Adventure Update - A Year Later

I cannot believe how fast a year has passed.  Today marks the one year anniversary of when my new adventure started.  The journey has been challenging and yet sweet.  One of the blessings of this new adventure means I don't dread Mondays anymore!  (See above picture.)

If you recall, I decided to begin pursuing a job overseas and almost immediately lost my job of 7 years.  I am still in pursuit of the overseas job.  The company has a long-drawn out process which has been frustrating at times.  There is a method to their lengthy madness and a significant part of that is trying to discover whether applicants are willing to persevere and also digging into their hearts to see if they can adapt well to the stress of a new culture.  I have currently completed 3 out of 5 steps.  One of the things they check for is physical health and trying to resolve issues that could only worsen in the stress of another culture.  I am now impatiently waiting to be medically cleared.  If things continue to move forward at the projected speed, and I continue to gain approval, I could be moving overseas by the tail end of this year.  I will be honest that the delays and waiting make me adapt the attitude that “I won’t believe it till I see it.” or until my feet are on foreign soil with my belongings.  God has used much of this journey to show me scarred areas of my heart, ways in which I do not trust Him, opportunities to practice trusting Him, and areas of weakness to be strengthened.  He also tries to hammer in my skull that my timing His timing is perfect.  

In other news, I began working from home doing freelance architectural drafting.  I have discovered that working from home is not all it’s cracked up to be.  If you have an office job and are wishing you could work from home, it has some struggles.  True, I get to work in my pajamas if I want and I can set my own work hours but there are downsides.  One downside is that as a freelancer, I am not guaranteed a set paycheck.  I also never know when I’ll have work.  Some days I think I’ll have work and I don’t or I’ll finish early.  Other days I expect to have a day off and it seems everyone wants me to work.  A second downside is that it is ridiculously hard to accumulate a good chunk of hours worked.  My extracurricular activities get in the way.  Friends stop by. I have to stop to make lunch and clean the kitchen.  I have to change out laundry loads.  It seems like there were less interruptions at the office and even if there were interruptions, I was paid the same nonetheless.  Speaking of housework, that is another downside.  I have discovered that I can never escape housework or paid work.  When I worked in an office, I could leave all my cleaning chores at home.  From the office, I could not do anything about laundry so it didn’t weigh on me.  Similarly, at 5:00, I left work at the office.  While working from home, I never get away from either and it’s always a battle to figure out which is the priority.  Another downside to freelance work is self-employment taxes.  I learned that as an employee, my employers paid part of my taxes for me.  As self-employed, I have to pay my own taxes.  Lastly, working from home is lonely.  And yes, that last statement was made by an introvert.  Having a roommate that works 12 hour shifts during the day, means there are days that I see nor talk to anyone.  I have to be intentional about making plans with friends so I don’t go insane.  

Over the past year, I have had 6 jobs.  I freelanced for two separate guys doing drafting work.  I finished teaching my art class last spring.  I babysat for a couple months.  I also began driving a van for the local international school.  In addition to all of that, I am currently the assistant coordinator for the international festival at the local university.  If you think it’s a bit chaotic to juggle all of those jobs, I also took 4 seminary classes with a ridiculous amount of reading and this comes from a person who loves to read.  In addition, I began volunteering weekly at the local pregnancy center and started an internship with my church.  This is all in addition to existing extracurricular activities that were ongoing before the job loss.  Through the juggling of all of these things, God has been stretching me to be more flexible and less of a control-freak planner.  

Throughout the past year, God has proven to be a faithful provider in spite of my pitiful trust in Him.  I made more during the first 3 months of 2013 than I did the last 9 months.  My original budget projected that I needed to work 20 hours a week and I only averaged 10.  In spite of all of this, I never missed a meal due to lack of funds.  In fact, most days I ate better than before because I had time to prepare home-cooked, healthy meals.  I was never late on any of my bills.  I paid for 4 seminary classes and still have a bit of money in savings.  In addition, by some strange miracle, I did not pay in quarterly self-employment taxes and yet I miraculously got money back on my return rather than having to pay in.  As I write these words, my finances don’t make sense on paper.  All I can say is that God is a faithful provider and I am thankful.  I still have many moments of doubt but He always provides.  

