I’m here to tell you that God is good. He was good before the story I’m about to relate, and He’d still be good if it hadn’t happened, but this is just one of the many instances through which I’ve witnessed His goodness lately.
I had a crazy weekend. To make a long story short, I had two days worth of homework to do and chose to spend what I thought would be part of my day Saturday but which turned in to all of my day Saturday, helping some friends. Sounds like a good, Christian thing to do, right? Except I forgot one major step-ask God first! Just because a thing is worth doing doesn’t mean I’m supposed to do it. (This has been ‘Life Lessons from The Overbooked DTS Student’) God is good and used my mistake to teach me that lesson and to give me practice, the next day when they needed more help, at saying ‘no’ even when I think it will make people unhappy with me (a tough thing for us people pleasers).
The point of all of this is, I started Sunday with two days of work to do and only one day left in which to do it. I spent the whole day Sunday and part of Monday morning getting my work done. I reached a point of utter frustration and panic around 10 pm and walked down the hill in front of the Inn (you can see part of it in the picture on my first post) to meet with God for a few minutes of crying and pleading for help before I resumed my labors. When I finally crashed into bed in the wee hours of Monday morning, I was pretty sure of 2 things – I was going to need one HUGE cup of coffee to get me going in the morning, and I was STILL going to struggle to stay awake in class. My biggest fear, though, was that I would wake up with a migraine or develop one at some point in the day, from the stress and lack of sleep. And my Monday schedule left no room for napping-be at class an hour early for worship practice (to which I had to walk, because I had just made a no-driving-in-good-weather proclamation to my classmates, to save gas and prepare for our wilderness challenge weekend-how much I regretted my burst of responsibility at that point, I don’t think I need to say :)), help lead worship, 3.5 hours of lecture, walking home for lunch, 2 hours of work duty, dinner and walking back for 2 more hours of class before I could even think about returning to my bed.
With all of this swirling in my brain, I prayed again as I finally laid down for that catnap before breakfast. When I got up a few hours later, I was amazed at how awake I felt. I got ready and went down for breakfast, remembering just in time that I COULDN’T have that huge cup of coffee I’d been betting on, because I was in the process of kicking my caffeine habit in preparation for Niko (the wilderness challenge camp I mentioned earlier). I thought about throwing in the towel and suffering through the caffeine headaches next week, but decided headache now was better than headache in the woods and went outside to start my walk to worship practice. I ran into Jesse (the guitar player for worship, who is also the Brazilian ELC student I told you about in my first post) and was given my second gift of the morning (the first, in case you weren’t counting yet, was waking up and not wanting to die on the spot from exhaustion) when he told me that the base worship leader was giving him a ride to class and would have room for me, too. If I hadn’t been holding my breakfast awkwardly in both hands and carrying all my books and laptop for class, I’m pretty sure I would have jumped for joy.
My morning continued with more little gifts…I knew all the worship songs we were leading, so I could relax and even got a chance to lead two of them. Our speaker this week is pregnant (with twins—how exciting!), so she took several short rest breaks during lecture, during which I was able to walk around and wake up a bit—I didn’t nod off once during class. The biggest gift of all, though, came during work duty when my fellow Hospitality worker, Christiane (picture above, right-she's the one who's not me ;)), offered to cover the rest of our day’s work by herself so that I could take a nap. A GLORIOUS, 1.5 hour nap, to be exact. And, no migraine!
So I’ll say it again…God is SO good! He takes care not of ‘those who help themselves,’ as the saying would tell us, but of those who, not having helped themselves, having, in fact, found themselves in horrible positions all of their own making, cry out to Him for help. Yea God!
Praise God with Me:
+For my unexpectedly wonderful Monday (described above)
+For His provision for my teammates, Tamika (picture above, below Christiane & I) & Christiane who heard from supporters that some of their lecture fees will be covered.
+That our outreach airfare cost, which was supposed to come to $1400 a piece, could be as low as $1019 because one of my teammates has a friend, who is a travel agent, working on our behalf.
Pray with Me:
*That God will prepare and equip us for our Outreach to Amsterdam
*That God will provide us housing in Amsterdam (we had a place lined up, but it’s been double-booked)
*That God will continue to draw us closer to Him that we might know and serve Him better
*That God would continue to raise up people to provide lecture funding for my teammates (As a team, we owe over $6,000)
*That God will provide funding for our Outreach fees and airfare (over $17,000 for our whole team, if we get the deal I mentioned above…but it is time sensitive and we are waiting on some passport info on two of our teammates, so please pray for that, too)
I had a crazy weekend. To make a long story short, I had two days worth of homework to do and chose to spend what I thought would be part of my day Saturday but which turned in to all of my day Saturday, helping some friends. Sounds like a good, Christian thing to do, right? Except I forgot one major step-ask God first! Just because a thing is worth doing doesn’t mean I’m supposed to do it. (This has been ‘Life Lessons from The Overbooked DTS Student’) God is good and used my mistake to teach me that lesson and to give me practice, the next day when they needed more help, at saying ‘no’ even when I think it will make people unhappy with me (a tough thing for us people pleasers).
