Drop

I guess I never mentioned on this blog that we moved.

Moved. Past tense. That is so odd.

Let me tell you something else, though, moved is not synonymous with unpacked.

That is what we continue to work on, on this, the 30th day of December.

As in 2 days until 2011. Which is funny because that's the year I'm going to graduate.

Click.

Right, yes, I am graduating this year. It's to the point of being asked 36 times a day what I'm going to do after graduation and it's a legitimate question. The usual answer is something like "well I'm going to be doing some interviewing in the spring for flight attendant positions within the U.S."

Where? "Anywhere." Which one? "The one that will hire me."

It seems about as ridiculous as the conversations I used to have about going to some school far, far away that I knew no real details about.

Except.

Except for then I had a real peace-- a real sense of direction. Like I had no clue but I knew what I was doing. This time it feels like I both have no clue and no idea what I'm doing.

Which would be a little humiliating and quite frightening to admit to the general public (hello, family) except for that there is another option that I've been tiptoeing around for about a week now. And in all honesty, it seems a bit more synonymous with the UMW option of 2007 than the flight attendant thing.

Flight attending, while competitive and not a guaranteed position, is more like the safe route of the Ouachita option of 2007. Like that thing that I'd always pictured myself doing and feel I'd have no problem with and could do well and would probably have a good time with except for that I've made a life out of having a good time and would really like to know the God that I claim makes life worth living.

So I chose UMW against really all odds and with a Mom that pretty much thought me crazy right on up to the minute she drove away from campus with an empty U-haul and an outside-of-his-mind-sort-of-sick husband. Because the truth is that I hadn't a clue what I was doing. But I knew I was doing it. Kicking and screaming or not, God wanted me in that place and if he had to provide friends and community and great teachers and a church and a whirlwind job to get me there he would, but by God I was going to do it.

Seems like most of the time I spent at UMW has been to prepare me for the next step. And it is exhausting to keep up my own glass-half-full-I'm-here-for-a-purpose spirit amidst the things of life that become so daily. I get insecure and exclusive and persuaded and hurt and offended and I second guess myself more easily than I like to admit, but I know that ultimately things could be worse and I am here for a purpose and I believe that about everyone I encounter and would like so badly for other people to believe that about themselves and me that I spend hours talking about life and God and adjust myself to what I think those people might need in order to see that in themselves that I forget to stop and talk to God instead of about him and that's incredibly difficult when my job is to talk about him but most times I don't like to go before God because he is the one person who says "you can be yourself and I'll be happy" (matter of fact it's the only way he'll be happy) and I'm so, so caught up in what I'm supposed to be that I forget who I actually am and what I really want-- and that is to know him.

Longest. sentence. ever.

Not even really a sentence as so much the headline that scrolls at the bottom of the screen that is my mind.

Getting to know God is incredibly difficult when I don't know how to be myself in front of him. Even more difficult is knowing that who I am when I'm before him is actually quite frustrated by the person I am when I'm living apart from him.

As a result of this move out of 4 Beeson Ct., we lived with Luke and Stephanie for a couple of weeks. They lived with us for the greater parts of 2009 and 2010, so it was kind of an I owe you that was slated for like 2030 when Mom needs a hip replacement and Dad can't find his toupee that we ended up cashing in early. Still a generous gesture when you consider it was their first Christmas in a house with their little family and 4 grown folk straight descended upon it. They continued to speak of how they were happy to do it, and did so quite genuinely. After all, as Luke pointed out "C'mon, Mom, we lived with you for a year and a half, 2 weeks is like a drop in the bucket."

Now you know how well I do with expressions like this. (read: not well). I mean, I had an idea, but wanted to think off of accurate information. Phrases.org and I were buddies, already, anyway. So I learned that its meaning is "a very small proportion of the whole."

