I'm not 100% sure what I'm going to write about in this post,
but I have some ideas floating around in my head like an aria landscape
casserole. Does that make sense? Good. I think this is the part of my season
finale where a happy montage flashes across the screen while the protagonist
does a voiceover, something along the lines of "So, I learned some stuff
during this 30 minutes of sitcom [or 60 minutes of drama], and I'd like to
summarize it for you before the credits roll and you tune in again next week
for our next episode."
If you're new to my blog and/or have no idea what I'm talking
about, maybe this previous post can give you an
idea. It may also help for you to know a little bit about me, if you don't
already. Hi, I'm Tirzah. I'm 37 years old, but when I pray to God in heaven, I
talk to Him like I'm 5. Because He's my Daddy. And I like Him. And He's been
redesigning me. I analyze everything to death because I'm a meditator. That's
what I do. I chew. Then I spit it out, stare at it for a few hours, and then
gulp it down again. And I chew some more. I think God my Daddy made me that way
because, well, He wants me to chew on Him. (Not literally. That would be gross,
and I would die immediately. End of chewing. Roll credits.) While He's been
healing up my emotions for the past 3 years, I've become one of the most
sentimental people you'll ever meet, and usually when I sit down and try to
write a song to my God, it sounds like doo-wop. Because I'm in love, and He's
my First Love. You can roll your eyes and call me a nun or a fanatic or a
stupid little kid if you want, but I don't care. I know that I'm my Beloved's,
and He is mine.
"Prepare your outside work, make it fit for yourself in
the field; and afterward build your house." (Proverbs 24:27)
"They confronted me in the day of my calamity, but the
Lord was my support. He also brought me out into a broad place; He delivered me
because He delighted me." (Psalm 18:18-19)
2013 has been an extremely excruciating, buttcrack-terrible,
horrible year for me, just because of the spiritual warfare. I didn't call up
50 of my friends to ask me to pray for me every time I got attacked because I knew
it would end well, and I knew I needed to fight most of the battles myself so
that God could make me stronger. (Also, my friends probably would have gotten like 80 phone calls a week from me and would have had to file restraining orders.) I think it was kind of like watching an egg
hatch. You want to help the baby chick by breaking its shell for her, but she
needs to break out of there herself -- as difficult of a process as it can be
-- or she'll die. If she doesn't hatch on her own, she won't build up the
strength that's necessary for her to break free, breathe free, waddle free, run
free, fly free.
So, God has talked to me plenty about my crazy 3-year healing
season. 2013 was the hardest part, of course. He showed me that I had spent
time taking care of people, and now it was time to take care of me. He showed
me that if He had told me ahead of time how whacked-out crazy 2013 was going to
be, I probably wouldn't have wanted to go there. He likes to sneak around
sometimes. Aw, yeah, Psalm 18:26. I used to be pretty darn deceptive. I was
quite a terrible mess, actually. But I think God reached down, pulled me out,
washed me off, and said something like, "This one's Mine. When they look
at her, I want them to say, 'Wow, she didn't do that herself. God chipped away,
whittled ferociously, and polished profusely, and now she looks just like Him.'
"
I love to hear other people's testimonies. (When I visit the
beautiful coin laundromat each week, I take a book with me, and I make sure
it's a testimony/biography/memoir.) I love to hear people tell their life
stories (but not the entire thing in like a 4-hour sitting), especially about
how God found them, bought them, and restored them. Usually the stories I hear
are nice and shiny, but I'm not so sure mine is so shiny. I don't think my
testimony is like "I grew up in a Christian home, experimented with drugs
when I was a teenager, and then everything became wonderful after I got saved,
and now I have a beautiful spouse and wonderful children, and we're all living
for the Lord, and God is so faithful, and I'm so thankful."
I think my testimony is more like "What you're looking
at is what was left after God pulled Tirzah out of the shredder, sewed her back
together, patched up the questionable-looking parts, welded the chafed-looking
parts, smoothed out the dead parts, and said, 'It's alive! It's alive!' Dang,
it's been a [bleep] crazy road I've been crawling on. I'm thankful that God
didn't zap me off the face of the earth for waving my [bleep] middle finger at
Him, cussing Him out, and yelling at Him. He's faithful, and quite honestly,
with all due respect to Him, I think He's absolutely crazy. Who the [bleep] in
their [bleep] mind would put up with [bleep] like me? Him. And now I'm just as crazy
as He is. He's had plenty of chances to kill me, and I've given Him plenty of
reasons to, but I've finally come to the [bleep] conclusion that He ain't
interested in killing me. He's interested in keeping me alive so that I can
point to Him and say, 'Check Him out. He's [bleep] crazy in love with me and
with you, too.' Wait. Do you smell something burning? Uh-oh. It's my [bleep]
butt. Uh... excuse me, folks, but He decided to light me on fire while I was
speaking. Pardon me while I stop, drop, and roll."
During this crazy healing season, I've learned to be prepared
for anything. I guess you could use the cliché "expect the
unexpected," but I would say it's more like "hey, man, if somebody
suddenly throws something at you, duck. If you don't duck right away, try to
find something to throw back. If you can't, then you may as well buy a house in
Greenland with flying unicorn cats." Does that make sense? Good.
I've learned that God is a wonderful Daddy who has a huge
bottomless treasure chest -- nay, it's more like a treasure mall with unlimited
supplies -- and is constantly wanting to give good gifts. And He's also like a
benevolent Stage Mom who isn't a micromanaging tyrant but more like the Teacher
of the Year who always has the best answer for everything and always feeds you
your line or gives you your cue at the perfect time and who always believes in
you and who always fights for you.
And as much as He wants to give cool stuff or lead to cool
places, He's really mainly interested in ME. In YOU. In US. In all of us
getting some one-on-one bonding with Him. He's hilarious, He's serious, He's
soft, He's strong, and He's perfect, all the time.
I'm sorry, I distracted myself talking about my Father. What
was I saying? Oh, yeah. The credits are about to roll. So, what I learned
during these 3 years of sitcom/drama/nonstop life is that, well,
I'm stuck with God. And, like a good, cheesy love song says, I'm happy to be
stuck with Him. It's like we're a married couple or something. We've promised
ourselves to one another for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in
sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live. (That's an eternity.)
And yes, He is faithful, and I'm so thankful.
So, I think my field has been in its final stages of getting
ready (as I quoted in Proverbs 24 above). I've finally let Him clear out my
garbage that was just sitting outside for all the neighbors to gawk at and
gossip about, and now I think the field is ready to be worked. And now it's time
to build my house. Do I know how to do that or what it's going to look like?
Pffffft. No. But God knows. And if He doesn't build my house, I'd just be
laboring in vain, anyway (Psalm 127). And I know another thing for sure: After
all this, He and I aren't ever going to forget each other.
So, I'm going to hang on and enjoy the ending of this ride
and the beginning of the next ride. This one kinda felt like Falkor's back. I
wonder if I'll get a limo for the next one? Or maybe a moped? Maybe a Hummer.
Have I ever told you about the time I got rear-ended by a Hummer and lived to
tell about it?
Wait. I wouldn't just end a blog post on a cliffhanger, would
I? Hi, I'm Tirzah. I'm 37 years old, and I like to keep people guessing.
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