Uber Marianne

Just a quick update to revel in the great providence of God, who somehow sees fit to bless me despite my failings. Of course, as a human, its unlikely that those failings will ever cease, and yet, although they should never be reveled in, they are usable by God to demonstrate to me again and again the depth of His undeserved grace on me. I mean, not the depth that it really is, because I’m puny and unrighteous so how could I really know how far short of the mark I actually fall. But enough that even I, being little and easily distracted, can see that His grace is abounding.

But here is what He’s gone and done this time.

Our new little puppy Star disappeared on Monday night after she’d only been at our house since Saturday. We’d let her out in the yard and when we went to let her back in, she was nowhere to be found. We (Erik, Steph, and I) walked and drove the neighborhood looking for her for a good few hours, then spent some more hours making up Lost Dog signs and putting them up around our block and the main roads. Here I was grateful for two things: 1) That I’d been excited enough to have taken a bunch of pictures of her when she first got here so that we could actually make the signs, and 2) I’d been dweeby enough to dress her in a little dog shirt so that if anyone found her they would know that she belonged to someone, albeit a crazy-dog-lady who puts clothes on dogs.

As an aside, I’ll explain a couple of things about this particular pet. First, Star was one of the puppies of the last litter my mom’s dogs had before my mother died. Second, of that litter, Star was my mother’s favorite. Third, after my mom died, Star went to live with a friend of my mom’s who has eighteen dogs of the same breed and four others of a different breed and who loves each of them tremendously. She even cried a little when I came to pick Star up and take her home. The only reason that I came to have Star at all was that my mother’s friend thought that Star would be happier in a home with fewer dogs because Star seemed to want more individual attention.

So, I had lost not only an adorable puppy, but also a link to my mother and practically a child to the woman who had been taking care of her. I prayed that God would bring her back home and that if He decided not to, that He would let someone find her who would love and take care of her. I prayed that for two days while I called the police to report her missing and visited the animal shelter to see if she had been found, while I sat outside on the porch willing to see her and walked the neighborhood hoping to find her.

And then what happened, but on Wednesday night, we got the call that she’d been found! A couple with three dogs of their own had found her on a side street being chased by some kids with sticks. They rescued her and took her home and then came back to our part of town to see if they could figure out who she belonged to, saw the notice, and called. We brought Star home and she’s been spoiled completely ever since she got back. It was certainly one way for her to get to sleep on the bed, although honestly I’d rather she just asked.

At any rate, the reason that I describe all of  this minutia is because I’m overwhelmed by how kind God is, even in these little things. Of course, it wasn’t little to me to have Star back, but in the grand scheme of things, things like war and famine and spiritual confusion, me finding a dog I lost is not probably on the list of Top Ten Things That Will Change the World. And yet, the Lord saw fit in His great mercy to bring my puppy home. It’s so small but shows such care. And I know that even if God had kept her from me, He would still be merciful and comfort me. No matter what, in every seemingly tiny thing, God still provides, He still sustains.

God isn’t only the God of small things, of course. And little blessings only seems so because He blesses even more.  But they can be useful to illuminate the big things that He is God of, too. The care that He shows for me reminds me of the care that He has consistently shown for me, the home He provided for Natalie, the eternal home He provided for my mother, the healing that He has given to my sister, the community He has brought to my dad, the fellowship He has brought me in my brothers and sisters in the faith, the providence He has given me while I’ve been out of work, the comfort of all His good and perfect gifts. And, most importantly, it reminds me that He rescued me from sin and made me into a new creature, that He equipped me to have a ministry to bring glory to His name, that He sustains my life each day and provides me with every pleasure that it offers, from the comfort of acknowledging His goodness to the care I feel for a little dog. And I want to thank God for all His blessings, even the “little” ones.

James 1:17 ~ Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.

Dear Workplace Diary-

Another day has crawled by at a snails pace and has left a somewhat similar residue. The good part about today is that I got to swap evil cousin stories with Hilary at work, but the bad part was the fact that my time is running out like a sandglass and I still don’t have any prospects. I can already see myself landing flat on my face with an audible thunk!, when I reach out my arm with my Tarzan yell and find there are no other branches to swing to.

