Missing Peaces

When we are fighting for our souls, to some degree, we need to feel it! We are fighting to find out and become ALL that God has promised us and we go through a change. It’s going to be rough at time. We may feel exposed, forced to look at ourselves, our motives, our weaknesses, faults, and deny ourselves on a grander scale than just saying “No” to sin. We are saying no to Satan and “Yes” God I want you to heal me no matter the path it takes. It’s going to hurt some days like training for a race or marathon but the pain is worth it. The pain makes you feel alive again in him. I tried to find a pill to fix me. Yes, they might help but symptoms but the illness is still there. Back to tornadoes; I went on the mission trip to chaperone with my boys in the youth group and help in any way I could as well. Yet God spoke to me directly in the midst of others devastation. On the second day we went to a house that was to be completely gutted and had to be torn down to the foundation. Ground zero. To nothing. It was wrecked. We heard bits and pieces about the family who lived there. Mom, dad, two kids, a cat and dog as well. They rode out the tornado in a tiny coat closet as the roof was torn off the house, as their lives swirled about them. Nothing left but bits and pieces yet everything was left because they lived. Their names, Hayley & TJ, were spray painted across the walls. You look around and you think “Where do we start?”. You could sit and stew for a long time, but you don’t, instead you get to work. A couple of us started to move the fridge that was dumped out on the front lawn. We started to move it and then were told to move it elsewhere. All of a sudden it gave out and all of the food came falling out on the ground. This was at least 6 weeks after the storms had passed I am guessing. Maggots and containers of maggots. You just sift through it and pick it up and move on. I remember seeing a ton of packages of coconut and thinking this woman really liked her coconut. We were told at some point that the owners had said to throw everything away but some of the teens found some personal items in the rafters that still seemed like they were intact. The teens were insistent on keeping these items so we did. I sat on a curb and went through a box of some of these things. At first it was some old math notebooks. Who wants those? Not me. There were some music and various awards and pictures. Then there were the journals. I knew I would never throw out my own journals. I briefly glance through them, through her thoughts, memories, hopes. I certainly wouldn’t throw out hers. Yet I had already in fact thrown out my own. They were buried just as I had buried my desire to write, just as I buried my hurts. God used this later to remind me when I saw the exact same bag of coconut on a store shelf to not throw out my dreams. However there was a catch, although I wasn’t aware at the time. I was given a message in my heart to not throw out my own dreams but God did require me to give them to Him in order for Him to make them to start moving them into reality.