The last few days...

Recently I have been repeatedly confronted with opportunities to loose my cool, and at times have held onto it by a slipping thread.  At the beginning of February, during our Ministers Summit, I attended a workshop about Emotional Intelligence, or EQ.  EQ is basically emotional maturity.  The ability to control your emotions.  It's not just being a grown up by the numbers but by the attitude.

As I lay in bed the other night thinking about my day and my near misses of emotional explosion, I was on one hand "proud" that I made it through as well as I did.  On the other hand I wondered if I will ever reach a point where I don't have days where I feel like I'm going to pop.  Is it normal?  Is it just that I am emotive?  Will here always be some level of reaction or can I really learn, train myself even, not to react? 

I talked in a recent blog about the confirmations in my hope/dream of getting married someday.  The morning that I received the prophetic word from one of our Elders I had actually led worship.  What he shared, in addition to "that gentleman she is going to marry is very close," was that during worship he saw that my life was like an "apple basket turn over" and that God was getting ready to do something supernatural in my life and that He was going to bless me with a husband. 

For some reason we always forget that God's thoughts are higher than ours.  So when God says something to us through the written word, through another or even to us personally we always put our spin on it and assume we know what He means.  Or am I the only one guilty of such things?  There were all sorts of assumptions as to what this "apple basket turn over" could mean.  Did my apple cart have to be turned over first?  I already feel as if a lot of things have changed in my life over the last year, so maybe my cart was already in the process of being turned over?  Did it mean my "husband" will be nothing I expected?  I couldn't reconcile it and decided to trust the still small voice that was telling me to just be at peace and listen to my heart.  My heart was telling me to hold on to a hope that seemed hopeless, and trust God to work it out or to show me another way.

Well the other day when it seemed everything was falling apart, including me, I said, "I'm starting to think this whole 'apple basket turn over' thing has less to do with me actually getting married and more with the process leading up to it."  While recounting my crazy day to Shirley I told her I felt like my apples were strewn all over the parking lot!  She proceeded to tell me that an apple cart being turned over isn't always a bad thing.  It not only dumps out the apples, but it dumps out the dirt and the cobwebs that have built up.  Whoa!  I believe my exact words were, "Preach it girl!"  Plus in the process of putting the apples back in you can sort the good ones from the bad ones.  No one wants a rotten apple, or one that has been invaded by a worm.  We all want the perfectly ripe ones.  Hmmm... this certainly got me thinking. 

Shirley was describing the perfect apple, telling me what kind I should be looking for, but the more I've thought about it I think God is trying to make me the perfect apple! 

The perfect apple is neither picked too soon, nor left on the tree so long that it falls from the branch.  It is allowed to reach the peek of flavor and juiciness and then it is picked.  Kinda like love.... you have to wait until it's ready.  One of my favorite songs (Yes, I have a lot of favorite songs.) is by Brooke Frasier, "Love is Waiting."  All of the lyrics are amazing, but one line in particular stands out to me, "...and like I can't force the sun to rise or hasten summer's start, neither should I rush my way into your heart."  For everything there is a season.  I try to remind myself, the right thing at the wrong time is the wrong thing.

So if you put a perfect apple in a dirty apple cart you risk tarnishing the apple.  All sorts of stuff accumulates in an apple cart or wheel barrow that doesn't get cleaned out.  There's dirt, bugs, cobwebs, worms... all sorts of things that could ruin a perfect apple. 

Similar to cobwebs insecurities can surface without any warning.  Have you ever walked into a cobweb that you didn't see?  It feels like you have the finest sticky hair stuck to you.  However, there was no warning.  Insecurities surface in the same way.  You have no idea they are there until you walk right into a situation and they stick to you and then it takes some effort to get off.  Like cobwebs, if you don't deal with insecurities when you first discover them they go from one small invisible, albeit annoying, strand to a complex web that traps and ensnares.

When Sarah lived with me we had a few "pet" spiders that lived on the east wall of our living room.  It was obvious that they caused the cobwebs in the corners of our living room.  And it was obvious that as long as we allowed them to live it didn't matter how many times we cleaned the cobwebs out of the corners, they would return.  They were safe from extinction as long as they stayed on their side of the room.  If they ventured off of their wall they met their demise.  In this situation I knew the cause of the cobwebs, but there have been plenty of times that I haven't seen the spider that made the cobweb.  It seemingly appeared out of thin air, but somewhere there was a culprit even if I never saw it.

