After five months and HOURS of research, I FINALLY found an apartment.
It’s perfect.
Quite, woodsy, generally affordable, great view, and (the best part) there is a washer and dryer in-unit. Finding it was divinely orchestrated and I can finally have some peace about where I’ll be living in a month. Praise God!
There is only one problem.
I wasn’t expecting to make the move until the end of October and now it is happening at the beginning of October. What could be the problem?
Money.
The root of all evil.
Add this deposit to that deposit, subtract the income I thought I had time to save up, add first months rent, subtract last months bills, add next months bills, subtract a few bucks for the survival essentials, add the $5 I just found in my jean pocket, and you have $39 left over. (Probably less but we’ll just go with that for now.)
Yup.
Account Balance: $39.00
I sat there for a very long moment, staring at the calculator screen, staring plainly back at me. Maybe I made a mistake. One minute later and $39 pigmented on the screen again confirms I didn’t. A serious pang of fear shot through me. My eyes got salty and my throat got all lumpy. Slowly, but surely, the barrage of insecurities came crashing down like the pounding of hot rain on black pavement during a summer storm.
What am I doing?!
I am making a mistake.
Am I screwed?
Can I really do this on my own?
I’m so screwed.
Have you ever had one of those moments? The infamous, “I’m screwed.” moment, followed closely by the ever-attractive deer-in-the-head-lights stare? It doesn’t have to pertain to money, though it normally does. It’s a defining moment for most people. Why is it defining? Because we can either let that moment turn into hours, days, months, and even years or you can allow it the moment it currently occupies and then swiftly kick it in the rear.
I’ll admit, I’m still working on the courage to kick that fear in the rear, but I’m almost there.
Whether I’m making a mistake or not, my “I’m screwed” moment is challenging me to replace my $39 security blanket with one of divine trust. The I-only-have-two-fish-and-five-loaves kind of trust. Even more than that, this scenario is testing whether or not I believe God loves me enough to take care of me outside of my own means.
Fair enough.
I did call it a “defining” moment.
This is how I see it. I can fret and worry about what’s in my bank account or I can take what I’ve got, all I’ve got, and deposit it into the hands of Yaweh; the one who clothes the lilies of the field in splendor and feeds the birds of the air. I can completely forget how He has literally carried me right up to this very moment, or I can practice remembering at least this one truth over and over again:
He’s brought me too far to give up on me now.
There is a witty saying that points out that in order to gain patience, you must be in the very situation where patience is trained up. In other words, in order to learn how to be patient, you have to test it with everything that requires it. Guess what? Trust works the same way. You want to learn how to trust God and know His love for you? Get into a situation where it’s the only thing you’ve got left to do. Trust me, you’ll start trusting faster than you can count to thirty nine.
Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding. But in all your ways, acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths.
Provers 3:5-6
ToBeKT 