If I were to write a poem right now the title would probably be discouragement. It would certainly sum up the mood of the day. Not only for me, but for my business as well.
Here we are, nearly a month into Quarter 4 and after weeks of pushing myself to the breaking, I made 3 whole sells on Etsy for $18 dollars. I know what you are thinking, how will I ever manage to spend so much money. A new car, a house, a vacation, or all of the above? Ha ha, it really is enough to take the wind right out of one’s sales.
I know that I have a way to go to develop really good designing skills, but even though I did not expect a rush on my products, I had hoped that at least 1 or 2 of my designs might get a couple of sales. I was sure that some, like my Turkey’s protesting Against Thanksgiving and insisting that you should play Sudoku instead was not only colorful but humorous as well.
Sadly, even though my Mother helped me to purchase a mockup to give it more appeal, it has gone over as well as bag of potatoes filled with bricks.
If that were not discouraging enough, in a few days we have to move from our temporary rental, and we still have to find a new place to move too. And between the holidays and the arrival of the winter birds there is a good chance that we could find ourselves on the street.
It is hard to believe that when we put our home on the market almost 1 year ago, there were multiple homes in our price range. Even more amazing, it is hard to believe that at the time, interest rates were low enough that we could get a house for $300,000 and it would have cost less per month than the house we were living in. Why at the time we put our house for sell, there was a 4/3 manufactured home on 3 acres for $180,000 that we were hoping to get once the house sold.
But fast forward a couple of months to when our house finally sold, and it was as if a vacuum had come along and sucked up every descent price home and then spit out a bunch of higher priced fixer uppers. Almost overnight anything that was descent disappeared from our price range or shot up in price along with the interest rates. Before we sold there were dozens of halfway descent places under $250,000 and even some under the 180,000 mark. Then our house sold and their were only a handful of fixer uppers remained. It has been six months since we sold our home and 4 since we had to move out into one temporary rental after another, and the market has become even bleaker. Now, with the our down payment dwindling and the competition for housing rising, it seems as if it will not be long before my mother, sister, and I shall soon be homeless.
As each day brings us closer and closer to this possibility, I find myself pondering the story of the Israelite and their years of wandering in the wilderness. From the day beginning, as we moved from our house to house with the remains of my beloved father and a few weeks later placed the remains of our sweet pup Happy by his side, I was reminded of how all through their wilderness wanderings they had carried the remains of Joseph.
Every day as I looked their way, that story came to my mind and I felt like we were experiencing our own modern wandering. Marching about the bleak wilderness of uncertainty as we waited to see where, when, and how God was going to part the sea and bring us to our promised country home. Day after day I eagerly looked for our promised home to appear, confident that it would not be long.
But days turned into weeks, and not months and once more we need to find a new place to move. This time, instead of being able to find a place for a few months, I have found a few we might be able to get for the next month, if we can move fast enough. But after that, with Christmas close at hand, who knows. And seeing as I have yet to get a place secured, there is still a possibility that a few days from now we could be in trouble especially since there is still no sign of a permanent home bringing the story of the wilderness even more forcefully to my mind.
Over and over I remember how after beholding the miracle of the10 plagues, how God parted the red sea, and then destroyed their enemies, they so quickly cried out in fear. Not since the flood had God worked so remarkably to save people from destruction. Yet only days after walking on dry land, with bellies still full, they cried out that against Moses and God, because their stores were dropping. Over and over, even though the manana fell from heaven and God had caused water to flow from a rock, as soon as a hint of distant trial rose before them, they panicked and murmured that they had been brought into the wilderness to die.
All my life I wondered how could they have beheld so many miracles, how could they have heard the voice of God on Mt Sinai, and eaten the manana, and yet murmured at every turn? How could they follow that cooling cloud by day and warming fire by night, yet be so full of fear? Surely if I were there I would not act that way. Surely if I had been blessed to walk on dry land, eat manana, drink water from a rock, hear the voice of God, and behold the pillar my faith would not prove so weak.
But now that I am living a form of that wandering, I can see first hand how easy it is to be afraid. We still have some money for a down payment, and we are not officially homeless, but with each day the threat is becoming more real, and so is the stress an the fear. Each day our human heart trembles and our temples pound from the stress as we worry about the very real possibility that we may soon be homeless.
As we look towards our uncertain future and behold this looming threat that rises up like a giant, menacing monster before us, it seems as if faith must give way to fear. In that moment the voice of the tempter whispers so many words of doubt cleverly insinuating that God cannot or will not take care of us. Some days it takes every ounce of will power to focus on how God has worked on our behalf in the past and trust that if He had done it before He can and will do it again.
