiritual brokenness. “Lord, what are we supposed to do now?”
The Hebrew word for “wait” is hakah. It is not a passive verb. Like all Hebrew verbs, waiting is movement or action. How is this possible? Don’t we just sit in the doctor’s office, waiting for something to happen? Don’t we say to ourselves, “Why do I have to wait so long when I could be doing something?” Apparently, waiting is not doing in our world. But it is doing something in the Hebrew world. It is traveling on the continuum from frenetic activity to calm, expectant trust. Both ends of the continuum are active. Waiting is active expectation and anticipation. It is the action of holding your breath in anticipation of God’s arrival. He is there, just over the horizon, and if we could just stand a little taller, we would see Him coming. We can hardly sit passively still with this kind of attitude. We are like the maidens who hear the arrival of the bridegroom. We are ready to jump up and go at a moment’s notice. We are sitting in the doctor’s office on the edge of the chair. The engine is racing but the clutch isn’t engaged. And when we do pop the clutch, look out! Whoosh! We are off.
A year of brokenness provides lots of opportunity for drag strip faith. Any second God will drop the green light and we’ll be in full throttle, tires burning up the pavement, heading toward the finish line. But until the green light comes on, we wait! All of the experiences (and events) that prepare us for the green light are part of the waiting process. They are just elements of the explosive run to the finish. In other words, the active ingredients of waiting begin with the first moment of slowing down. That’s when the vacuum quit. Everything else simply provided the grounds for active waiting.
You can’t win a drag race if you’re not revving the engine at a stand-still. Just wait to pop the clutch.
PS – I guess we weren’t quite done. Now the roofer is here because the water is leaking into the house. Oh, I can’t wait to pop the clutch.
Oh, Skip, we are so with you – and so many others in the commmunity (it seems) – on this one!! I’m not even going to begin to tell you what we’re going through… as we wait…excitedly… trying to resist the temptation to go look for boxes to stand on to see if He really is about to arrive with some new revelation and challenge! Do know our prayers – as we go through these times together – that we will all be quicker to learn just how uncomplicated life should be.
Oh my goodness! What can I say about that! I know the feeling of trying to wait expectantly without giving up or trying to make things work out (after hearing and reading about how disastrously that worked out for people like Abraham or Joseph). I will certainly be praying for you and your family. Any comfort is a small comfort, but I am learning in times like these to try and repeat David’s cry, “Yet You are holy.” I don’t think I fully understand all the implications of that statement, but somehow it sticks like a rallying cry and rises up when I begin to feel overwhelmed by my almost 3-year-old who doesn’t talk due to autism, or by the uncertainty of the next paycheck (as a teacher this is the time of year when they tell you whether you get to have a job next year – fun!), or by the desire to do things that there seems to be no way to do.
On the up side, it’s supposed to be beautiful today! And my students are excited to be in class because they LOVE (for once) what they’re doing (they should since they’re writing the lessons). And Gavin’s making big strides in therapy (YEAH!). And who knows what the plans hold for next year except G-d.
You touch so many people’s lives, and clearly you are seeking the heart of G-d. His hand is all over you. Surely there is something in His greater purposes that He is accomplishing with all this craziness. Yet He is holy, and I will be praying,
Looking back to move forward,
Amanda
P.S. THANK YOU so much for all you do – for sharing the gift and insight G-d’s given you so that the rest of us can know Him more clearly and follow Him more closely.
Praise God for those like yourself who, after something breaks or everything breaks, turn to God – Yahweh-yireh instead of their own resources to mend. Unfortunately, I have witnessed those who have turned to their own resources to get out of the messes that they have found themselves in; and even though it appears for a season that they have managed to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps so to speak, they have lost forever the witness that they could have had provided they had turned to God.
Wow… The same things happen to my 1951 car and it only has 436,850 miles on it.
Bill
Sorry, my car is a 1991 model… not a 1951.
Bill
Skip, my friend, you have obviously been praying for patience! You should know better! 😉
I would say “I’ll pray for you”, but the country song that’s out right now has completely ruined that phrase for me! If you’re unfamiliar, google or YouTube “Jaron and the Long Road to Love”…at least you’ll get a chuckle today!
Although…now that I revisit the lyrics…perhaps someone has already been praying for you…
“What doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger” Well those are good words. Anyway like you April has been replacement month…or breakdown. A new electric service at $!000. Stack washer whcih was old, burned up. but no fire in the house. Money what is that. no cola this year from the government and increased medicare cost but like I said it didn’t kill me and I guess I am stronger after going for the B-12 shot only to end up telling about my pain in the left side that developed the day before. which is responding to antibiotics. Did I turn all of this frustration inward and bring on the hot colon. instead of just turning it over and letting God have control. Stress can make me sick this I know. After you gone thru most of your life and faced so many of it’s hurdles you would think that replacing a thirty year old electrical system would be a piece of cake. and goodness buying and paying for a washer and dryer like a walk in the park.