Additional Adventure Sweetness    

-So many warm days at the park

-Seminary knowledge and time to gain it (even if I didn’t enjoy it at the time)

-Trip to the Creeper Trail with my parents

-Trip to Orlando with my bff

-Extra time with my family

-Language School driving adventures

-Volunteer opportunities

-Gulf Shores Vacation with my family

-Unrushed morning quiet time with Jesus
-Starting the day slowly often

-No need to shower every day

-Overseas travels with my mom (and the money anonymously provided for that trip)

-Extended holiday time with my family

-A chance to get counselor training

-A week in Peoria resting and visiting friends

-My first ever staycation

-Quality time with my dad on a hunting trip

-Extra time with Mashaael before she moved

-Weekday hangouts and travels

-Extra time to hang out with friends who won’t be overseas with me

-Created and sold several art pieces

-Many opportunities to share my passion

-My first ever Ben Rector concert

-Made a new friend, Ashley

-Movies paid for by the Language school

-Ridiculous outpouring of gifts of money or food from friends

-Getting paid to work with internationals
-Learning to embrace weaknesses and the stretching
-Learning to take the weeks with little work as gifts where He leads me by still waters

Stabundance

This sermon has been blowing my mind lately.  I know, I know, I know.  I just wrote about this very topic in my post, Like Drinking From a Colander.  But like I said, the sermon is blowing my mind and shifting my thinking.  The idea that we try to run to different wells, namely ourselves, others, the world, and religion, makes so much since in how I am now viewing reality.  I look around me and I see broken people who search for fulfillment in all the wrong places and find themselves empty.  I look at my own life and see how I try to medicate myself with things other than Jesus and find myself eventually empty and miserable.  

The last several months have been difficult for me.  There have been no major tragedies or trials in my life but at the same time, the Father has been stripping away, little by little, all the things that I look to instead of Him.  He has dwindled away my savings account and my income to a point that I MUST rely on His provision rather than my own resources.  He has taken my plans and tossed them into a blender and turned the speed onto high.  He has taken away stability and consistency and predictability from my life or at least the false sense of those things.  

Amidst the stripping, He has replaced all of this with a word:  Stabundance.  Actually I made up this word after I found a treasure of a verse.  I know that I used this same verse in a recent post, but again, God is blowing my mind and hammering things into my heart.  

“and he will be the stability of your times, abundance of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge; the fear of the LORD is Zion’s treasure.”

Stability + Abundance = Stabundance

God is my Stabundance.  He is the only truly stable thing in my life.  He will not waver.  He is likewise my abundance.  “Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines,” nor money in the savings account, nor a specified, stable, and secure future laid out before my eyes, God is my abundance.  He is my abundance of things that matter like salvation, wisdom, and knowledge.  He is my treasure.  Nothing or no one on earth will ever be my treasure.  Others will disappoint or fail me.  Others will sin against me.  Others will crap out on me but not God.  He is Stability.  He is Abundance.  He is Treasure.  He is Stabundance.  Once I truly figure that out, I will want for nothing.  I will be able to sing out with all my heart the words that Paul wrote to the Romans:  

“for I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

And this new thought has transformed the way I pray for others.  In a recent situation, I was praying for ****.  Previously I would have asked God to take him out of his hurtful situation and make things better for him.  Instead, I began to pray that he would so come to know that God is his treasure, well, and stabundance that he then allows God to come and fill all of his cracks and crevices in his heart.  If he comes to know that God alone is his well, all the sufferings of this present time will be worth it.  If God were to just eliminate the pain and leave him thinking others or the world or religion is his well then he will continue down the path of emptiness.  

I have also been praying for ****.  Again, she is in a really hard spot.  She is discovering that certain wells are dry.  I have begun to ask for her as well that Jesus would become her well, her source.  

For my own life, I have been praying that I would learn effectively and eternally that God is my stability and source and treasure and He is trustworthy.  If I can get that reality established in my personhood, then this season of stretching and stress will create something so glorious and beautiful which will in turn bring exaltation for the remainder of my days on earth and eternally in Heaven.  

Listen to God’s own words about Himself:

“Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts: 

‘I am the first

and I am the last;

besides me there is no god.

Who is like me?

Let him proclaim it.

Let him declare and set it before me,

since I appointed an ancient people.

