Just Do It

I have been avoiding my computer.

It sits there, in it's place, torturing me. I know I need to write. I know I need to confess. I leave it there with its accusing black screen, treating it like it carries the worst form of Covid and can't wait to infect me.

But the truth is I am the one who is the problem.

I don't know what to write. I don't know how to feel. I don't know what to do next. I have only a one word prayer.

"Lord?"

The house sits there. We sit here. There is not enough money.

I pray. I ask and I wait.

"Lord?"

That one word prayer holds a whole universe of 'I don't get what is going on here.'

I don't.

But I hear that voice. You know the one. It comes from deep within and it whispers so that I have to tune totally in to it. The voice that is the creator of that whole universe.

"Start where you are."

Lord? I am in a darling cottage that makes me smile every time I come home. But its a darling cottage, not a mansion. It will hold 20 people. It will sleep 4.

"Good enough. Start there."

I fought the hot tears brimming my eyes.

"Lord?" I don't even have a bed for the guest room yet."

The answer nearly made me giggle. God can be so practical.

"Buy one."

Of course. Money has not been a problem the last couple months. It always works that way you know. God provides where he guides.

Yet.

My heart wonders why all this. We were doing well. People were getting help. The insurance reneged, but the new house was right there...and the donors too. Or so we thought.

But we sit here with reneging donors too.

"Start where you are."

I swallowed. "Where I am? Ok. If that is what you want that is what we will do. But --Lord?"

I thought the new place was a shoe in and we would be neck deep in decorating by now. However, the test was not availability but our willingness to compromise. We would not give up our mission or asserting that God is our mission maker, keeper, and provider. We lost our donor because they wanted control with no Creator. We would not have it, and rather than compromise, we backed up. Way up.

It cost us several million dollars and one fabulous property, at least for the moment.

It also wrung my faith to its limit.

"Lord?"

I settled down with my mocking computer and started writing this blog. I should have been writing all along, but I have been not. You might wonder why.

Well, its time for that confession.

I feel like a failure. We all worked so hard. We had it all figured out. Yet, when the moments came, the test was a fire. I would not move into a house with no centering in Christ.

So we didn't. It was right, I do know that.

Still, my mind wonders what happened and why we must start where we are. The place we were was amazing. The place we are trying to go is even more amazing.

So, “Lord?”

What is happening? Did we do something wrong? Did I do something wrong? Why are we going through all this? Why, oh why, do we have to start here, where we are, when where we are is not nearly as wonderful as where we have been?

What happened?

There has been no grand explanation. There has been no simple explanation. There has been no explanation at all. There is not, as of yet, a new donor. There is only that voice, deep in my soul, that keeps saying.

"Start where you are."

I have not lived a life of ease. I have had what some would call a fascinating life and others would call a horrible one. I call it both, depending on the memory. One thing that has remained steady in all the good and the bad is this: When I am obedient to the voice within, things go the way they should. Even when that voice is not really easy to fallow, or it stands in direct opposition to what I think I want, when I heed it, I am never sorry. God speaks in the depths of us. We have only to listen. He knows what we need to do. He knows all things and is never wrong.

So, we are going to start where we are.

Classes will begin again in September. We will begin our Ministry preparation program and we will get back to loving the hurting and giving them a place to go. Here, in my little cottage, up in Adin in Ron and Deborah's Air B&B's, and in the other places prepared by those who have rooms for the hurting.

We get the pain of others. We get the confusion and the loss and the anger and the angst and the wondering and the not understanding. We also get that there is hope and healing and a new life ahead.

While we are starting where we are. We will help you start where you are.