If you are like me then you like order, not knowing the next step bothers you. Even though you don’t have things written down, like a 2, 3, 10 year plan, you have a strategy. You have a reasonable “how”. A reasonable plan perhaps a fall back plan if things don’t go as expected. What to do though when all your order and structure is distorted to uncertainty? How will you cope? Will you come to the realisation of how much you are only but clay?
I was living my normal life, having my normal job and having my regular friends. I had even moved to a new house and bought a few more things to make my life much more comfortable. I love comfort, I love to be able to sleep in a cosy bed, the kind that makes you look forward to bed time.
My mattress was actually more expensive than my bed. As you can guess, I had bought a 6 by 6 bed. Spacious for a single girl, perhaps when I get married we will need two 6 by 6 joined together, I don’t know, just thinking out aloud. My bed had very lovely huggable pillows. Pillows that I could cuddle with. Fluffy and soft pillows plus a teddy bear to complete the bed look.
As I grew up, I envisioned having an all white bedroom. So I thought to myself, I am not going to wait for my husband to have an all white bedroom, what if he won’t even like white? What if he is all untidy and messy? I was gonna have my bedroom just as I envisioned it then. My curtains were white, my bedside mat white and all my beddings white. Yes, my towel white as well. I loved my bedroom, it was my favourite space in the entire house, It gave me calmness and I enjoyed the sweet sleep that God always gave me there.
The white bed however gave my sister and friends a headache when they had to sleep over. They were too afraid to make a mess, to leave a stain. That is the power of white. I once hosted a friend who completely refused to step foot in my bedroom. I had a spare mattress and they lay it down in the sitting room and slept there. We will talk about my sitting room another day.
My bedroom though was pure bliss. It was a reflection of how I wanted my life to be, pure and clean. Life has a way of leaving big muddy footsteps along the way and I didn’t want that, I wanted cleanliness, inside outside. On one of the walls I had three chats. One for the ideas I have in my life, another of problems I thought about and encountered and another of the solutions combined with words that I felt God spoke to me, My special chats. I had a pile of sticky notes on them. Yes I was that organised and set for life.
I loved my quiet times in the bedroom. Reading, praying, working and simply resting.
I would clean my house every weekend or almost every weekend. I had a structure that worked for me.
When the time came for me to leave all this structure, it was exciting yet distorting. Takes me back to Abraham when God told him to leave his land to a land that the Lord would show him. Abraham had already made some advancements in his life. God told him to leave and go to a land that He would show him. He moved with the possessions he had accumulated. It was a step of faith, a step into the unknown.
I can’t help but think about what the wife felt about all this. Imagine going to tell your friends that God told your husband to move, not that God is a liar, on the contrary though, it is the uncertainty for me. The not knowing. She too must have had friends and family that she needed to bid bye and Goodbyes do suck. Anyway, Abraham moved, as God had instructed him.
For me, I didn’t have such possessions like Abraham and I wasn’t married, I can only imagine the change of dynamics if these things were present. I had a desire that I had sort of lost hope in and I had chosen to bury it. It had been painful to see myself receive no upon no on the scholarships that I applied.
I had slowly come to terms that perhaps indeed God needed me right where I was. That is why I had made peace to move to a bigger house and live the life that I envisioned, at least part of it or simulate it a little bit. Moving to a bigger space was a consolation for the lack of acceptance to the scholarships.
However though, God’s timing is best and to me it couldn’t have come at a much better time. It was disrupting and it pushed me out of my new found bliss and new home and my 6 by 6. It had to go home. I miss that bed. I miss my all white bedroom. I miss cleaning and tidying it up. All the structure and order I had, I miss it. Now I leave only one day at a time, with a very different structure from what I had before but one factor has remained constant, God.
Genesis 12:1
The LORD had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.
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