Thunk!

I’m alright, I was just practicing.

Anyhow, the minutes are slipping away and there’s not one decent job to apply for. I’m applying for jobs I don’t even want at this  point. The joke will be on me if I actually get one of them. But, there seems to be little threat of that happening any time soon.

Oh, Workplace Journal, how do you keep the doldrums from catching up to you? I suppose it’s easy for you, since you can just cease to exist at my discretion, so there aren’t as many hours to fill up with wondering what happens next. It wouldn’t be such a big deal if I didn’t have to plan a stupid career and all. Why do I have to be thirty? Why do my next moves have to make an impact in my life?

Oh yeah, because they always do.

Anyway, the truth is that God is with me. Don’t believe me? Check it: “The Lord is the One who goes ahead of you; He will be with you. He will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.” (Deut. 31:8 NASB)  So I shall remember that, even though the trembly-kneed part of me wants to go home and take a nap and whine about things. As always, any time spent away from distractions is a good time to spend with the Lord, getting to know deeper His character, getting to wonder at the way He works things out. It will be for good, this. This will be for good, maybe not my good for the moment, but for Good.

And so, I will press on, out of this minor trouble, this trouble that is so small in the face of so much suffering in the world. I will pray for strength, and appropriate vision, and discretion and wisdom, and the ability to Philippians 4:11 myself, “Not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am.”

Only God can take me there. And He shall.

-Ube

Dear Workplace Journal-
It has come to my attention, recently, just now, that I will require your services to stave off the great gaping hole of activity that will no longer be filling my day. This is due to a series of events, most of which you already knew about before your creation. How lucky, how infinitely desirable to be you, and to have these known things already imparted to your sweet little brain as of the moment you were birthed. Whereas I have had to gain each tiny fact, intuition, and inference from years and years of hard emotional and mental labor.
(I wish I was British so I could have written “labour” and not been harassed by the Red Squiggle that has just made its appearance on my screen)
At any rate, there is no time like the present. But I suppose the same could be said of the future and, dare I mention, the past? What there have been far too many times like are the debaucheries of this past weekend. Dear me, dear me, what’s a lady-fellow to do?
Nothing, I guess.
You know, I’m smarter than I look actually. I’m also fatter and not as nice. These are things most people think about themselves though I’m sure. But in my case it’s true. And the reason that I bring it up is because I’ve got some things figured out. Like the fact that Brett Skywalker only gives me the time of day, or should I say gave me the time, because I don’t care or want him to. That’s the way these things go. If you want it, you can’t have it. If you don’t, it will be foisted upon you. I should make that “Uber’s Law” or something, unless it’s already taken. I wonder if to make something your own law you have to write a book making the proposition famous . . . ? Eh, forget it then. We all know how far I’d get on that.
Anyhow, no matter how many times he gives me, the truth is he won’t change. Either he’s been fooled or he uses it to fool everyone else. It’s a trick, either for or at his own expense, but a trick nonetheless. At the end of the day, it isn’t him that’s wanted, or missed, or called to. It’s her wanting to retain her possession. And I guess I refuse to believe that he doesn’t know that.
Still, it does make him an intriguing prospect probably to most. The idea of healing the wounded, of making the One and Only the Lone and Lonely, the thrill of dethroning a queen. But it’s so obvious. It seems like such a ploy. The idea that beyond his own control (oh, the unfairness, the grief!) one can only give so much of oneself. Hmph.
Anyway, Workplace Diary, at least I know I can be straight with you. I can tell you all the dirt and you won’t run off and tell everyone and then no one will let me sit with them in the lunchroom. I can level with you like hanging a large living room picture. I can give you the scoop and you wait, expectant, like a beloved empty ice cream cone. You who sit and receive while I creep out the Receptionist Aide because I can look off into space and still type accurately.
I’ll admit it, I can be a show off.

Love and Kissies!
-Ube

By the way? This is my beautiful baby girl, taken last weekend at her mom’s parent’s place.