During these dark days of uncertainty, I find myself looking with different eyes at those wanderers and their grumblings. As I look and see how quickly I become discouraged because my eyes move away from the excitement of getting 3 sales to dwell instead upon the 100s of sales I need to make a real living, or from the roof that God has still blessed us with and worry how my pain ridden body will endure the unprotected blasting of the elements when we end up on the streets, I realize that in my own small way, I am acting just like them. Because instead of dwelling upon the memory of the mountain top, I am running in fear along side Elijah in the wilderness. Instead of trustingly marching up the mountain with Jonathan, I am trembling in the caves with those who had deserted his father’s army.
Some fear and uncertainty are good, because it wakes us up to our danger. As we look up and see that looming cloud of danger, fear of that danger drives us to our only source of safety, the side of the Great Shepherd, Jesus. But if like a mother hen, He has gathered us under His protecting wings, why should we be afraid? Why, when we are protected by the hand that guided the ark safely through the flood, who opened the Red Sea, who threw down the walls of Jericho, who over and over held back the threatening armies, should we continue to dwell not upon His protection, but upon the dark cloud?
The more I pondered the struggle and uncertainty my family and I are facing right now, the more I realized that I have a choice to make. In this hour of testing, faced with the very real possibility that due to inflation and soaring interest rates of ending up on the streets, I could react just like the children of Israel in the wilderness. I could take my eyes off the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, I could forget how God worked one miracle after another to set me free from the power of Egypt, I could forget how He parted the Red Sea, and ignore the bounty of manana and water from a rock, and instead blame God for my trials. Reproaching Him for driving me into the wilderness to die.
Or I could chose to hold onto my faith like Joseph. Imagine how hard it must have been for him to believe in the dreams that God had given him. How, could God possibly cause his brother’s to bow before him when his unwilling feet were marching further and further from his family? Why would they, freemen, bow before him, now that they had sold him as a slave?
I wonder how often his mind recalled those dreams as he marched towards a very fearful and uncertain future as a slave in Egypt. What words of doubt and despair must the tempter have whispered in his ear, as he highlighted his fall from favorite son to unloved slave. I can only imagine the battle he faced as overnight he went from pampered son to toiling slave. Then, worse yet, after years of patient toil finally brought him a measure of success, because he would not dishonor God, his world turned upside down once more as he end up in even less enviable spot in the prison dungeon.
There is no way that he could have survived that crushing trial if he kept his vision upon the pile of sales he did not make, and forgot the 3 sales that the Lord had blessed him with. If, locked away in the sunless walls of that prison, he had spent his days dwelling only upon the loss of his beloved dog, the loss of his father, his home, his position in Potiphar’s house he never would have become the right hand of Pharaoh, because his faith would have shriveled up and died. If like the children of Israel after him, he had turned his eyes off of the many things that God had done on his behalf, and stared fearfully into the not so distant cloud of doom, he would not have endured the long days of trial buried in that prison. His cup of trust would not have been full to be able to speak words of truth to the baker and the cup bearer, or been filled with the spirit so he could give wise counsel to Pharaoh.
I do not know where God is leading that this hard trial is required of us. I do not know if it is because of some flaw in my character or training for some future work that requires us to pass under this heavy cloud of uncertainty. Is there a poem or story that I must write in order to touch someone’s heart? Will I need this experience to help reach a soul who is struggling with some battle that thanks to this experience I will be able to understand? Or is that the hour is at hand, and the day is almost over, and God is preparing us to be soldiers able to endure the rigors of the final battle? I do not know.
What I do know, is that if I want to be like Joseph and not the those that murmured, I must learn to take my eyes off of the things that have not yet sold, and rejoice in the victory of the three things that did sell. I must not dwell upon the ashes of my father and Happy, but look forward by faith to the day when the voice of God will call out and they will rise from the ashes never to die again. I must spend the day worrying about how I will endure the street, but instead recall how God worked things so during the bursting of the housing bubble in 2008, God did the impossible and sold our old house when no one was buying, got us a loan when no one was giving them, and moved us into the home of our dreams.
Filling my heart with all the amazing things that He has done for us before which will cause my faith to increase. Giving me strength to look not at that cloud of tribulation and trial as an impossible to conquer ogre, but instead as a paper tiger who has no power to step past the line which God has drawn. Encouraged by the knowledge that if He has safely led us thus far, He will lead us wrong now. But will keep His promise to safely guide us not just to a temporary promised land in the country, but to that promised land where sin, death, and sorrow cannot go.
reflectionsaboutlifedotcom 