I'm baaaack..

      You may or may not have read my last note, where I said,
"If you hear from me again you will have no reason to believe that God does not exist." And here you are, hearing me again in another note. (er, book/tome/epic tale..)

      Well, okay maybe that was a little naive, lots of people have lots of reasons for not believing in God, however erroneous. Nonetheless, here I stand before you, (metaphorically. Actually I'm sitting at a desk in a bad chair.) I am (still) living, (still) breathing proof that the God who Provides (still) actually provides.

      He told me at some point that 1)this would be a good summer (and it has)
and 2) that this season I have been through would bolster someone else's faith in time. I hope that person reads this, because it is not exaggerated or embellished at all. If anything, it is condensed and watered down.

      Let's recap. I didn't work more than eight hours past June 27th. I had expected a tight summer and saved up some money. It was okay at first living on a very limited savings amount, then a very limited peach selling job, and then..
Then I was no longer okay. Things got worse and worse. And worse.
The bills kept coming in, bigger and, if it were possible, even more often.

      When stuff gets hard, it's usually okay at first. We think, "Oh, it's just a rough patch, things will get better." We stay positive. We find things to do and take up cheap hobbies, to keep us entertained through the boring inconvenience of not having a job. We eat cheaper, turn off more lights, use a little less conditioner because you're not sure if "get better" will happen before or after you run out of it. The real friends and family you have stand there next to you and do everything they can, offering every source of support they possess. (And guys, I would give you credit except that if I don't, God will, and his credit is SO much better.) Money comes from strange and unexpected places. Strangers, friends, odd (really, really odd) jobs, and unexpected gifts. The bills get paid, but barely. People bring you food, and suddenly free things take on a new sheen. "God Provides" plays in a loop in your head, drowning out what you're afraid of thinking. You start to make a choice to believe his promises, because before you could see how they would play out and now, not so much. He provides, he promised, and you focus on that.

      Over time though, it starts to wear on you. The collagen of your mood wears out and the wrinkles stop going away. You know God provides, but it seems like he forgot this time. Or maybe he got tired of you and took you out to the street on a Monday or Thursday morning, sticking you in with the pizza boxes, junk mail and used tissues to be hauled off. A dulling sense of not contributing, of being almost worthless to the scheme of things, seems to drift over life like dust. Things like getting out of bed and knowing what day it is aren't quite as important, because after all you can't afford to go anywhere and you have nothing really to do. You apply to more jobs than you can count, way way more kinds than you actually want to hold. You call back on jobs you applied for previously. The library ladies with the free internet/job searching know you by name. Friends help you out and you still have fun, but it's almost like too much vacation. Free time, once priceless, becomes worthless.

     You finally hit the bottom.
In my case, I was actually surprised as to how far down the bottom really is, and how much broader. You might think it's going around in circles, having a terrible day in which the bills are due and you come up less than a movie ticket short even after robbing the piggy bank and the couch and the ashtray, driving too far on no gas in the driving rain to do a favor for someone, and finally backing into a brand new truck. You might lay your head back and cry and think, "Of COURSE.. I really knew this day could be worse somehow."
That feels like the bottom. But when the man looks at his truck, doesn't see any damage and tells you it's okay, you know that's not it.

      You might think it's getting pulled over another day, also in the rain. When you're so far out of gas you might not make it the one more mile to a different bank because your overdrawn account keeps you from cashing a tiny check that will at least get you home. When the officer tells you five things he could ticket you for, and you can't afford milk, much less a new windshield and expired tags and a broken taillight, that feels like the bottom.
But when the officer realizes he made a mistake at the initial stop, and is compassionate towards your tears and does not give you any tickets at all, you know it's not. Even though you might pull away from the stop and burst into tears and scream at God, "I CANNOT LIVE THIS WAY ANY MORE! WHO DID I PISS OFF AND WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME?"
It's not the bottom.

      The bottom comes when you realize that the accounts are all at zero, the piggybank slaughtered and the couches ravished. The credit card is full and cut up anyway, the gas light has been on so long it might burn out, and "oil change" is some kind of greasy money. You can't sleep and your stomach hurts for worrying about the future that through no fault of your own is totally blank. "Jehovah Jireh" sounds like some kind of archaic toy, worn out, cracked and no longer working. You keep saying "God provides" but you feel guilty like it's a lie, and every promise he's made that used to be reassuring echoes like an empty house.
School keeps happening- thirty or a thousand miles away whether you make it or not. The food in the pantry, so incredibly generously given by friends closer than a brother, is running out, the bills are due every day it seems. Everyone you know is broke. You might even have an interview or two out of the fifty applications you filled out, but you can't get there. You've come ten thousand miles to be six inches short.

It's three months unemployed, where a happy face is no longer worth the effort, and it's the bottom. At least, it was for me.

     But there's a secret to that bottom place, and lots of people talk about it. Usually it they say it in smarmy, slightly cryptic ways like, "The darkest hour is just before dawn," or some other sentence often printed on cheap house decor. But I've often said that if something is a cliche, it's probably because it's true. Secretly, that ugly needlepoint in the plastic frame speaks the real truth: When you hit the absolute floor, God is honor-bound to turn things for the better.

      I can't spell out exactly how I got from that day to this one. It involved people giving me things like money and rides, and some people being compassionate, like letting me forgo a month's rent. Honestly I can't spell it out because I don't know how it went. I got to the interview and out of eighty applicants I got the job. I got, somehow and some way, enough gas to get to work and get my paychecks for more gas and slowly, surely, the whole world turned around.

      Today, there's money in my bank account. There's gas in my tank enough to last me until my next payday. There's food in my fridge, shampoo in my shower, and my bills are all paid up. I figured up my budget based on approximate number of hours worked, and I'm set to make more than I put out, (imagine that, what a concept!) And even maybe put money in savings. God Provides is no longer a hopeless mantra but the short story of my life.
      I put my faith in my God. It was a choice. If you think Faith is some happy little state of feeling that everything's just gonna be okay, you have it all wrong. It is a choice, and just like many choices, sometimes it hurts worse than you thought possible. Everything is not always okay. But I am here and alive to tell you that this is one choice that is worth making time and time again.  The night is coming to an end, and I'm almost shocked to find out that the dawn is here again, after so long.


In very, very short,

God provides.