I love this precious little girl so much. I can’t tell you how my heart thrilled to sit next to her, hunched together on a love-seat, poring over a Big Book of Words. I love her sweet little voice and her strange sounding stories and the way she smiles. She likes lions best of all and a gorilla at the zoo scared her. She draws squiggles on a small notepad and only looks up to tell me that she isn’t finished and then goes back to drawing. My heart breaks with love for her, every time, every time.

I am so blessed.

So I went into O-NET online today to gather some resources for the Resume Talk-A-Thon I’ll be presenting as my Last Act As Acting APD at my job. And, while I was there, and since no one seems to think I’m qualified for the jobs I’ve been submitting my resume to ad infinitem, I decided to find out what exactly my skill set has prepared me to be when I grow up.

This was the answer:

Yes, special friends, that’s right. The number one resounding reply was “Ship or Boat Captain”.  I hope this isn’t a reference to me doing down with the ship.

On the other hand, if that doesn’t work out, I can always supervise some logging workers. Although that doesn’t exactly look like the most promising career either.

I guess it all just goes to show that it really will pay to set my sights on the stars: If nothing else, I’ll be able to steer by them.

I would build you a boat

In which you could sail to any place you choose

Where you could languor and lean at your leisure

Stained with triumph through tears, and not

With blood, or disease, or held together with chains

A boat to dispel all memory of prisons

Or perhaps they will always be prisons

Because of the weight they hung around your neck?

Yet, still, I think, a gilded boat,

Made of silver and precious things

To carry you, suspended, between rocks and lands that have only served to bruise

But you can build your own boats,  and bridges, and you do

Your fortresses on the sand

You can take your own steps, and leaps, and turns,

As right or as left as you want

You will never need me to coddle you, stroke your hair, embrace you,

Cry over you

As I feel sometimes I want

It isn’t my place, not my place anywhere over you,

Even if I am grieving for what you should never have lost

You, agent, actor, master,

Carve out your own place from jewels and stones

Hollow out hills where ghosts roam with secrets unburied

Build it from everything so that everyone marvels

At how little you needed from anyone

And I will build my little boat

And wait for the wind to catch it

To take me off to someplace where

If indeed there’s  any place where

No one would ever think of building you a boat

That probably sounds more difficult to do than it actually is, since I really don’t know for sure what it means but I am almost certain I heard it in a song once. Almost certain.

So it’s today today and I wanted to check in and see what exactly that means. For starters, I got my first call for an interview since I heard the dread news that I was being laid off at the end of June, so that was an encouragement. As was listening to R.C. Sproul/Renewing Your Mind on AM1050 this morning. Strangely enough as I was sitting in my car waiting to go into work (heaven forbid I go in early), all of the sudden I hear R.C. discussing how sometimes when people lose their jobs, instead of thinking that everything is going wrong, it would be beneficial to recognize that losing your job could be a prompt to get you moving in a different direction, one in which your talents and abilities can be used more fully and God’s kingdom can be made more manifest through your humble service to what He’s called you to. Perhaps, to put it much more lamely, when God closes a door He opens a window.

For the truth of the matter is that God knows the number of hairs on my head (Luke 12:7), and so I have to trust that He also knows that my job has been eliminated due to budget cuts. I have to trust, and I have to make a determination to trust, that I will persevere so long as I pursue my faith in Him.  And whatever comes next, as uncertain as it seems to me now . . . He is sovereign.

I do hope I get a new job soon, though.

But if I don’t, I guess I will simply have to remain in pursuit of He Who is within me. It isn’t always simple, and it’s very seldom easy, and sometimes it seems all I do is vacillate between doing whatever I feel like when I feel like it and dragging my soul around by the ear for being naughty. Actually, it seems that way because it is that way. But God can make me better. He can cause the fruit of the Spirit to bloom in me. He can take me (Yes, even me!) if it pleases Him and turn my shruggery into self-control, my selfishness into goodness, my wandering eye into faithfulness. And that is good to know and better to trust because there are days and nights when I do, really and truly, forget that.

