Interruptions

I've been thinking a lot about the interruptions in my life. It seems to me they all have the same theme. They take me out of my stable, secure, known world and propel me into a new world. When I was young, we moved several times, from Grand Rapids to Holland, from Holland to Lansing, from Lansing to Wisconsin, from Wisconsin to Pennsylvania. I was going into the 7th grade when we moved to Lansing. I knew one girl who said she would pick me up for the first day of school, but didn't. I was starting a public school for the first time in my life. I had to go there, by myself, and start new. It was hard, but I survived, and made new friends.

In the 9th grade, we moved to Wisconsin, and I went back to a Christian school. A small private school - 10 kids in the 9th grade. Seven girls and 3 boys. A cute teacher, single, who we teased a lot. The pastor came in to teach catechism once a week. The first week I felt so stupid because he asked a question from the catechism which I could not answer. Even though I had gone to church all my life, I had not had catechism instruction. My classmates however, had memorized catechism and hymns for some years. I can't say that I learned to love the Heidelberg catechism here, but I did learn it. I'm not sure I can even say that I learned to really love God here, in the way of having an intimate relationship with Him, but I did learn more about Him.

Ninth grade was my last year in Christian school. In the 10th and 11th grades I went to J. I. Case High School in Racine, WI. When the 12th grade came around my family would move to Havertown, PA. I threw a fit. I'm not kidding here, I stormed and cried and wouldn't speak to my mother. It was not a happy time. My mom and dad made arrangements for me to live with a girlfriend's family for the 12th grade. But, I graduated at semester and then to PA to live with my family. In PA, if you weren't Italian and you weren't from the neighborhood, you weren't quite accepted. I had taken co-op classes in high school in order to get a job, and that's what I did once I moved back "home". It was hard to make friends other than workplace friends.

After about a year in PA, my mom and dad moved back to Holland, and I with them. I got a job, a good job with a college, but then made some rebellious choices that took me out of God's presence. I moved away from home and into a relationship far away from Holland, Michigan. It would be more fair to say I snuck away from home because they had no idea I was leaving until the day I left. I still remember my parents crying and my dad reading scripture to me. It is so easy to find a worldly reason to say you are living in God's will, when in fact you are not. My time away didn't last long, I was back home within 2 weeks. I think I felt a bit like Jonah then, like I was falling down a deep well and was content to just stay there. But the really good thing that happened at that time was that I realized I really did believe in God and the Bible. Isn't it interesting that the only time I chose to leave my comfortable world was the time that I finally began a real relationship with God.

It's interesting to me that this all came out as I began to write. I really wasn't sure just what I was going to say. My interruptions don't seem like God calling me to a specific activity, other than show who He is where-ever he puts me. Even now, my interruptions all seem to do with taking me out of relationships in my comfortable world and placing me in a new world that "force" me into new relationships. As old as I am, it is still so hard for me to surrender all of myself to God. I am better at accepting where He puts me, but my heart still argues with Him as to whether He really knows what He's doing. So blasphemous!

In our sermon this morning, Pastor Huckabee said that as Christians we must always be prepared, and, that there are 3 types of believers:

1. Those that are about to get tested
2. Those that are enduring a test
3. Those that are coming out of test

He further said, God doesn't show up to make it easy, He shows up to prove He's faithful. That's what the testing is about. It's not for God. He knows us, He knows what we'll do. Testing is for us, so we know what we can do when we rely on God's presence. Huckabee said, "the trying of faith brings you to the pint of victory". Now, am I going to go willingly, or reluctantly?