Over the last few weeks I’ve been feeling kind of bummed out/stressed out worried that maybe I was reading more into what I thought God was saying, by making it what I wanted rather than what he wanted.
Right now a large part of my WR mission trip is fundraising and getting stuff done like shots and passport, gear and figuring out when exactly it is I need to turn in notice for my job, and where I’m going to store my stuff for next year. It’s like putting together a puzzle and getting all the pieces to fit, but not having the actual picture to use as a guide….It was starting to freak me out…
Last Monday (7/6/15) I was having a rough day, not only was it the six year anniversary since my dad had died, but my paycheck was smaller than I had expected, and I realized I didn’t have money to get my first round of shots on Thursday (7/9) and that I really wanted/needed my passport to come in. (When I turned it in to renew it, I wasn’t entirely thrilled that it would be out of my possession for up to 8 weeks or so), and on top of it all I had probably the worst Migraine I’ve had since high school. I left work early because of it and went home and sat there at home in my recliner feeling like I was going to lose it. By the end of the night I was talking to God and I finally came to the realization that I just needed to let it all go. That my passport would come in when it was time that the money for shots would come in, etc…
I went to sleep Monday night feeling better about things, but when I woke up Tuesday and went through my day. That evening we had a Youth Group (YG) leaders meeting and it went well, we figured out our plans for the rest of the summer, and before we left Starbucks in Safeway I decided that I should pick up a prescription I’d been meaning to pick up for a few days only to find that my care wasn’t being accepted, which then caused me to go into a full panic attack again that night, because if my card wasn’t working for a $10.00 prescription there was no way it was going to work on Thursday for a couple hundred bucks for my shots. I went to bed that night feeling defeated and like there was no point. (On top of all this I was supposed to be figuring out how to pay to go visit my mom and sister on the other side of the state, and going to my church family camp over the weekend, and I just wasn’t feeling either).
Wednesday I woke up and I remember staring at my celling, and thinking, Okay God…I give up, I can’t do it all on my own…Everything will happen when it needs to…. Later that day I got home from work and there was my passport in the mail. Praise God!!! I got a text from my mom later that day saying that the card I use to pay for medical stuff had been fixed and that it should work the next day. So Thursday I walk into the CHD building to have my first two shots done (Yellow Fever, and Tetanus) and when it came time to pay everything went smoothly. All I could think was Praise God! I didn’t have to pay $250 out of pocket that day, because honestly I didn’t have it.
Went home and still hadn’t decided if I was going to go to my church’s family camp. Honestly, I hadn’t really wanted to, but I had told my adoptive family that I would depending on how I reacted to the shots I had just gotten. I woke up Friday morning and outside of losing feeling in my left hand for a little bit, I felt fine. So I decided to go to family camp. Before leaving I had to not only pack for the weekend but for the whole next week as I would be leaving from camp on Sunday (7/12) afternoon to head straight to my mom’s which is across the state. Making a pit stop at Wal-Mart on my way out of town I walked out and it’s pouring. My first thought was oh great. We haven’t really had rain in few weeks and of all day’s week get it now. Well okay God, I guess the farmers do need it but still. So I drove the 45minutes to Camp Elkanah just outside of La Grande, Oregon. The entire time I’m driving I’m basically praying to God that it stops raining, after all my favorite part of camp is Saturday, because we have a church softball game, and then we open up the slip and slide, zip line, and other activities to do. Friday night it continued to rain some, but then it calmed down. Saturday morning it managed to stay dry long enough to play eight innings of a church softball game. (Never seen so many doubles and triples in a church game). But just as we’re finishing up the softball game it starts to rain again, nothing major but we figured let’s all go get lunch and then we’ll decide what activities to open up for the afternoon. It rained off and on for an hour so but then we saw the Sun break through, so we decided to go open the Zip-Line up for people to do…we didn’t get more than 1 person down before it started to rain, by person #3 we called it. It was just too dangerous. Of course people were disappointed, but one by one we all ran back go the lodge to hang out for the rest of the afternoon.
Sunday morning, we woke up and it was sunny again. Went to the lodge for breakfast where someone, who shall remain nameless *ah-hum, Mike* decided to announce to everyone that it was my birthday, where they proceeded to sing Happy Birthday (not big on being publically recognized like that), on the plus side it meant getting breakfast first. We then all headed to the chapel where we had Church service (at family camp we normally do service outside but it was still too wet). Afterwards I left for my six hour drive to my mom’s.
The entire way home I couldn’t help but wonder why God allowed for it to storm and rain this weekend when he knew we’d all be looking forward to hanging out together outside. But then I got to thinking about all the things I got to do that I wouldn’t have necessarily done if we’d been outside all day. I got to hang out with some of the elderly of my church and play cards, I got to know one of my pastor’s and his family a little better. I along with most everyone else retired back to our cabins a little earlier than normal, and because of this I got to tell my story, my testimony to a couple of my youth group girls who were staying with us because they didn’t have anyone one else to stay with. God used this weekend, even though it was stormy and miserable outside, to bring us all a little closer, to have us mixing young and old and not caring that we weren’t hanging out with people our own ages, He gave us a chance to step out of our comfort zones.
My blog post this time is called Praise Him in the Storm. I chose to call it that because had it not been for the stormy weather this last weekend, I might not have taken five minutes to appreciate all that he did do. God always provides. He had my passport arrive just when I was thinking about giving up. He made it possible for me to pay for my shots when I didn’t think it would be possible. He got me down Cabbage Hill safely even though my breaks on my car don’t work super well. He even provided me with a donation of $50 into my AIM account to show me that the cares. No matter what the storm is, whether it’s a literal one with Rain, Thunder, and Lighting, or it’s a figuratively one, where nothing seems to be going right in your life right now. Remember to always PRAISE HIM! Remember he will get you through, He will never leave you, nor forsake you. He is always there. So PRAISE HIM in the good and in the bad. In the calm and in the storm.
