Hello again!

I know it’s only been three days since my last post, but this one wouldn’t wait. Hopefully there will be inspiration for another post when Tuesday rolls around again.

There was a fire in my flat yesterday. Don’t worry – it was intentional and well contained in the kitchen sink. But before I tell you about that, I should back up a bit.

For years, I have used fire to rid my heart and mind of lies I find myself believing. Being a verbal processor, I have to get thoughts into words before I can deal with them (or even know they’re there), but I decided I don’t want rubbish filling my journals. When I find myself writing something untrue, I switch to a piece of notepaper and write the lies there. When the paper is filled, I burn it, offering those thoughts to God and asking Him to fill the space with His truth instead.

Yesterday, I expanded that practice a bit. This is a photo of the front of my wardrobe from sometime around February or March 2016. These notecards are filled with verses God had given me to read often, memorize and hold onto as I waited for His promises to be fulfilled in my life. They will always be special to me, but they are no longer displayed next to  my bed.

During the past weeks, those verses have served as reminders, not of the faithfulness of the God who inspired the words, but of the promises that remain unfulfilled. Instead of hope, they brought frustration and doubt and despair.

You see, if we let our minds wander at will instead of taking the thoughts captive, they will often turn toward the dark places in our hearts. As I have processed the disappointment of my visa refusal, my thoughts have wandered toward other disappointments too. Most of them stem from promises I felt God gave me long before my life in Ireland was even a thought.  And the thing about disappointments lurking in the dark is they rarely hang out alone. They are usually accompanied by lies about us and about God who often gets blamed for the sorrows we face.

As I burned lies yesterday (ugly ones saying I’m unlovable, I’ll never find a place to belong, etc.), I also burned truths. Those notecards that had begun to represent sorrow went up in smoke along with the lies – not because they are untrue, but because I had attached them to my expectations of what should happen. As I burned those bits of paper, I surrendered my own ideas of what fulfilled promises have to look like. In return, I received truth straight from God once again.

There may never be a man on earth who thinks I’m worth sharing life with, but there is a Man in heaven who thinks it was worth giving His life so that He could share it with me forever. He calls me His Beloved and invites me to come away with Him into spring. Winter is past, and it’s time for new life, beauty, and singing again.

Now I can read “[God] led them by a straight way to a city where they could settle” and realize no matter where I call “home” here on earth, or whether I ever get to stay more than three years in one place, I can be settled with Him. I don’t have to start from scratch at every turn because He is my constant.

I don’t know what is around the next bend, but surrender has brought hope to the surface again. God’s promises are true whether they look like I had hoped and expected or not. Whatever He will do in the seasons to come will be remarkable – for His glory and my good! So today, I choose to be still and know He is God.