What makes us thinik we have to carry anything and internalize and make our selves sick over it.
Do I think I am stronger than our creator. No. But he lets me be human and I get overwhelmed and forget who is in charge. So with pain. physical pain I realize I have only our creator to give me the peace of mind that I seek. and inside I know that he is in charge…and it will be okay.
I didn’t let it kill me but it makes stronger. and poorer…but I can’t take it with me.
blessings to all and peace
Well Skip with our 81 & 77 years, we grew up without most of the things of yours that are now broken. But God gave us life, his Word, parents that loved us, and provided by growing food if they had a plot of land. — One year, 1929, my husband’s father lost his small dairy, no food for the cows, no one to buy them, he had to shoot them. and could utilize very little of the meat. No refrigeration. It continued from bad to worse, so with five children at that point. His parents had to abandon their little house & leave most possessions behind, they rode and lived in the back of their old beat up farm truck. And they followed the cotton pulling from the top of the Panhandle to the Coast of Tx, Corpus Christi, where they found the Gulf of Mexico and beaches to their great delight. They fished there and cooked the fish outdoors. No school, no books, all that were old enough worked , picking and pulling cotton, ( their is a difference) even his sister. People they worked for sometimes provided some food for them. It was hot in the summer, and they slept on tarps. or the sacks they pulled cotton with. –Then they returned to a realtive’s home near Lubbock. They let them live/sleep in a shack in the barn area. His father and the older boys, got a combine from the relative,( that was often broken) and the old truck ( often broken–they repaired them with their own hands and makeshift materials, and followed the wheat harvest up into OK, Kansas, etc., and came back different routes doing the same thing.— Then WW 2 came and the three older boys joined the Army, Navy. Only one was 18, their dad had to sign that they could join, and broke their parents hearts going off to fight in the War. All survived ( some minor injuries –the war brought better economic, now that is such a contracdiction—so sad that killing hundreds of thousands of people, makes some others able to make a living. Five of those seven children ( two more were born after the leaving of the home/dairy in Vernon, TX) Five of those earned college degrees, and my husband, Ed went on eventually to earn a PhD from Indiana U. Sad to say that not all of them walked in the Faith of Our Loving God and Savior, Jesus, but several of them did.
God is always on His Throne, and people can do without for more things than they think can! — I know that for sure! Never have such a large percentage of people in a nation had more than Americans. We are spoiled with materialism!! Has it helped us to walk with the Lord better? —- It appears that the Lord is going to turn us over to our own lusts. The trials of all I know are beyond the limits , so to speak! Below, I hope to write of one educated family I know about in the 1980’s that did live in a tent in Houston-which is Flordia weather. They moved from Canada to Houston in the summer. ( to be continued) L.B.
L.B. is continuing: The family from Canada with two children about 5 and 7, moved to Houston for him to continue in a Post Graduate program in some rare medical research area, in the 1990’s. The man was an indepth Bible teacher ( I am not sure of his credentials in that area). They pulled their pop-up-trailer tent to a park that allowed camping in it. They started attending the Vineyard Church where one of our daughters and her husband attended.
A church group that was started by John Wimber, a Fuller Theological Seminary Professor, about 30 years ago. The Vineyard churches knows how to minister in the love of the Lord! I have never seen any group give as they do. Well, our daughter and husband got to know this family, and found where they were living in the high humdity heat of Houston in an open type pop up camper.. ( seemingly unbearable situation) They took them in there home for one year. The wife could not work, but could be an unpaid -aid in an excellent private school where she got free-tuition for her children in the Medical Center area where her husband went each day. My daughter cooked their meals each evening, and cleaned up the dishes. while the mother bathed and took care of the children. We were living in the top of TX by then caring for my elderly parents, and not Houston. But when we were able to visit our family, this family temporaily moved to some of the other Church member’s home so we could have the”guest” bedroom and be with our children alone.—– Then the Lord, provided a lovely home in the Medical Center Area near Rice University, where the Professor and his wife were on sabbatical, and this family moved there. Once during this period, the man’s brother in CA died rather suddenly. He did not have the money to fly to the services and minister to them. The church took up an offering to buy his ticket, purchased it for him, and gave the left over money in an envelope to the man. After he returned to Houston from CA, he asked to speak to the group to thank them. He wept as he told how after he settled down on the plane, he opened the envelope with the cash and counted it, and he said that in his entire life he had never had that much cash before.—- I am giving God to glory and honor for His people that so value their Christian brothers and sisters!—
—– We need to be less concerned about doctrines and more concerned about the love of our Heavenly Father through His Power in dealing and healing people. We too can see His miracles !
