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You know, I am not typically at a loss for words … this is very odd for me.  I have started this post about 102 times, written long paragraphs and deleted them only to start over.  I feel like I’m getting no where in a quick hurry. 

I think I shall start at the begining.  If you aren’t in for the long haul tonight, I understand … it’s getting late and I’m tired too.  I am likely to share some things with you tonight that may be a little deep for our normal discussion around here.   I find it far easier to write about funny stuff as opposed to serious stuff but that isn’t on my agenda for tonight.

So, what is on my agenda for tonight?  I want to share with you, from deep down in my heart.  I want you to know that as I sit here and type this, I have tears in my eyes and my heart is torn in about 50 different directions.  I’m listening to Tobymac’s new song “City on our knees” if you haven’t heard it, you should.  It’s beautiful and it speaks to me.  But that isn’t what’s wrong with my heart. 

I have a question.  Are you a dreamer?  Are there things that you think of so much, you go to sleep with them on your mind and you literally dream about them?  It’s ok if I just caused you to say “melinda has truly lost her mind this time” because I’m not so sure that I, myself, don’t feel like I am losing my mind right now.  Maybe I should be more specific … do you ever feel a deep down calling in your heart that makes absolutely no sense at all?  (as a side note here, I just want y’all to know that I feel really safe in posting this on a weekend because I know for a fact that our blog has far fewer readers on the weekends and all of you already know that I’m a little tetched, as mamaw would say, so I feel very safe in openly admitting that I am completely insane).  

Ok, I promise, somewhere in this post I will come to a point.  Be patient.  I’m having a hard time here.  I should just say what it is I want to say and be done with it. 

For the past 6 months or so, I have felt an enormous call upon my life to do something more.  I have prayed, cried, ignored, run, reasoned and argued with God more than I care to tell any of you about.  And I’m not sure why I’m telling you now.  Maybe it just seems concrete if I write it down, maybe it actually makes me be accountable, maybe you are part of the plan … who knows, I certainly don’t.  So here is my bigger problem.  I’m lazy, for all intents and purposes, we’re broke, sure we can pay our bills but we don’t have much left over, I’m comfortable with my life just the way it is, I’m involved in church, I’m faithful … I like to think I’m a team player, sooo why can’t that just be enough?  Why can’t I just go to church on Sunday and Wednesday, pay my tithes, pray, teach Sunday School and Youth and come the crap home and be satisfied with that?  Why do I feel this deep down, will not go away, soul hurting need to do something more?  I promise you it isn’t because I am some super christian.  For pete’s sake, do you know me?  I smoke cigarettes like a freight train most days.  I’m fat.  I’ve been divorced.  I’m married to a recovering alcoholic with a criminal record.  I like taking naps on Sunday, or any other day of the week for that matter.  I’ve raised my kids, I want to be selfish with my time.  It was never my plan to want to do more.  I just wanted to go to church, live a good life and go to heaven one day.  That’s it.  That’s all I thought I signed up for and I didn’t really intend to sign up for that, I just wanted Cathy to shut up and stop asking me to come to church, thank you very much.  After they let me out of the nut house, would someone please remind me to kick her in the shin, really hard.  My point would be … why? Do I by any stretch of the imagination look like the model of Christ?  Nope, pretty sure not.  So that begs the question …  why why why why why?  I don’t want to sit in my warm house and know that there are people not far from me who aren’t warm tonight.  I want to go eat steak with my sweet daddy, husband and daughter and not care that I almost threw up in public today because other people don’t have an indoor bathroom at their house, which is actually more of a shed than a house.  Those kind of people live in 3rd world country’s not my community … that my friends is a big fat flippin lie.  I have no desire to realize that people right here in our own back yards go to sleep with mice and roaches crawling on their children.  It’s yucky, it’s nasty and I do not want to know about it … because if I know about it, what do I do to change it?  Do I go clean up trash one day, carry off  junk or clean out a toilet and call it a good day and come home to my semi clean house, with indoor plumbing and food in the fridge and feel good about my christianly efforts?  Someone please feel free to say “yes melinda, that is all you need to do”  cause I might just be willing to believe you tonight. 

Why didn’t God just put me at some church where the pastor was content to simply talk about God?  Why do I have to have a preacher and a board who actually want to do something biblical?  Why can’t I have one of those hypocritical preacher’s?  Noo, I get Eric instead.  Great.  And if that weren’t bad enough, God throws in Anita who I’m pretty sure could pray the devil himself into heaven.  Then I get to contend with the most unusual bunch church family on the planet.  What the crap?  These people shouldn’t even like eachother, most of them have no social or economic similarities, other than blood relation and not one of them is my blood relative and I have to love them like the world would end without them.  Why?  Why can’t I just simply be cordial to my fellow church goers and go home?  Seriously, it bothers me … and do you know why it bothers me?  Because it all makes sense.  It makes sense that if God has a bigger plan for me that He would put me at a church 30 minutes from my house, with the right pastor, with the right pastor’s wife, with the right church family to prepare me for whatever this plan of His may be.  Do you have any idea how many churches I drive past to get to my church?  It’s insane,  crazy, illogical, nonsense … unless there was a plan all along.  Which would lead me directly to Jerimiah 29:11 or just read the whole chapter, it makes even more sense that way. 

I have no illusions or disillusions about my life.  I’m nobody any more special than you or anybody else for that matter.  I am not a shining example of perfection, in fact, I am quite the opposite.  I’m not planning on quitting my job and moving to Africa (God knows there are snakes in Africa and I do not do snakes).  However, I do think God is opening some really wide doors right here at home for this plan of His.  I also do not think that this plan God has is all for melinda … those doors are way to wide open for just me.  In turn, this causes me to think that at least part, if not all of you, must have some part in the grand plan.  Nothing is coincidence, nothing happens without a reason.  Maybe that’s why you landed here … lucky you.

This is where I am going to leave this for tonight … I don’t have the 1st answer, but I am willing.  I am willing to openly tell all of you, my life is evolving, my relationship with Christ is growing, my comittment is deepening.  No clue where any of that will lead and that’s ok.  For this moment, it’s ok that I don’t know the plans God has for me, because He knows, all I have to do is be willing.  It is my prayer that if even one of you feel any tinge or tug in your heart that you will prepare yourself to be willing also.  We may not be able to change the world in a week or two, it will be a long journey, it will be slow and often frustrating but it is my belief that the end result will be more than worth the efforts any one person can begin to imagine.  Just think about it.  Are we willing to become a city on our knees?

me.