The point of all of this is, I started Sunday with two days of work to do and only one day left in which to do it. I spent the whole day Sunday and part of Monday morning getting my work done. I reached a point of utter frustration and panic around 10 pm and walked down the hill in front of the Inn (you can see part of it in the picture on my first post) to meet with God for a few minutes of crying and pleading for help before I resumed my labors. When I finally crashed into bed in the wee hours of Monday morning, I was pretty sure of 2 things – I was going to need one HUGE cup of coffee to get me going in the morning, and I was STILL going to struggle to stay awake in class. My biggest fear, though, was that I would wake up with a migraine or develop one at some point in the day, from the stress and lack of sleep. And my Monday schedule left no room for napping-be at class an hour early for worship practice (to which I had to walk, because I had just made a no-driving-in-good-weather proclamation to my classmates, to save gas and prepare for our wilderness challenge weekend-how much I regretted my burst of responsibility at that point, I don’t think I need to say :)), help lead worship, 3.5 hours of lecture, walking home for lunch, 2 hours of work duty, dinner and walking back for 2 more hours of class before I could even think about returning to my bed.
With all of this swirling in my brain, I prayed again as I finally laid down for that catnap before breakfast. When I got up a few hours later, I was amazed at how awake I felt. I got ready and went down for breakfast, remembering just in time that I COULDN’T have that huge cup of coffee I’d been betting on, because I was in the process of kicking my caffeine habit in preparation for Niko (the wilderness challenge camp I mentioned earlier). I thought about throwing in the towel and suffering through the caffeine headaches next week, but decided headache now was better than headache in the woods and went outside to start my walk to worship practice. I ran into Jesse (the guitar player for worship, who is also the Brazilian ELC student I told you about in my first post) and was given my second gift of the morning (the first, in case you weren’t counting yet, was waking up and not wanting to die on the spot from exhaustion) when he told me that the base worship leader was giving him a ride to class and would have room for me, too. If I hadn’t been holding my breakfast awkwardly in both hands and carrying all my books and laptop for class, I’m pretty sure I would have jumped for joy.
My morning continued with more little gifts…I knew all the worship songs we were leading, so I could relax and even got a chance to lead two of them. Our speaker this week is pregnant (with twins—how exciting!), so she took several short rest breaks during lecture, during which I was able to walk around and wake up a bit—I didn’t nod off once during class. The biggest gift of all, though, came during work duty when my fellow Hospitality worker, Christiane (picture above, right-she's the one who's not me ;)), offered to cover the rest of our day’s work by herself so that I could take a nap. A GLORIOUS, 1.5 hour nap, to be exact. And, no migraine!
So I’ll say it again…God is SO good! He takes care not of ‘those who help themselves,’ as the saying would tell us, but of those who, not having helped themselves, having, in fact, found themselves in horrible positions all of their own making, cry out to Him for help. Yea God!
Praise God with Me:
+For my unexpectedly wonderful Monday (described above)
+For His provision for my teammates, Tamika (picture above, below Christiane & I) & Christiane who heard from supporters that some of their lecture fees will be covered.
+That our outreach airfare cost, which was supposed to come to $1400 a piece, could be as low as $1019 because one of my teammates has a friend, who is a travel agent, working on our behalf.
Pray with Me:
*That God will prepare and equip us for our Outreach to Amsterdam
*That God will provide us housing in Amsterdam (we had a place lined up, but it’s been double-booked)
*That God will continue to draw us closer to Him that we might know and serve Him better
*That God would continue to raise up people to provide lecture funding for my teammates (As a team, we owe over $6,000)
*That God will provide funding for our Outreach fees and airfare (over $17,000 for our whole team, if we get the deal I mentioned above…but it is time sensitive and we are waiting on some passport info on two of our teammates, so please pray for that, too)
2 comments:
Well, praise God indeed for a good Monday :) And for no migraines!! Lance and I will certainly be praying for you. Love you tons!
Hi Beth.
Great blog. Glad to know we can keep up with you.
Hope you don't mind but I am linking you to mine as well.
Have a good one.
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