This week is flying by quickly. It has not been a busy week for me at all. I have been home this week with not much going on. My mom works from 8-8 most days and then I see her for about an hour and a half in the evening before I am by myself again. I long to be busy doing something. I have the Internet but it can only provide so much companionship before I am bored again. This time I have had this week has just reinforced how much I just want "out". I want to be out of this house and out of this city/town so badly. I want and long to be somewhere where there is more going on, more to do, and more to see. Charlotte is just not it. The news is boring, the city is boring, and yes, the people are boring. Things move at such a slow pace it is aggravating. I do have things to look forward to though. Thanksgiving in NYC, that's exciting. Then there's Christmas in a month and some. Then there's New Year's. And then my birthday!!!! I'm really excited because today I reserved my hotel suite in Savannah at the Mansion on Forsyth Park. I'm so excited about this trip! I'm going to drive down to Savannah on my birthday and then on Saturday I am going to sight see and have fun around the city before going to The Lady and Sons!!! That's right my birthday dinner is going to be at Paula Deen's restaurant! I can't way. I start salivating just looking at the menu online. The food looks perfectly cooked of course and I just can't wait to try her signature dishes. I also found a cute cafe for brunch the next day, a bakery called Goose Feathers which was voted as one of the best places for brunch by Southern Living magazine. If you haven't guessed much of this trip is focused on my foodie dreams coming true. I am so excited for Savannah. I haven't been there in a long time and many of the places and restaurants I'm going to are going to be first time experiences for me. So there are several occasions I am looking forward to coming up in the next months. But it is very hard to live in the in between times when nothing is going on and day after day seems the same. I know I have to look beyond the day to day and know that there is more that will be going on at some point than what a typical day holds right now. But sometimes it is just very difficult to see that far into the future. When you're in it, it seems like it is going to last forever. Today I was reading in Pastor Gools short book Don't Block the Blessings. The chapter I read today talked about how when you are going through something it is never as big as it seems. Meaning the problems or circumstances may seem insumountable but they are not. He explains with God on your side there should not be a reason for you to feel like things can't change. God can make the impossible possible so you have to believe that He will come through for you and help you no matter how long it takes. He also talked about how when you have negative thoughts and feelings and your self is talking to you about defeat you have to talk back and let your self know that you are not going to be defeated. It was good advice. I need to be sure to use it too because at times my reality of where I am and what has been going on and has not been going on in my life is just overwhelming and too much to take and I feel too far down to make it back up again. But then I have to encourage myself and remind myself that I can make it and that this is only a season and that seasons change. It won't be like this forever. It is hard when you feel like there is a way out and then it doesn't work out. I have lived through that more times than I care to recount. Over the last few years I have had those moments when I was waiting on a job response or had an interview and had gotten my hopes up to think that this might be it and I might be on my way and then it didn't work out and my hopes and confidence were just dashed. I went through that big time in August of last year and August of this year and it was so painful. But two things have come to remind me to keep hoping. Just recently I read the story of Joseph in the Bible. Joseph was sold my his brothers to traders, then became a servant in a private household, was accused of rape and jailed, and then when it looked like he might get out was forgotten. Joseph had helped the baker and the cupbearer and asked that they remember him when they got out. Instead it would be two more years until he would be remembered by the cupbearer. Last year I read this book called God Meant It For Good which is an analysis of the story of Joseph and how we should respond to hard times. The author spoke about how Joseph had put his confidence in people instead of God because he was trying to help himself out of a bad situation. The author said he believed that Joseph spent those two additional years in prison because he needed to learn to trust God only. Joseph's story was a great reminder that there are situations that come in life that you cannot help yourself out of. You have to wait and be patient to witness the Lord's hand move on your behalf. The other great reminder to keep believing that good will come came from Ezekiel 37. Last year at my church in New Jersey we had several ministers come fairly close together and present messages on this specific chapter. This chapter speaks about Ezekiel in the Valley of the Dry Bones. Ezekiel was transported in the Spirit to a desert valley that was filled with dry bones. The Lord asked him if the bones could live and he told the Lord that He could make them live. So the Lord told Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones and he did. Then Ezekiel saw the bones re-connecting to each other and being covered with muscle and flesh. The verse is speaking specifically about the reformation of the nation of Israel after their exile but it can apply as well to those things in our lives that seem as if they are as good as dead i.e. relationships, dreams, finances etc. I was also reminded about this past Easter when my pastor's wife in New Jersey prayed for people who needed a resurrection of their hopes and dreams. She was praying for people who had been praying for something for a long time and believing for something for a long time only to see any hope of it coming to pass fading away before their very eyes. Needless to say I went up for prayer. Shortly after that I read the same thing in a short book by Marilyn Hickey and her daughter, Sarah Bowling. Marilyn used the same phrase "resurrection" to refer to dreams, hopes and goals that we have that seem to disappear. She talked about how sometimes we have to be willing to give those things over to the Lord until it seems like they are gone forever so that the Lord can resurrect them and do with them what seems impossible, resurrecting them to become reality. When I say I can't wait until this happens in my life you cannot possibly comprehend how much I mean it. I am ready for a change. I am ready to see the dry bones of my life coming back together. I am ready to experience the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. I really don't want to experience the same old, same old of everyday life or the same kind of year that I had last year and have had this past year. I want newness, change, restoration of my hopes and dreams, just a very different life than what I have experienced these past few years. I really believe that 2012 will be different. I really do. I read through the two posts that I had in October of last year and in those posts I was really hopeful that a year later my life would be different and a year later it is different but not in the way that I expected or really wanted. The previous October I had fled from DC to NJ after the promise of a permanent job fell through, the previous October I was recovering from not getting a job in New York that I desperately wanted. I really am hoping that the future October of 2012 proves to be different than these past Octobers and I know that I will have to keep pumping myself up even if I get deflated daily. I think I have reached that point that Joseph probably got to in prison where he realized that no one around him and not even he could change things. He realized that he needed a miracle and that was the only way he was going to get out of his situation. And he probably realized that the only one who could provide the miracle that he needed was God and he just had to resign himself to wait for God to let him know the time was right for him to be released and for his purpose to be fulfilled. I wonder what he was doing that day when someone from Pharoah's court came and said that they needed him right away. I wonder if he thought to himself that this might be another false alarm before realizing that he was on the cusp of freedom. I wonder what that day will be like for me. I am so encouraged by Joseph's story and seeing that one day he was in prison and less than 24 hours later he was second to Pharoah himself. He didn't have to take remedial classes on administration or get his resume together, it just all fell into place. And only God can do that. I expect that kind of quickness in my own situation. I believe it will change so quickly that I won't have time to really even know that it is happening until after the fact.
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