In the past six weeks, I have had a true physical healing that can not be discounted by any of the nay-sayers. I am too busy with our personal ministries to write any more. I did not have time for writing any of this it is 11:00 o=p.m. and I have not stopped working all day. I am not to suppose to work like that, but it is necessary to keep things going. We have seen our “adopted” military family through so much — including a court-martial. Yes, covering several months, a nightmare, he was somewhat exonarated.
A new General came in Jan., by March he had ended the Court-martial, but there was lots of discipline. We believed that the ending of the Court Martial,with no prison sentence
I lost the above, —-was truly because of much intercession of prayer for this man and his wife and three small children! Well, what a shock ,when within six weeks after his exoneration, the man announced without explaining that he wanted a divorce, and that his wife was not to speak to anyone about it, includig us. He would draw the terms, and literally has put her under his thumb with threats of what he will do, if she does not agree to his terms. We have been inundating this entire situation with much prayer, quiet help of the usual things we have helped with: food, care of the children as needed, and trying to see what the Lord wants us to do.! —
I lost this one, too, I know I am too tired to continue, tomorrow, I will have a two year old that never stops, and I can never take my eyes off her! —– ” Don’t be surprised when the firery trials come upon you”—– James said, but we say, ” We always are surprised when they come!— WHY WHY???? God? give us sleep, rest, peace, health, and faith to keep on doing good, and in due season we will reap, if we faint not!!!—– Thank you Lord Jesus for providing your Light, your HOPE, your Word, Your Spirit, Your Love —–L.B. ( LaVaye–husband Ed who has been substituting at the H.S. almost every day at his age 81. Comes home to work in his garden,– now giving us lettuce, parlsey, onions, and one cucumber that will be ready about Sat., arugula ( also called Rocket– in Roman Days–and still is today actually, one of our granddaugthers spent a semester in Rome two years ago. They serve it almost every day there. Many blessings to all of you that read this! L.B.
Thank you, LaVaye. A testimony to faithfulness and encouragement to all.
Thank you for your stories. We have so much that we often take for granted (okay, I do). God is GOOD, yes, all the time.
Amanda, I appreciate reading your comments, and am blessed that with all you do that you spend time “seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousnes!”. I would like to comment on your three year old son that you say is autism. I know there are so many articles, knowledge, and information out there by experts. I am not one, but I would like to encourage you to speak & sing to him as often as possible in rhyme, smiling and really enjoying it yourself, and act as if he is too. Make up little short songs about any natural subject that are surrounding him at the time: swings, swimming, running, whatever. Include ” simple things from God’s Word: Praise God, Let this little light of mine! Yes, Skip reminded us that one recently, and I recalled when I learned it in a Southern Baptist revival at age four and half, and actually experienced God’s presence. ( it was years before that happened again). I have found it works with all small children; Be joyous, funny, etc. Spend much time with him and his brother. Mothers are the most important part of the young child’s life, No One Else can do it like you !—- One of my greates concern for young children today, is the long hours of absence from their Moms.
— I understand the seriousness of autism, but God is Greater. –Our own 56 year old Avionics Engineer son, did not speak much until he was three, he never did the one word thing, but when he started talking, it was amazing, he spoke in full blown sentences. He still does not talk as his mom does, but is a brilliant Avionics Eng. with a three- four office company that has done his small part in designing the King of Thailand’s ” Air Force One”, 2007, and redisgned three of the Princes large older planes. ( the King of Thailand has 17 sons) ( Our son, and his crew design the interior electronics part and gets to take the first test ride up). blessings in its full meaning, to you and your husband and sons. LaVaye Billings
Thank you for your advice an encouragement about my son! 🙂 I miss seeing him all day since I work, but I sing songs (like This Little Light of Mine, and Jesus Loves Me) as I drop him off and when I pick him up and at night when I put him to bed. But sometimes I’m lazy and don’t do as much as I should. Sigh – life! 🙂 Yes, G-d is greater. He’s blessed us with a great doctor whose recommendations have made a huge difference with Gavin and all of his therapists have noticed it. I’m confident that G-d has an awesome plan for out little guy. He’s so exuberant, and we laughingly say he’s “speaking in tongues” (we just need a translator). He is such a blessing! That’s awesome about your son – a great story to remember, that just because someone doesn’t follow “typical” patterns doesn’t mean they won’t do extraordinary things!
Thank you! Blessings! Amanda
Hello Skip. This is a little late in coming, but my first thought was, Lord, bless this man financially as he really needs money right now. I wish I had it to give, but struggle day to day myself. But, I do pray that the Lord bless you now with much needed funds to pay for all your needed repairs.