I have been worried, I confess. I have been frightened and anxious about not knowing what comes next. At some soon and definable point, I will not have something that I had before, something that I depended on. Of course, it’s only a job, but when the mortgage payment is due, the fact that it’s only a job is very little comfort. Is it a great job that I can’t bear to be without? No. In fact, I don’t really like it all that much and for various reasons I won’t get into now. Still, it was my job. And something about having that removed from my possession without my consent is pretty troubling.

So maybe that’s it. Maybe it comes down to feeling entitled. Maybe what I have had yet to look at is that the reason losing this job means so much to me is because in my mind I think that I deserve to have it. Maybe I think that it belongs to me and that I got it on my own and that no one and nothing should be able to interfere with that. Okay, okay, no maybes: I do think that. Ugh. How many times do I have to learn the same lesson.

The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed  be the name of the Lord.

What am I doing up at this time of night, you ask? Baby, there was a time when this time of night was like mid-afternoon to me. But, still, it IS somewhat inappropriate to be wondering around online when I should be sleeping away a contented fifteen minutes worth before going to work tomorrow. Still, here I am, and there you are, so let’s get down to it without all these prying questions all the time, shall we?

I enjoyed Renewing Your Mind today. Well, that is I tried to. I got a free two cassette VHS set of The Holiness of God about a year ago and finally got around to trying to watch it today. I’m touched and pleased by someone talking about God’s immense and depthless (not sure this is a word, but it will be for the purposes of this entry) majesty. It’s overwhelming. And I think in watching that program today (when it wasn’t going all fuzzy and being eaten by a decade old VCR) was influential in reminding me of what I’ve been missing. I won’t make a secret of the fact that my heart has felt cast down lately. And I’ve been so irritable with Erik, I’m not sure why he hangs around . . . which makes me even more irritable because if he doesn’t have a good reason to be here with me specifically for the traits I have (of which disconsolate irritability should not be high on the list) then I must be just taking up space and . . . well, the whole thing is endless when one starts heading down that line. I could probably write for an hour about that, but I wanted to tell you more about my First Love.

I miss being with God. I miss the movement He inspires in me. I can be so self-centered and static. But He reaches in with His Truth and who can remain unchanged by such holiness and grace? Not I, though I cover my eyes sometimes to ignore it. Lately it’s been my eyes covered with my arm to block out the sunlight on an early Sunday morning so I can “forget” that church will be starting soon. But I went this morning, and met with my Savior, and that has made all the difference.

. . .

It turns out it is later than I thought. To bed with me!

Who do I belong to? It isn’t me. It’s by blood I was purchased and to dust I will return. Who is the Author my life as well as its Great Love? Only Jesus. Jesus alone.

And who am I? Can anyone even tell? I’ve been reading a book about the empowerment of the Holy Spirit and while doing so it was mentioned that when Elijah did battle with the prophets of Baal and called down fire from Heaven, the prophets of Baal all resounded with cries that Elijah’s God was Lord. Can anyone tell that my God is Lord?

The point of the excerpt was that we Christians should pray outrageous prayers, like, for example, God, please shoot down fire from Heaven. But I think to myself that it isn’t the prayers that are missing, it’s me. I haven’t shown up to demonstrate what God has done for me. I’ve forgotten the beautiful and loving and radical and severe ways of my Master. And I haven’t been loving anyone very well at all.

And so, this radical prayer that I’ve been called to contemplate? Seems to lead me to a simple phrase: Pour me out of myself and You take up all the room. I’m Yours. And what purpose could I possibly have that is more valuable than Yours? How can I be so arrogant as to think that what it is I’m doing supersedes what You can do?

I am arrogant, and dishonest, and selfish and unmoving. And I believe with weeping hope that He will heal me from these things. I believe that if I truly ask, He will bless me by bestowing His manner in me. I believe He will give me the ability and the energy and the sustenance and the power to doggedly pursue Truth in all things.

So pray for me, friends, if you think of it. I have a long way to go.