Yes, I’m a middle-aged woman who owns a SpongeBob ice pack. I ended up using it yesterday to help with a migraine. I don’t remember how long it’s been since I’ve had a migraine (I used to get them more frequently when I was in my 20s), but I was fighting one pretty much all day yesterday. Aspirin wasn’t completely getting rid of the pain (I can’t just take Tylenol and drink a Coke anymore like I used to), but smushing an ice pack to my forehead/eyeballs/neck helped. I blame the Texas heat. Or my middle-agedness. Or maybe stress.
“‘We have the fire and the wood,’ the boy said, ‘but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?’ ‘God will provide a sheep for the burnt offering, my son,’ Abraham answered. And they both walked on together.” (Genesis 22:7b-8 NLT)
I’ve been taking Hebrew this semester, which has been a delight thus far, despite its challenges. When I was very young, my language-professor dad taught me and my sister some Hebrew (he still communicates to us that way on occasion, and we’re usually just like... Uhhhhh, sí). I think I forgot most of it, but I also think I have discovered—based on how I learned Spanish—that I learn foreign languages much better by taking a class than by immersion. I think this class is helping to awaken any Hebrew skills that have been buried in my subconscious all these years.
My Hebrew professor studies the Bible frequently, so sometimes he peppers his language discussions with his findings and opinions. During a recent class, he said that in the Bible story of Abraham being instructed to sacrifice his son Isaac, English Bibles mistranslated Genesis 22:8 in which Abraham tells Isaac, “God will provide.” According to my professor, at this point in the Genesis narrative, God is fed up with Abraham (presumably because of the way that he handled the situation with Hagar and Ishmael) and decides to test him and see if He really wants to build a nation out of him. So, Abraham didn’t tell Isaac in verse 8 like a good little Christian, “God will provide”; a more accurate translation is actually “Let’s see what God does.” I think my professor’s interpretation makes sense. To me, this explains this verse in the New Testament a little better:
“Abraham reasoned that if Isaac died, God was able to bring him back to life again. And in a sense, Abraham did receive his son back from the dead.” (Hebrews 11:19 NLT)
Why would Abraham think that God would raise Isaac from the dead if he thought that He would just provide a sheep in the first place? And yes, this part of Abraham and Isaac’s story mirrors how God would give up His only Son Jesus later, but my professor’s interpretation has gotten me thinking... “Let’s see what God does.” That seems to be the attitude of an expectant heart.
This season in which I am attending graduate school part-time and working only one part-time job (plus borrowing my guts out in student loans) has been fantastic. Instead of filling nearly every hour of the day with multiple part-time jobs or with a back-breaking course load, I am able to balance work/school with rest. I have time to be a student and an adult. I feel human. And as a side effect, I’ve been feeling a lot of emotions. God showed me recently that He took so much stuff off my plate so that I could deal with my issues—because they have been surfacing in full force. (Good thing the devil knows that I don’t take his crap anymore, and good thing Jesus is with me.)
Something else has been happening recently that I think might be related. I told a coworker years ago that the weekend is like exhaustion detox: You’re going a million miles an hour during the week, so your body gets used to flying high on exhaustion, and then you come down from that high on the weekends when your body is like... Duuuuude, you better sleep this off. So, while I’ve been in this metaphorical “weekend” of sorts, with a lighter load for the moment, I wonder if my body has just been taking its sweet time unwinding and detoxing. Over the past few months, I’ve been dealing with foot pain off and on. One horrible afternoon a few weeks ago, I had legit IBS; as in, while I was just pooping as usual, my intestines suddenly decided to spasm, as if I were getting repeated charley horses in my gut (my belly was sore afterwards as if I had just completed an intense workout, and I never, ever, ever want to repeat that painful experience ever again). Then I had that stubborn migraine yesterday. All of this has had me wondering if I’m way more stressed than I think I am. Or maybe I’ve been stressed all along, and my body thinks that it finally has permission to express/release it.
At any rate, grad school/seminary is fun, and I’m having the time of my life, but poverty will always be a stressful thing, no matter how much faith you have. I have everything that I need, but my budget is extremely tight, and I’ve been thinking through ways that I can reduce certain expenses. Meanwhile, the plan is still to keep doing what I’m doing until God opens a different door. But in crunching some numbers in my head, I’m wondering if I may need to get a full-time job sooner than later (possibly next summer).
I’ll cross that bridge when I get there. In the meantime, I know that God will take care of me, and I know that He likes to show off the cool things that He can do, but waiting for Him to provide can be a cliffhanger. Will He provide a fitting full-time job? Will He provide a second part-time job again? Will He multiply my current money sources like Jesus multiplied the five loaves and the two fish? Will He bring an anonymous benefactor? Will He miraculously pay for stuff? Will He drop money from the sky?
Hmm. Let’s see what God does.
