Day Five

DAY 5

Seeing Life from God’s View

Well then, Move over God, you are blocking my view! I can’t see a thing. What’s that? I’m in YOUR WAY! I thought you could see it all, from anywhere? Oh you do. So I can’t cheat or get away with anything. BUMMER. So this is where all that Grace and Mercy stuff comes in. I get it. But don’t you think I took that a little too far MOST OF THE TIME? OH that’s where the LOVE stuff came in. Thank you Lord. I really needed that. I still do. It was like that geometry test I took in tenth grade. Before I even got the test passed back to me I had already put in my 15 answers on the computer card. I just guessed at A B C or D and hoped for the best. Hey I got a 100% on that one so I guess I could do that with anything. Guess, cheat, it was all the same to me. Only Duane saw me do it so I had a witness to my 100% so it was believable and the teacher had no idea how the kid that hardly ever showed up for class and was failing the class to begin with could ever get a perfect score on something that you had to use scratch paper to work out all the answers to begin with. Why didn’t I save my one and only time that would ever happen for the lotto later in life instead of a stupid geometry test?

And why didn’t anyone tell me that life was one big spiritual test to begin with either? All I was told was that I didn’t have to work my way to heaven, that the work had already been done. Well I learned so early in life that in my innocent little mind I thought that it didn’t matter what I did, I was bought and paid for so that gave me the freedom to make the mistakes WE WERE ALL GOING TO MAKE ANYWAY. Hey I was just trying to find myself, wasn’t i? Again, Thank you for all that grace and mercy and love and patience. You see I used to see God as I did my earth father or authority figures. I didn’t know what a loving one was supposed to be so how could I relate to one that was far more superior to them like GOD? Most of everything I have learned I have had to learn on my own, literally. Yea there have been a therapist here and there but for the most part it has been me and me alone to work out what the heck went on, and what is going on, and where the heck am I going, and what am I doing? Why do I feel like this? Why don’t I feel like That? Where is God in all of this? Is He really concerned about me? I pray and ask for what I think is His will for me but those request seem to have gone completely unanswered my whole life. If the bible says something is not right, I pray for that to be removed from my life, why isn’t it? And if it isn’t, why would God leave something that could send me to hell inside of me. Then expect me to just deal with it. He knew the answers I was looking for and the help that I searched for and the answers I got and the answers I didn’t get. The frustration I felt and the corners I felt backed into but He just seemed to leave me there all alone and then say “GO AHEAD MIKE PASS THIS TEST. Well of course I failed. But I had fun failing and on top of that it felt good too, so the next time it became easier and easier to fail again and again until the only test was could I make it out alive?

And what about TRUST? The first thing I ever remember trusting in was my friend Bill in elementary school. I trusting him to protect me when danger was near. That was it, nothing more. I didn’t even trust myself to be good at home, to keep my temper in control or stop myself from taking my anger out on my sister. I didn’t trust my dad to not hurt me or my mother to protect me from him. I couldn’t even trust my own body from reacting to or responding to things as I reached puberty. Then as a young adult meeting new people and trying new things, being the innocent young naive person that I seemed to be, those two words TRUST ME became the scariest two words in the English dictionary. All my trust, in anything was gone. It was just me against the world. So you can imagine how it came to be that I always had my guard up and my defenses at full guard all the time. I could spot a lie a mile away. I could see right through people without even looking. It could be just a tone or an inflection in their voice that gave them away. Their words didn’t even matter.

So how does this all apply to the lesson? Amongst all the hurt that I have endured and all the tests that I have failed, I believe that I have just recently past the biggest one of my life. It was when I called my doctor I had her take the Marinol away from me and was honest with her why she needed to do that. So much has changed since the moment that happened. I have learned to TRUST me for the first time in my life. I have been blessed with so much that has always been right in front of me but it was like my eyes were clouded before but now they have been opened, once I was blind but now I see. I the view is like no other I have ever seen. God has entrusted in me the lives of others who are and were in the same places that I have been in. The latest trust issue is my friend Maria who came to me last Thursday with a 3day notice on the third day needing money to pay the rent. I only had 148 dollars in the bank and she needed 100 of them. So I went to the ATM and met her and gave her the money. She said she could return it this Thursday or Friday. I hope so because that is all I have for the month. And as I am writing this I am no down to 17 of those dollars left. But I trust her. She is a friend I met at the bus stop last year that invited me to her Portuguese church so I have no reason to doubt her. I HOPE. This is where I am trusting in God that my simple act of kindness won’t be anything but that. It’s only money but when you are a broke man already money is money in the world we live in. The animals need the food. There’s always credit cards right? UGG! But we won’t have to go there, TRUST..Mike Trust.

Now that I am a little older and wiser, I should be able to see the TESTS of life and the areas that God wants me to TRUST Him in a little bit more clearly than I did when I was growing up and trying to just get through life one lesson and one more of the same lesson at a time, over and over again. ONCE is enough from now on. Time is too short to go through all that again. Besides, I would rather start enjoying life from the lessons I have learned instead of going back and repeating them just for the agony of it again. It is really not worth it and it really wouldn’t work again anyway. I really do like who I have become, and I have gathered a wealth of knowledge to go with it. More than most in areas that most fear to travel, but that’s ok, it was sometimes a scary place to be in. And most of my friends and people in those places didn’t make it out alive. Thanks again for all the Grace and Mercy and Love I have come to enjoy and accept as such a gift most never get to experience in their lifetime. It is priceless and I have lots of it to share and spread around.