I’m sitting in the cutest little coffee shop waiting for my Crepedillia.  That’s a crepe with a Mexican flare in case you’re wondering.  The day is glorious, the sky couldn’t be any bluer and there’s just the right amount of chill in the air.  It feels perfect, honestly.  Kacey Musgraves is singing Rainbow gently over the speakers and I find myself swaying softly, enjoying the music.

I am grateful for this place, for right now.

I just got off the phone with my youngest and he is having a good week in spite of the work load of being a full time student and having a part time job.  My middle child, Dreamer, as I’ve named him, is having a great week too.  The Lord is opening some opportunities for him and he, in his usual zest for life manner, is thrilled.  My daughter, and oldest child, has found a full time job now that’s she’s graduated from college.  She loves it and feels so blessed.

So, I ask myself repeatedly, why all this self-reflection and battling sadness?

Last week I wrote to you guys about how I feel a lack of purpose in my life these days.   I wrote it not intending to post it to my blog. I was just trying to be honest with myself in hopes to figure out all of these emotions that feel like a kaleidoscope.  When I decided I would send it out to all of you, I pressed “post” with a knot in my stomach.  I mean, how much honesty is too much, you know??  Several of you responded and I am so thankful for the encouragement.  As much as I appreciated the advice and love shown to me, it just didn’t seem to make me feel any better.

I needed to hear from HIM.

From Jesus.

I want to continue my story today, fill you in on what’s happened since I decided to tell my truth on such a raw and public level.

I recently finished a book, it took me three months to read it and it wasn’t even that long.  What happened to me??  I used to be such an avid reader?   Definitely getting back to it in 2020.  Anyway, at the end of this book, and right after I published last week’s blog, the author began to remind me why I picked up the book in the first place.  We do our deepest growing in the unseen, she said.  I’m paraphrasing.  Our most important goal in these times of feeling alone, or not seen, is to focus on our relationship with Jesus.  I knew this.  I decided I might just skim the last chapter and call it DONE.  But, the Lord wouldn’t let me.  He gripped my heart and I knew there was something deeper in this message.  The author explained she broke her ankle and all of her plans for the spring had to change.  She had a choice to make: surrender to her circumstances with a grateful heart for what she was still able to do or be angry.

She chose surrender.

Okay, Lord, I was listening but I still wasn’t sure why I needed to read about her ankle problem.

The church we’ve been attending started a series on I Samuel at the first of the year.  It’s been really rich and, at times, above my head.  But I keep hanging in there.  I appreciate good teaching.  This week’s message was in chapter four and he explained that God was following through on a promise he made to discipline (punish) the Israelites if they didn’t turn back to Him.   In the middle of his forty minute talk he explained that God is our king and not our servant.  We are to surrender to Him in all things.

There was that word again.

Surrender.

When I was little my mom would sometimes have to get on to me in public.  I understand, now that I’ve had kids, this probably embarrassed her as much as it did me.  Well, in an effort to be discreet she wouldn’t directly say that she was going to “beat my tail” if I didn’t stop my bad behavior, she would say it in code but I ALWAYS knew what she meant.  None of her words were lost on me.

That’s how it felt sitting in church.

I KNEW the words were for me even though I wasn’t a worried Israelite waiting for punishment.  I knew he was speaking into my personal circumstances.  He was whispering, at first in the book, and then clearing His throat to say it a bit louder again in church.  “Surrender, Sandi, surrender.  Quit trying to figure it all out, quit focusing on all the things you miss and surrender to this place, this place right here, right now.   This place of wondering why you’re here, this place of feeling like you’re not needed, this place of sadness.  Surrender to it, I have work to do in THIS PLACE.”

It was code for “I’m gonna beat your tail if you don’t obey.”  (figuratively not literally)

He didn’t speak in an audible voice.

It wasn’t some powerful message that left me undone.

Nothing in my life changed.

But, in that moment when God was speaking discreetly and a bit in code so I would understand…I understood.  It is time to embrace what IS, even if I don’t particularly love it.  It is time to be lonely and not run from it.  It is time to be sad and not search for distraction.  It is time to surrender to whatever God wants to teach me through this feeling of being lost with no purpose.

Maybe that’s it, maybe there’s purpose in what feels like purposelessness.

Wow, you may need to read that last sentence again.  It’s a mouthful.

Maybe He’s going to teach me to surrender so I’ll be available for what comes next.

Or maybe I need to surrender because He is king I am the servant.  Maybe I need to learn that when I don’t get my way it doesn’t mean he isn’t faithful, it means he gets the final word because…

He is KING and I am the SERVANT.

Not the other way around.

Well, guys, I just had the most precious encounter with the cutest little girl.  She couldn’t have been more that eighteen months and her smile lit up my heart.  It is a good day, it’s not the day I would’ve chosen, but it is the day I’ve been given and I surrender to whatever it holds.   I’ll take all the little girl smiles and giggles I can get, oh, and my Crepedillia was awesome.

If you’re ever in my area, we’ll go get one together.