tres

dice que, Dios?

1. Never completely sure of what I hear, I second guess myself in the wee hours of this morning; awaking with a start and needing the sleep I've been lacking this week.

But needing the Lord more. I've been working out my salvation in a bigger way recently. Admitting things to myself and to God that I thought weren't things to be admitted. (As if were there any question in my mind, God knew anyway, so why must I whisper the secret things aloud?) But He never asks for a half and so a whole I must give. Here is the thing which I've been learning though, elemental it may be, collossal it is to me:

He takes the halves I offer and puts them together into the whole I wish to give Him. He has the five thousand piece puzzle box with a picture on the front in his hands, and I humbly hand him the corner pieces, the side pieces, and the expansive blue sky pieces -- and He fits them all together. Interlocking, though not interchangable. He makes them work accordingly.

2. Joseph Eliot, and I cannot quote it exactly, said something like this: I am always content with what God permits me to have, and never feel the lack of that which He has not given me. It proceeded to become a mantra of sorts to me after I first read it -- a reminder that God in His sovereignty gave me what I needed until this moment and kept from me everything I had no need for until this moment -- and so He will continue.

Family reconciled? Gotcha.
Deciding about Lee University? No problem.
Teaching English in a foreign country? Don't sweat it.
Starting a little store with homemade cards and knitted fisherman's sweaters and pretty tote bags? In my dreams, but those are allowed too.

The point is to feel the lack of none of it, but to walk as though they were already mine. He's good, but He's better than that too.

3. We've just finished Milton's Paradise Lost in my Literary Criticism class -- it's taken a few weeks and I'm sad to see it go. It was nice to have a breath of fresh Spirit in at least one classroom. We're on to Oscar Wilde next -- a phenomenal author and an impoverished soul. Between him, Auden, and Cather I should be qualified to speak at the next GLAAD Literature conference. Which, I suppose, is what these professors want; whole graduating classes of gay and lesbian activists.