hopeactually

Essay is not really any further along what with having had to postpone French work a whole week till yesterday evening. Today has been one of slowly waking up to the world following lots of presentation pressure, only to be submersed again tomorrow in a land of distraction, study and imminence.

Miss Spitfire came over to see me at the weekend, much to my delight. And indeed salvation, I would not have been able to survive if it were not for her... Really wakened me up to my inbuilt issues with self-reliance, that visit did. I got over it enough to submit, albeit legalistically at times, to God but to surrender myself to the support of others has been *quite* uncomfortable. I can talk all day about community and interdependence and how God provides for me through people but when the shadows creep in, the computer crashes an hour before or the mind is just not even pretending to cope anymore one tends to "forget" how to put the words into action. Needing help made me downright angry, allowing it to happen just felt like absolute crap.

Yet I need to get over that I know it. So, vulnerability rears it's not actually ugly just not "conventionally accepted" head and reminds me of my fallibility. Who am I to try and cope alone anyway? Even Jesus didn't do that.

Godwise? Lots of thinking, even *some* clarity coming there. Issues being raise up, semi-answers sort of fall into place... now is no time to try and talk about that as I have a week and a half to go before I can justify the deep expounding of anything in a non-mathematical area (and even then it would probably be a bit of a long shot). I think am the best I've been since the very start of the year (where if you recall I was actually feeling excellent till it all fell apart literally overnight) and reckon, perhaps, that all the "of the world" trials have helped me to draw near to God in reliance - like a teenager that is angry at their parent but really needs a lift to the pub. Sort of.

'Cause what I have been doing is getting increasingly angry, mostly at Him, and yesterday that really culminated like some kind of inflamed pustule. I pretty much decided that I was fed up of the life I was being subjected to, the constant battle it seems to be to get anything done or to see any progress and how really I was just not up for it anymore... so I popped. My new red glasses have an interesting and even newer shape that testifies to this fact. The strange thing was that as I expressed this I knew, deep down, that it would be OK and that actually God did know what I could bear, He would get me through it and I was going to be OK nay perhaps even better off. Not actually a good feeling I have you know, very much like a teacher that has this "I know best" look and you don't want it to be true but it just is.

Thing is, I can't shake the hope. Despite the fear I have always had this hope and, as God became a consistent feature in my life, it became more and more fulfilled. Nay, turned into faith a little, perhaps. Sometimes you want to indulge in the misery of it all but really, deep down, there is this hope. And, as I shake pain from the past, the hope flows even freer (sp?).

Just, sometimes I don't like the process through which I mush keep hoping. I've heard some pretty cool prophecies for this year and, in all honesty, for me right now one of the most spot on ones is a passing comment I myself made on New Year's Day - when me and two friends had an amazing "improv" pray sesh. One girl said '2008 was great' (which is true! :-)) and I followed almost immediately with '2009 - refine'. Dang it, I seem to have spoken that into being!

But I just "know", somehow, that God is getting me ready for something or other and is doing stuff in me that I may be up to the task. I feel broken shattered and bruised but that is, yet again, a good place for God's strength to be made complete and for my dependency on Him to be renewed. This verse in Job 23:9-10 that I just "got" really sums it up:

"When he is at work in the north, I do not see him; when he turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of him
But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold."

So, ummmm, yeah. Not actually looking forward at all to the next few weeks... but the next few years may just rock out; if I can only get through the fire.

And learning to rely on other people is sure to help. Mummy is coming to look after me next week which is utterly wonderful, welcome and necessary, though I don't envy at all what she will go through! I am just so grateful that there are people who care enough to take me in my unrefined state; I know I won't make it to shiny without being held up in the process...