Let them declare what is to come, 

and what will happen.

Fear not, nor be afraid;

have I not told you from of old and declared it?

And you are my witnesses!

Is there a God besides me?

There is no Rock;

I know not any.” -Isaiah 44:6-8

He is first.  He is last.  There is no other god.  No one is like Him.  No one can predict the future except Him alone.  Don’t be afraid.  There is no other Rock, no other Source, no other Well, no other Stabundance.  

Adventures as a Chauffeur

Airport Meme, pretty accurate for my first pickup

I arrived at the airport on time but didn’t allow for the amount of time it would take to park the van and walk inside.  I checked the arrivals board and based on the information assumed the flight had not yet arrived.  I decided to take a quick bathroom break.  I then exited the bathroom and found people at the specified baggage carousel waiting to retrieve their bags.  I asked a young woman if she was from the Miami flight.  She nodded and her nod sent me into a frenzy of trying to whip out my sign with the student’s name.  I rushed over to the assigned escalator with my sign in hand.  After the flow of people ceased and I still hadn’t found my guy, I marched back over to the assigned baggage carousel.  “Are you Victor?” I said these words to every guy who looked even remotely like a Spanish speaker.  After a few minutes, and still no Victor, I realized that I had failed my first airport pickup assignment.  My heart sank.  I called my boss to tell her the news that I had lost a non-English speaking student.  With a sigh of relief, I discovered from her that the student had missed his flight but was to take one about 4 hours later.  

My next student was supposed to arrive in another hour and a half so I sat down to wait for his flight to arrive.  Luckily I had brought ample reading material to occupy my time.  I kept checking the arrivals board and discovered his flight had been delayed an hour.  As the arrival time drew nearer, I sat watching the escalator for human movement for 15 minutes before the flight should arrive.  At the first sign of human life, I jumped up with my sign, eager to greet my second student.  I waited and waited and finally made small talk with another driver doing a pickup and asked if he too was waiting on someone from Chicago.  He said he thought everyone from that flight had already came down the escalator.  I walked around the assigned baggage carousel with my sign asking, “Is this you?” to all the Asian males.  I didn’t attempt to butcher the jumbled letters that made up the name of my student.  Eventually everyone got their bags and left the airport and I still did not have a student.  I called my boss again and told her the news hoping she had word that he too had missed his flight.  This was not the case.  I spent the next 90 minutes searching.  I had the guy paged, held my sign as I walked all over baggage claim, went upstairs and downstairs and outside but could not find my guy.  I became frustrated at having been at the airport for 4 hours and still not having a student to show for it.  I later discovered my guy had a friend pick him up without telling my company.

Victor’s second plane was scheduled to arrive at 9pm.  The arrival boards did not have this flight so I asked the Information Desk.  They told me the flight was actually leaving rather than arriving at 9pm and would arrive instead at 10:30pm.  I again pulled out my book and waited.  The flight didn’t actually arrive until 10:50pm.  I readied myself with my sign by the escalator.  You cannot imagine the joy when I saw a young man grinning at me as he came down the escalator.  I told him I was so happy to meet him.  We grabbed his bag and headed home.  I dropped him off at his house, dropped off the van and paperwork and finally made it home at 1:00 in the morning.  

Since that frustrating night, I have made a few more airport runs.  One was incredibly smooth and the student spoke great English so we talked the entire way home allowing me a window into his world.  The next student spoke almost no English.  When I asked if he had a great flight, he turned his head away and was silent since he had no idea what I had said.  My most recent pickup involved misinformation about a flight on the arrivals board and the reality that the flight did not actually arrive until 12:30am.  I didn’t get home from that shift until 3 in the morning after fulfilling my duties as a driver.   

My driving shifts of late have most often been the aforementioned airport pickups or taking the students to the movies.  I enjoy airport pickups because it gives me an hour alone in the car to process, think, pray, or listen to an audio book.  I also really enjoy seeing all the families and couples and friends reunited in the baggage claim area.  It is also rewarding and a relief to lock eyes with the student and to know that the student can rest a little easier knowing someone is there to watch out for them and take them to their new destination.  I also really enjoy the movie trips for obvious reasons.  Who wouldn’t enjoy getting paid to see a movie as well as a free movie ticket.  