All sorts of situations in our lives act as the spiders that spin cobwebs of insecurities.  Some instances are obvious - abandonment, divorce, neglect, abuse, etc.  Others are much more sly.  They creep in when we don't realize or expect them to.  They spin their webs through teasing, let downs, disappointments and hope deferred.

I am often mistaken as a tough girl that is not effected by others words or actions, but honestly it's not true.  A friend recently said to me that I seem pretty confident, but they got the feeling that I still had some insecurities that I battle with.  Though I gave a mild verbal affirmation, I was thinking, "You don't even know the half of it!"  There are definitely still some cobwebs to be swept out and spiders to be squashed!

When I turned 25 I hit a wall emotionally.  I had run from and ignored all of my issues long enough and God felt it was time to deal with the things that were cluttering and overwhelming my heart.  I remember feeling like I was volunteering for preemptive heart surgery.  Some nights I journalled and prayed until I couldn't hold a pen anymore.  I poured my heart out to the Lord and forgave everyone I could possibly think to forgive. 

I wasn't abused or neglected, but I faced my own share of life altering situations.  My parents divorced when I was eight and my grandparents shortly there after.  Pair all of that with a little bit of moving around, mean kids, family secrets and a host of other things and you got one little mess of a girl.  Not to mention a nearly life long battle with anxiety attacks...  I don't blame my family for my insecurities, but it is healthy to identify the spiders that spun the web rather than just sweep them under a rug.  Since we all have insecurities I know that we all do the best we can with what we have, and with what we're equipped to handle.

At 25 I knew I could not continue to carry around all of the pain I had experienced to that point, and I had to tear down the walls that formed my own personal prison.  Now five years later I still find some cobwebs that need to be swept out, and set to searching for the spider that caused them.  There are some people I've had to forgive a thousand times, and I will keep forgiving them until I have let go of the situation.  I know that with every ounce of forgiveness I extend I grant that person freedom from a debt they can never repay, and I sweep another cobweb out of the rooms of my heart. 

One of the issues I had to deal with effected my confidence as a worshipper.  In High School I was very involved with the choir at my school and the youth choir/worship team at church.  For whatever reason we were having tryouts for the youth front-line singers.  I was already singing front-line some, but all of us had to tryout again.  At the end of the series of "tests" we were each brought in and told whether we had made the team, would be alternates, or needed to work harder and try out again later.  I had made the team, and as I usually did between front-line practice and choir practice, left to pick up our choir director.  As I walked out the door a girl who had not been there for the previous weeks of tryouts walked in.  Despite it being made very well known that the tryouts were being held she hadn't been there.  In the time that I was gone she had been permitted to tryout.  However, I wouldn't find out until the end of choir practice that the decision had been made to bump me to an alternate and put her on the team.  I was devastated.  I somehow managed to get from where we were practicing at the Bible College to the church without crying, but as soon as I was alone in my car in the church parking lot I sobbed.  It wasn't just that she was better than me... actually it was more that she brought the racial balance to the team that I didn't.  My consistency, ability, loyalty didn't matter.  I determined to be the most faithful non-official member of the team.  Alternates were not required to attend practices, but I went and sat in the chairs and sang along.  I would sing into my thumb since I lacked a microphone.  Eventually I ended up back on the team, but a spider was born that day that proceeded to spin webs in my life for some time.  Five years ago I exterminated that spider.  Sometimes that spider's offspring try to stake claim in my heart and mind and I have to squish it quick.

I could go on and on about the things that have bred insecurities that I have had to overcome, but the important thing is that I have overcome them.  I have allowed the Lord to dump my apple cart and clean it before.  I know that it is a good process and I know that it is once again necessary.  We will never be completely free of our insecurities because we are human, but we are fortunate enough to have the master exterminator on our side! 

So when God says I'm going through a time of "apple cart turnover" I believe He's letting me know that He's dealing with the insecurities that could ensnare me in a marriage relationship. 
For some time I've asked that God deal with the issues in me before I got married.  He's good at answering our prayers and making good on His promises! 

Let Him sweep the cobwebs out of your heart.  Let Him exterminate the spiders.  It can be a painful/messy process, but you will be so grateful you went through it!