Humble Song

Humbly I say,
Humbly
Only humbly may I proceed

For I know
And I know
I know of my deep deep need

My need is greater
Greater Greater Lord
Weaker Weaker
Each day do I percieve
When I realize who I am
And then I realize I am
I am one who
One who believes

Humble, Humble
as humble a one as you'd make me
A servant belittled by the entire world
But lift me up and show me who I am

Weaker, weaker
I know this is who I am
Weaker, weaker
I know, I know this is who I am
I am one so weak that I
Stand up and proclaim
In the Holiest of Names

Humble, Humble
Humbly may I be crucified
by you
Humble, Humble
I have died through you
And I, I
I say bye to I
And hi to You
Allelu Allelu Alleluia
Alleluia alleluia
alleluia
alleluia
alleluia
a le lu ia

What I can't tell you, but I'll try to anyway.

I am peculiar.

I'm beginning to embrace this about myself.

Lately I've been blogging about this thing or that thing with friends. That's because that's what's been easy to blog about. There are solid events I can tell you about. This happened, or this didn't happen, etc.

But there's been so much more going on.

I can't tell you all of it, because honestly, I don't know everything yet. I can feel the hands of God kneading my spirit, forming it into something else. And I praise Him for it! But right now I'm in the process, and I have no idea what is going on. :)

But I can tell you that my hunger for Scripture is multiplying, the 'secret place' in me and in Christ where I meet Him is expanding, and... SO MUCH MORE! He's growing me. He's using me.

I am His and He is mine.

I LOVE YOU!

"It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart; for whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God's grace with me. God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God." -- Philippians 1:7-11

Oh, Paul! And Timothy, in this case. How I love the way he expresses things, through the power of the Holy Spirit.

I just wanted to tell you, all of you but most especially my family in Christ, that I love you, I love you, I love you.

God has made me for you, to serve you, to pray for you, to love you.

And I do, I will, and I am joyful to do so.

Preperation v. Planning

My last post was about disappointed plans... which I'm used to. I'm not really supposed to make plans.

I have been giving this thought lately. God makes the real plans, you know? Is there any point in us planning? Or, specifically, me? God's always veered me away from plans, either with guidance that way or just with throwing tons and tons of wrenches into them. :)

It's not that I'm saying be irresponsible either. Which is why I've been giving this thought. Where is the balance? And now I think I've figured something out.

I need to live prepared. Preparation and hopes are the forward force, not planning and goals. Those belong to God. But I need to be prepared to carry out His plans.

It might seem a simple revelation, but it's huge too. Not because it's particularly profound, but because I've had the worldly wisdom of "plan, plan, plan" being pushed upon me all my life. And the Spirit has always guided me to resist this... and realizing how to react to it is big. I need to prepare, but planning needs to be resisted. I mean, there is no harm in little plans like "I plan on going out with my friend today". But there is harm in assuming it's set into stone. I suppose I really "HOPE on going out with my friend today". There's a key difference.

Today and how it deviated

It's been two weeks since my last post! Considering I posted practically daily in July, this feels like a huge time off from blogging. And that's sort of funny, since I used to be a once every three months type of blogger.

You know how whenever I make plans it all falls apart? Well... it happened again.

Today was supposed to go like this:
Wake up around 8. Be on the road, catching a ride with my Mom who has to be at work at 9, leaving the house at like 8:20.

Meet up with friends in Spartanburg at sometime in morning. Lydia, who I went to MO with, is finally back... and leaving for CA tomorrow. Grace is a great friend I go to Bible study with, but rarely get to hang out with socially outside of Bible study. And their friend Amanda actually goes to my church, but I've never met her! So I was supposed to be introduced and we'd have fun happy times until Grace had to go to work at one.

Amanda would also say bye, then Lydia and I were going to be alone. I would either talk to her now or later, but I want to catch up with her, especially telling her about Kansas City and IHOP. Especially IHOP and what God did for me there.

Then we'd go swimming at another friend's house. Then I guess we'd probably get dinner (I have like 4 bucks so I'm thinking taco bell). Then we'd be meeting another of her friends, and some other friend or friends, I forget and we were going to the movies. Then Lydia would drive me home and I'd have had a blissfully happy day.

That did not happen.

Instead, let's rewind to yesterday. My friend Sarah got married. I didn't go, but Lydia did. And Grace tagged along. And apparently she didn't leave Columbia (where the wedding was) until 3 am or so. So she texts me saying there's no way we're meeting up in the morning. All right, that's fine. I plan on doing everything else the same, but just spending my morning at the library.

On my end, I had to go to Charlotte picking up my sister. Her plane got in at around midnight, so we were home a little before 2. But then I talked to her, and let's face it, I'm a night owl, so I wasn't sleepy. She went to bed around 3:30, but I hadn't prepared for today. I had to lay out my clothes so I could just slide into them in the morning. I had to figure out just what I was bringing with me to Spartanburg: pamphlets on IHOP, swimsuit, etc. I got to sleep after 5:30 I know for sure. I debated if I should sleep at all.