I enjoy this job but can also see the hand of God in using the job to stretch me.  I am a planner and get easily frustrated without a plan or when things don’t go according to plan.  This job makes me throw plans out the window and be ok with it.  Just yesterday, I got a text around 9:30am asking if I wanted to take students to the movies that night.  So much for being able to plan ahead.  Then there are the obvious airport delays and missed flights and students having someone else pick them up without telling my company.  Another element that stresses me is having to take all of the students home after the movies.  I usually ask my boss to tell me where each of the students on the sign up sheet live.  The problem is that not every student who signs up actually comes.  Then others don’t sign up but come anyway.  Once we are ready to depart the movie theater, I find out one student has a different ride home and another student who didn’t ride with me now wants a ride home.  To top it off, the students at times have little English and I’m supposed to drive them in a giant van to their homes without a GPS in the dark.  Lucky for me this past year has been one of interrupted plans and chaotic schedules because the old Candace would have ulcers from this job.  What I am discovering is that I can survive without plans and things always work out eventually so I’m learning to not stress.    

Alarm Clocks and Steadfast Provision

Several years ago, I stopped using an alarm clock. I know some of you are in shock so I will pause and let you compose yourself while I say it again. I stopped using an alarm clock. I imagine your response may be similar to mine the first time I heard someone had stopped using an alarm clock. I thought she was crazy. She told me she chose to trust God to wake her on time. The only time she used one was if she had to wake super early for a flight or something similar. She said it so calmly, while I silently panicked on the inside.  

Fast forward several years. I was reading the book ‘The Forgotten God‘ by Francis Chan. Oddly enough, my friend Angie posted a quote from this book a few days ago, a quote that made me want to run away screaming when I first read it.

“So, if you say you want the Holy Spirit, you must honestly ask yourself if you want to do His will. Because if you do not genuinely want to know and do his will why should you ask for his presence at all? But if you decide you do want to know his will there will be moments you have to let go of the fear of what that might mean - when you have to release your grip of control on your life and decide to be led - come what may.”  

I was a control freak. Who am I kidding? I still am a control freak. This continues in spite of the knowledge that control is an illusion. After reading the above quote and knowing I needed to release my grip of control and trust Him, I decided one way I could actively do this was to try out the no alarm clock thing. I had already been waking most mornings just before my alarm so it’s not like I went completely cold turkey. I began praying at night before bed, ‘God, please wake me by 6:30.‘ Morning after morning I awoke on time. Morning after morning I woke naturally without those cringe inducing beeps. Morning after morning I felt rested since I hadn’t snoozed and since I woke when my body was ready.  

A couple weeks into this experiment, I traveled internationally into a time zone 8 hours ahead of my normal time zone. I barely slept on the flight. I had jet lag. My circadian rhythms were out of whack. I shared a hotel room with a 6 month old who did not sleep through the night. I was consistently woken around 5 am by the muezzin’s call to prayer. Two nights my bed was over a techno party that ended at 3 am. Two mornings towards the end of the sleep-deprived trip required me to be awake between 3 and 4 am. Not once did I oversleep. Each morning I woke in awe that the God of the universe would bend himself and have enough care for me to wake me. 

I was sold. If I could be out of my time zone, sleep deprived, needing to wake at unusual hours and God was still waking me on time, then He could be trusted and alarm clocks were history. Too often in the past 3 years I have taken for granted my divine alarm clock. And yet there are still days where I need to be up earlier than usual combined with the fact that I went to bed late the night before and I wonder, will I wake on time? Recently I needed to be up by 5 am. After all this time, I still had wonder and awe that the God of the Universe would continue to bend Himself low and wake me at 4:53.  

I debated about whether or not to write this post. I didn’t want people to laud me for my decision to ditch alarm clocks. I also didn’t want alarm clock users to feel guilty. In the end I felt like the steadfast faithfulness of God in my life that continues even today needed to be shared. I decided to write the post to encourage others to release control in an area and see the steadfast provision of God. Even today as I look at my impossible financial situation, the eliminating of the alarm clock has taught me much. The faithful provision of God morning after morning has pushed me to a place with my finances to again whisper quick requests asking Him to handle my finances as well. I tell Him almost weekly that He will have to take care of matters because they are out of my hands. I tell Him He has proven to be trustworthy in one area and this helps me have faith He will in this other area as well. I am happy to say the wonder and awe have extended to seeing His faithfulness in my finances as well. 

