Taking God's Lead

September 17, 2008


I made a connection today.

As a slumbered, I dreamt I was orchestrating this plan. It was to figure out who dumped toxic material in a local reservoir. The townspeople were sick and the businesses had left.

In the hospital I got eyewitness accounts from sick townspeople of the dumping activities. I had maps marked and I had a plan to bring the people responsible to justice. I had records and charts.

Then, in the dream, my husband erased all my notes, crumpled my plans and destroyed everything I built. My teetering plans for retribution were wiped clean in a single fell swoop.

Then I woke up.

I rolled over and gave my husband a morning hug just as his alarm rang. Today he’d be auditioning for open mic night at a comedy club for the first time. I couldn’t help but think the dream had something to do with this, but I couldn’t tell how.

As a rose, he told me to get some rest, since we’d be up late that night. I wasn’t sleepy, and I told him so. I walked into the kitchen to make him his lunch. God told me to tell him about my dream, I didn’t want to, but I shared anyway.

I hugged him again as he walked out the door and opened up my computer to email someone I forgot to the night before. I read some email, got to one from my homeschooling cyber parent support group. It led me to the third epistle of John.

I read the whole epistle, and then was led to the questions. “Is God trying to tell you follow someone else’s lead?” I instantly knew what the dream was about.

Lord, let me follow your lead today, do what you have in store for me and give my children Your love today.

________________________

This was a journal entry made two years ago. I have yet to learn the lesson God was speaking to my heart that day. So much has happened since then. I am seizure and medication free becasue I stopped eating gluten and other foods (you can find the story here about that on my other blog glutenfreefantasy.blogspot.com). I had a miscarriage, I had a baby, and I had back surgery. All through these trials I feel God's hand leading me. The one thing I can say is that I am redirected much easier than before. :)

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Finding Faith in the Clean Towels

Yesterday my 5 year old was helping me with the laundry, her job is to bring down the empty basket for the clean laundry. When she gets that done, she’s allowed to put in the scoop of laundry soap in for the next load to go in the washer.

On this particular occasion, I beat her down the stairs and by the time she was hitting the last step I had half of the wet laundry in the dryer. The other half still sat in the bottom of the washer waiting patiently for its turn to hop in the dryer and get tossed around. My big helper asked if she could put the little scoop of laundry soap in the washer. When I told her no, she protested, “But Mommy I always put in the laundry soap, why can’t I?” Then she proceeded to grab the scoop and fill it with the white granules and head for the open washer.

“No!” I shouted. She stopped and looked at me with moist eyes and started to whimper. To her, it looked like the washer was empty and there was no reason not to put the soap in. I said, “Sometimes there are things that you just can’t see, and you just have to trust me!” My words stopped me. More often than not I demanded a reason why before I would comply with a request, now I was asking her to just trust me. I couldn’t help thinking about how many times God asked me to do something for Him, to trust Him with the situation, and I’d respond with a request for conformation before I would take action. Sometimes I’d do the exact opposite of what He was asking me to do. Then when my defiance had made a mess of things, I’d pray to be rescued.

How many times has God asked for our obedience and we gave Him defiance? When is the last time He gently reminded you that He sees more than you do? Do we respond by picking up the scoop of soap and tossing it in the tub, or do we follow orders like Joshua did when he marched around the city of Jericho. Blowing those trumpets and screaming must have looked completely irrational to those looking on, but Joshua’s obedience was rewarded by complete victory without a single Hebrew casualty. Had he attacked Jericho with might, there most certainly would have been a mess to clean up, and I don’t think a little scoop of laundry detergent would have helped.