God has given us this season to enjoy. What fear or anxiety is keeping you from full life? What would it look like to lay it down?
It is incredible how subtlety insecurity can creep in without fully seeing it. It seems like when I feel I am trusting God, I turn around and see another hole where it is lacking and no matter how small the hole, there is still water seeping in and raising and I am left to pick up the buckets and pour more of myself out.
Ever since God started giving me
glimpses and guidance towards starting a business and somehow binding it up
with Pocket Blessings and bringing it out in to the community, anxiety started
bubbling up too. The thought of it sounded great but the execution and day to
day kept me hesitant and doubting a bit, as it is when I try to figure out
everything. The down side of being analytical.
For me, starting a business means
time away from my kiddos, which is hard but I also enjoy the entire creative
process. Two fold, right. And then there is the selling and buying of products,
something I have never liked to do. Giving is always my favorite and I would
much rather give everything away than get a dollar. I do not have sales
personality, not even in my left pinky toe.
The more I thought about it, as
with anything, the more I questioned if this was really what God was calling us to. The more I wondered if this could really be right. The more I allowed doubt
to win and trust to trail off in the distance.
It made me think back to Moses. He
had bigger quests to accomplish but there is the sending and the call that
always bring me back to obedience.
Did he try to figure it out
before they left? Did Moses talk it over with his wife before he went to Egypt
and make a plan about the way he would get to the palace? Or did he just throw
caution to the wind, trusting the very words God had spoken and run towards the
doors with Aaron? Did he go over the situation numerous times, seeing it played
out in his head? These are the details I would love to hear the account of.
In the figuring it out, anxiety
takes its best form as questions and solutions bring on more questions needing
more answers. Perhaps that is my way of thinking.
When I started peeling back the
layers and realizing the thoughts and insecurities that surrounded the
endeavor, it turned me even more to listening to God and praying and reminding
me to take each step as it comes. Trusting God above my own worries and knowing
whatever this looks like, it is a stepping out in faith and making a way where
there has not yet been foot prints.
It is an opportunity to be
obedient and pray and fast and clearly seek God and allow my children to be a
part of the ride, as they pray for those who will hear the Gospel for perhaps
the first time and for those who will be inspired by the products.
It has been an opportunity to
have friends pray for me and choose to lean on God, not my own understanding
and insecurity, as getting things out in the open tends to do that. It is another opportunity for God to work in ways only he can and for me to watch it unfold before my eyes.
Here's to less anxiety and more
trust.
____________________________________________________
This is part of a 365 day blogging series through Savor by Shauna Niequist. If you would like to blog along, whether daily or weekly, I would love to have you for the journey; be sure to link back to the post. And if you are not a blogger, you can join along, too. Just leave your response and answers in the comments.