I Can't Find My Sea Legs

I have found myself having waves of anxiousness from time to time over the last week. I finally identified the problem a day or two ago. There is nothing concrete in my life. My most concrete detail is that every other Wednesday, I usually babysit for my friend Jolina. This last week, I actually babysat on Thursday. Like I said, nothing concrete. I work but never know when I will have work. I applied this last week for a part-time job driving international students to summer activities. Again, I do not know when I will be needed to drive. I am currently taking a class and have a ton of reading and writing assignments but have no set aside time to do those assignments. I borderline freaked on my parents a couple weeks ago when we had no plan in place for our Virginia Creeper trail adventure. With my flexible schedule, I am now free to hang out with friends and family more often but again those opportunities come and go at random intervals.  

In my mind, I picture my new situation as having all the contents of my life dumped into a sea along with me. I am frantically trying to grasp for or find something firm but can’t seem to find my sea legs. My life reminds me of C.S. Lewis’ floating island in his book Perelandra.   

“The thing had looked, in that first glance, so like a real country that he had forgotten it was floating - an island if you like, with hills and valleys, but hills and valleys which changed places every minute so that only a cinematograph could make a contour of it. -- Although he had now grasped with his brain what was happening, Ransom had not yet grasped it with his muscles and nerves. He rose to take a few paces inland - and downhill, as it was at the moment of his rising - and immediately found himself flung down on his face, unhurt because of the softness of the weed. He scrambled to his feet - saw that he now had a steep slope to ascend - and fell a second time. - And then for the next hour or two he was teaching himself to walk. It was much harder than getting your sea legs on a ship, for whatever the sea is doing, the deck of the ship remains a plane. But this was like learning to walk on water itself.” -C.S. Lewis in Perelandra 

I recognized there was a problem in my life with the waves of anxiety. Then last night, I was at a small group I attend and the leader began describing a series of questions that are helpful in dealing with sin. He listened to a talk by Jeff Vanderstelt. The four questions are listed below:

Who is God?

What does He do?

Who am I?

What do I do?

The problem is that we as humans tend to have things backwards. We begin everything with us in the center. I will use an example relating to my anxiety and lack of anything concrete:

Q: What do I do?

A: I worry about my circumstances. There is no stability, nothing concrete so therefore I am a wreck.

Q: Who am I? Who do I want to be?

A: I want to be in control so I don’t have to worry. I want to grasp at something solid so I will not feel out of control.  

Q: What does God do?

A: He caused all of this to happen. He is mean and now He does nothing. He is absent. He is not in control.

Q: Who is God

A:  God is weak, in fact, weaker than I am and therefore no god at all. He is unstable and therefore untrustworthy.  

  

When I get to my last answer, I quickly laughed at the absurdity that I am stronger and have better control over my life than the God of the Universe who spoke all things into existence by the word of His mouth. I quickly realize that I started in the wrong place. The correct starting point is to ask myself, ‘Who is God?’

Q: Who is God?

A:  He is Sovereign. He is absolutely in control of all things. He knows all and sees all and is therefore wiser than me in determining my circumstances. He is an anchor for me.

Q: What does God do? 

A: He did not withhold His Son will He withhold any needed thing? He calms and masters the sea. Jesus even walks on water. 

Q: Who am I?

A: I am his daughter. He delights in me and protects me.  

Q: What do I do?

A: I worship. I trust Him. I give all my anxiety to Him, all my fluid plans and schedules. I lay my anxiety at His feet and I find peace. I get up and walk on the water through His Spirit in me.  

My hope is built on nothing less

Than Jesus' blood and righteousness

I dare not trust the sweetest frame 

But wholly lean on Jesus' name

When darkness seems to hide His face

I rest on His unchanging grace

In every high and stormy gale

My anchor holds within the veil

On Christ the Solid Rock I stand

All other ground is sinking sand

All other ground is sinking sand

His oath, His covenant, His blood

Support me in the whelming flood

When all around my soul gives way
He then is all my hope and stay

When He shall come with trumpet sound
Oh may I then in Him be found
Dressed in His righteousness alone
Faultless to stand before the throne