See, sleep and I are old foes. I need it, sadly, but whenever I fall asleep I entirely lose control. I am not a control freak, so it's not that it's that, but sleep always screws me over. As it did this morning. I woke up at 10:30, my mom long gone.

Lydia called me around 11:30, once she'd gotten up. I told her, hoping she'd be willing to come and pick me up. She wasn't.

So I cried. (Not on the phone, after)

Then something occurred to me... Tabitha! She is usually willing to run around, so I called her, explained the situation, and asked if she'd be willing to take me to Spartanburg. She said it was a definite maybe, but she has plans until at least 1:30 (and it's 1:22 now, so I'm waiting to see if she'll call me soon). I told her that Lydia and I would be hanging out until after the movie and she thought that was cool...

So I, better cheered, call Lydia. And she tells me she's not willing to drive me home after the movie now, she's afraid of over doing it and getting ill after not getting home until practically the morning last night. You have to understand, I live 45 minutes away from the east side, which is where she lives. So to go to my house is 45 minutes and to go back to hers is another 45: that's an hour and a half. If she had done that this morning and this evening, that'd be three hours just to give me a ride. So I understand... but she had already told me she'd be willing to take me home, so I was really disappointed. I'm trying to scrape at least a little of these ruined plans back together and, well, she's not.

She says my mom should take me home. My mom (who works on the east side) leaves work at 6pm.

If Friend T leaves right now to come get me, she'll be here around 2. We'll go 45 minutes to Spartanburg and be there at 2:45 or 3. I can't ask her to take me and not hang out with her at all, but let's say I spend an hour with her. That puts me with Lydia at 4. That means she and I would only have two hours together.

Part of me says is it worth it? Especially since Tabitha is never here exactly when she says. If she said she'll be done by 1:30, she'll probably actually be done at 2 or 2:30.

But I also really just want to hang out with Lydia, especially to talk about God, KC, and IHOP. And to hear about Sarah's wedding! I saw Lydia at Bible study on Friday, but otherwise I've not seen her since I said goodbye to her in Columbia, MO back on June 27th. And she's leaving again tomorrow.

Admittedly, she'll only be gone a week. And then she'll be back for a while because her job will restart again here.

That's it. Once again I am waiting and seeing what will happen.

Welcome to August!

And what a fine month it is.

My God is so amazing. It's mainly in the little things He is great. My God is just... yayness personified.

It's true.

I had a good day of work on Saturday. I kicked off 8 hours on the porch cleaning. It's still not done, but it's better. I did a tiny bit this morning, but I'm a bit more day dreamy today. On Saturday evening I went out with an old friend too, caught up. It was good. I hope it was cosmically good too, you know?

Sunday was a good sabbath day of rest. I went out with the same friend whose dog I can never get with my dog? We looked up rental places. We got the paper and the IWANNA but there were only a few prospects there. So then we drove around areas that were in the right general corner of the upstate, but likely to be both inexpensive and relatively safe. And if we saw a for rent sign, we wrote down the number. Excitingly, the strongest prospect currently is a trailer within walking distance of where I live. I love the idea of having a friend that close. And we won't have an excuse not to get our dogs together then! The sign outside had in small letters the price per month and the deposit required, and the number. She called and left a message, but no one answered, it being Sunday. But the next cheapest thing we found was 50 dollars a month more, and was in a bad area. See, we'd driven down a nice street and saw a nice twostory house and knew she probably couldn't afford it, but called anyway. And the guy who answered said that house actually wasn't ready for tenants, but he had two other properties. He gave us the address and told us the price per month and we checked them out. One is a duplex, which she isn't wild about. And both had tons of kids (mainly teenagers) milling around in the streets, which both made her nervous (gangs? drugs deals?) and also made her annoyed. Even if those kids are perfectly harmless, she doesn't want to have to deal with worrying about hitting people in the road every time she comes home. I can see that. Plus, her husband is an introvert and likes to be isolated. The trailer isn't isolated, but it's got more land around it than the houses did, and certainly more room between you and your neighbor than the duplex!

Still, they don't know yet.
Currently, they're living with her parents. They've been having marital problems and now he's confessing he wants to live elsewhere. That seems like it's probably healthy to me. It's probably tough living with your in-laws.

And today... I cleaned the porch a little. That's pretty much it, productive wise. But I'm on the internet for the first time in days and you're expected to keep in touch electronically, so that's probably not a bad thing or a waste of time. And I played with kittens, which is always good. :)

I think I'm going to have some lunch and then go clean the porch some more. (It's a screened in porch, btw, that we use as a tool shed/gardening center/place to keep sunscreen and bug spray/cat land/where my parents read the newspaper/etc and it's just overcrowded with stuff. Plus, since it is outdoors, it's muddy and dusty and such. That's why it's taking so long to clean it.)