At the time he said it, I was brushing my teeth (as the bathroom is, indeed, the social epicenter of the Smith home) and I immediately thought of this move and my own next move. See, God did everything for us. Hence, the Christmas shebang. That's what we're celebrating. And the first question to ask myself is "did he really save me with the Jesus scenario?" Because if I don't believe that I am in desperate need of a savior and that he came, how on earth (literally) do I expect to live like I have one?

Then, if I truly believe my life would be pointless without salvation, everything God asks of me is just a drop in the bucket.

If I am Luke in the analogy, the recipient of an act of love and generosity (the ability to live with the parents for over a year) then shouldn't my reaction to God (the parents in this analogy-- they do so well with modeling the godly principles I need to learn) be the same?

God you have done so much that whatever you ask of me is all yours to have.

That is an idea that excites and haunts me.

Much like filling out an application to a school that came out of nowhere for no real reason other than I thought it might be a good departure from what felt entirely too safe and known. A thought that was extremely strange for me to be entertaining considering I was that annoying kid that would never distance myself from my mothers legs at any function long enough to make eye contact with a stranger.

Strangely enough, though I spent my life growing up in church, considered myself sufficiently versed in the Bible (as if), and honestly have always known that I should (and wanted to) consider God above all else in life, it felt like God was then making the point that he was that stranger I avoided looking dead in the eyes for an honest, humble "hello, it's good to meet you."

Because, you see, I clung to my mother for dear life even if she knew the person and vouched for them. Matter of a fact, it was especially those people she knew well that I dreaded because I knew she would insist I scoot out from behind her and offer a smile.

I remember very specifically the conversation she had with me one night about how it was rude to ignore people when they were just trying to be friendly and wanted to know me.

In true Sadie fashion, I was secretly devastated that I had offended people and tried to remember to branch out more than was comfortable so people would know I appreciated them being interested in shy little me who, left to my own devices, would just as soon have them turn around and leave me alone.

If there was anyone who deserved that extra effort from me, it was (and is) God.

Approaching the brave new world out there, I now feel like a kid hiding behind the legs of the Almighty himself. He's shown himself faithful to me, tending to needs along the way with a love that the five-year-old me had come to know of mom and dad. My efforts to be a little more bold, more audacious than that little girl taught me that the source of the love I've experienced as the daughter of Chris and Trudy Smith is much larger than them or their commitment to loving me as best they can. And whereas little me thought they were the apex of security and protection, my ventures have surprisingly proved me wrong. They long to provide those things for me, sure and I am so grateful to know it. But it's God who gives me the authority to risk that earthly notion of safety, step out from behind the comfort I've come to know he will always provide, and approach the world.

The big one with all of the pain and the hurt and the sadness that I can't fix by talking about life or about God. The world that I certainly won't help by ignoring the heavy stuff. The one I'm going to have to at some point look in the eye and address. People that God vouches for. The diseased ones, the "weird" ones, the democrats, the republicans, the homosexuals, the immigrants, the sinful ones. The people like me who I have no right to hide from because I have someone to duck behind.

God didn't humble himself to a cross so I could duck behind it.

He is there for safety and protection. He is the shelter of the Most High. He is all those things he promised to be through the prophets of the Old Testament. But if the book of Acts says anything, it's that safety and protection aren't the end of the story. At least not here. For many of the early Christians, the last chapter of their lives was all about action. Action they felt specifically called to because they knew, win or lose, security ascended to heaven 40 days after Christ won it for all and just would not happen on earth while Jesus reigned in heaven.

I want to be the person that asks "how high?" when God says "jump." It begins with a heart that says "anything, God, is a drop in the bucket compared to the forgiveness and grace you constantly show me."

"Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket; they are regarded as dust on the scales; he weighs the islands as though they were fine dust." -Isaiah 40:15

I want to have weight in this world. But I will be little less than fine dust if I am not on the side of the Weigher, doing that which he specifically nudges me towards. Otherwise, I am a drop in the bucket and that is just a slap in the face of the man who died to offer my teeninesy self a little significance.