it's a sign of the times

birds chirping outside, but the snow is falling.

quiet, relaxing current music (89.3 yo) on in the background, but sharp thumps and bumps coming from the neighbors house.

moving forward, but tripping most of the way.

i have been amazed lately at the examples of how God pushes us, allows these crazy extremes in our lives.

"The Lord is my refuge and my fortress"

i sorta feel like that whole being put through the fire to bring out the purity in the gold is a constant cycle of my life.  in high school we used to joke about re-learning lessons that we knew that we already knew, but seemed to forget just in time to need a refresher course via God.  but here i am 10 years later and still freezing in my steps, thinking for a split second and then smacking my hand to my head thinkin - COME ON, you KNOW THIS!! ironically, it never seems to be things that i just need to know, it's things that i need to do.  it's not like getting back from the grocery store and thinking, crap, i forgot the milk... i get milk every single time i go to the store, how could i forget that?! it's more along the lines of, i know how God expects and desires me to handle these life situations, i may have even done then dozens or even a hundred times before, and yet, i still manage to get wrapped up in my own life and somehow miss the signs... all of the sudden i'm in the proverbial des moines IA and have no idea why i'm there or what i should do.  after a minute or two (or months depending on just how dumb i am at the time), God gently reminds me, this is why i've brought you to this crossroad again, i have more to teach you.

these types of situations are both a blessing and a curse (but i guess since it seems like they will be happening for the rest of my entire life i should just start seeing them as just blessings... :)).  a blessing because this gives me another chance to do it right, to follow God's direction, to utilize the grace that He is offering me to handle a situation that i am not capable of handling myself... a curse because it's so darn humbling.

ahhh humbling.  this is one of my absolute favorite memories from high school.  somewhere along the lines, in our mixed up holier-than-thou attitude and theology-lite, we had this thing.  long story short, in the most high-school-appropriate-level-of-maturity we would ask God to humble someone. oh of course, we'd say it in the most christian way possible - we were worried about their attitude or their pride, we thought that it was affecting them, and we were really just asking God to humble them for their own good. right...

alright, set aside your many judgments regarding our clear lack of biblical knowledge and hypocrisy on this matter and just take a second to think about how absolutely absurd this whole concept was.  ooooooh, but it worked!  lemme tell you, we prayed for quite a few people to be "humbled" and boy, we were not disappointed!  i realize that this was never how God intended for humility to be viewed. ironically, we all learned our lesson regarding this, and all were humbled by our lack of humility.  funny how God does that :)

must just be a sign of the times - time to re-learn, time to be made aware once again of the fact that God is constantly shaping and reshaping us, and we can be confident in the fact that He is never quite through with us.  and even though this can be an exhausting thought, i somehow always feel refreshed.  what a good God we serve.