Isaac

I've gone back and forth about how to share this portion of the journey with you. Do I tell you all the fun story parts and then go back and fill in the spiritual parts? I thought it might be easier for you to follow that way, but the two are so intertwined that I'm not sure separating them would give clarity...nor would it do the journey justice. So, I'll just start telling, and if it gets too long, I'll stop and pick up again tomorrow.

One full week after Valentine's Day, I sat in my seat in Sunday School class with an attitude problem. A spiritual attitude problem. The season of drought I'd been plodding through had made my heart calloused toward any sort of effort in learning. One of the assignments in our workbook had been to rewrite the 23rd Psalm from our own vantage point. Personalize it. I'm not proud of this, but I snubbed my nose at that assignment. Our minister happened to be teaching our class for a few weeks, and during our discussion, he pulled a folded piece of paper from his suit pocket and asked if he could read the words his ten-year-old daughter had penned in response to the assignment.

That night, I wrote in my journal, My mind is full today. I’m so convicted about my complacency. When Jesse read Elizabeth’s take on Psalm 23…my heart was both blessed and saddened. Her purity and joy toward You remind me so much of what I used to be. And I wondered why I couldn’t take the time out of my day to ponder what Psalm 23 means for me.
I didn't write it in my journal, but it hit me that a full week had passed since "the email," and I'd not heard a word. I shrugged and determined that was my answer. I'd asked God to prevent him from pursuing me if it was not of Him, so the silence must be the answer.

Just a few minutes later, I found a little something in my inbox.

From Isaac.

(Side note: Isaac is not his real name. For the time being, I am choosing to keep his identity completely private. I won't be sharing a lot of personal details about him, but you do need to know that I prayed about what to name him on the blog, and this was the name God kept bringing back to my mind. And later, there's even a cool story about that.)

Oh yes. Isaac. The one who just moments earlier, I'd given up ever hearing from...that Isaac. Of course I was elated to hear from him, but I didn't want to appear desperate, so I turned aside from the email and turned my attention toward my journal again.

Last fall, I had the opportunity to hear Angela Thomas speak at a women's conference, and in the weeks that followed, I'd been doing her study Do You Think I'm Beautiful? with a friend of mine. We were almost finished working through it, and I read some in it that night.

I journaled this quote from the book: “In case you have missed it, there is a battle going on. The battle is for your soul. And if your soul belongs to God, Satan will go after your heart and your mind and your passion.” And that’s what scares me to death…I’m scared Satan is about to unload. And boy was he EVER.

Before I went to sleep, I read a passage from Streams, which said, “Have you prayed and prayed and prayed and waited and waited and still you see no evidence of an answer? Are you tired of seeing no movement? Are you at the point of giving up? Then perhaps you have not waited in the right way, which removes you from the right place – the place where the Lord can meet you…His purpose in waiting is to receive more glory through it.” (C.H.P.) Jesus, this is me! This is so me!

But He already knew that. And He already had a place picked out where He could meet with me. A place called a desert. But I knew nothing of a desert in that moment.

I have to tell you, the fact that Isaac had taken the first step in pursuing me made me nothing short of ridiculously giddy. The next day, he emailed...and a respectable 59 minutes later, I sent a response. I read it no less than a dozen times before screaming and hitting “send” – and wondered what in the world he would think of a crazy girl who talked to him as though they were already best friends. And yet – what did I have to lose? I could hardly wait for the next day – to hear from him again…hopefully! And yet when I crawled online later that night, he'd already written back.

I couldn't bear to ignore such a sweet email, so I wrote back on the spot.

And that night, after the emailing frenzy subsided, I confided in my journal, Isaac is funny. He is a good guy. But God. Please, please, please direct me. I don’t want to cause hurt. I do want to delight in You. I want to bring joy.

**Side note. The reference to "delighting in God" came from Psalm 37:4, which we'd studied in Sunday School a few weeks earlier. (It says, "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.) One of the ladies in our class admitted she struggled with that verse, because she always felt like she was treating God like the genie in Aladdin, and she knew that wasn't what the verse meant. And I'd been sort-of-praying for God to teach me to delight in HIM and to trust Him to bring the desires of my heart.**

After I wrote that, I opened Streams and wrote, Streams talks about faith again… "The greatest problem with most of us is, after asking Him to do it, we do not believe it is done. Instead, we keep trying to help Him, get others to help Him, and anxiously wait to see how He is going to work. Faith adds its amen to God’s yes and then takes its hands off, leaving God to finish His work.” (from Days of Heaven Upon Earth). And what does it quote? Psalm 37:5 – “Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will do this.”

Jesus. Show me.