I know I’m not alone when I say I was appalled when I stepped onto the scale this morning. Where on earth did those extra 10 pounds come from? My pants didn’t feel tight yesterday, but since I’ve seen that number, they feel suffocating. I suddenly hate the way that I look and start thinking about eating only lettuce and drinking ice water for the next week. Why did that number change the way I look at myself? It didn’t happen overnight, yet I suddenly felt very uneasy. I found an immediate motivation for finding healthy recipes. I started tracking what I eat in the handy iPhone app I have. With one glance at the scale, I felt a new way of living coming on.

Sort of the way the Lord has been working in my spiritual life too. I felt totally comfortable and at ease with the track my life was on – I finally felt like i had found some stability since Owen died and “the” divorce. Then, I got a glimpse at what my ministry could look like. How my graphic design degree could help share God’s message in new ways. With just a fleeting thought and dream, I suddenly felt really uncomfortable again.

I wake up feeling unsettled. My heart is slightly racing, my stomach churning. Life is good. Nothing horrible has happened … just the daily struggles of raising three amazing, stubborn, colorful boys. But my heart strings are tugging. I know it’s the Lord’s way of getting me to work … to seek answers and start to move.

I’ve been thinking about going for my master’s for about a year now. I know that this isn’t the right time … money and time are just too tight. My children need me and God has entrusted me with these small beings.

So what work needs to be done? What change is coming or needed?

My unsettled feelings find truth in the 29th chapter of Jeremiah, verse 11-13:

¹¹ For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. ¹² Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. ¹³ When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart,

The answer is in prayer. It’s in seeking our Father first; with every act of every day. It’s less about having the vision all planned out and more about always seeking Him. When you want to write out your to-do list, fold your hands in prayer and offer everything you have to the greatest visionary of the universe. Let’s be real, his creativity far outweighs anything we could ever imagine for ourselves.

Oh how I’d love to know the plan so I could prepare. I’d have a to-do list and be organized and efficient in completing God’s work. I’d have something to look towards and work for. (I do much better with a goal set in front of me to accomplish – do you?)

Yet, this is not the task God lays before us. He does not call us to be prepared. In fact, he calls us to blindly trust – to fully depend on him. In my world, that’s the opposite. Think of the apostles … do you think they were prepared to bring the church to the world? HECK NO! Yet, that is what they were called to do and, with God’s help, that’s just what they did.

Dear Father, calm my spirit. Calm my worry in a way that only you can. Help me to use the glimpses of your plan as reassurance rather than anxiety of what could be. 

Love, Mel