Destination

(It's taken me all day to find the finish to this thought. Now I see why.)

Lately, I've been feeling off. Not simply off-centered, or off-balanced. But it felt more like when in the car, and you have the bass on a few notches too high. The bass rolls through your body, vibrating everything around you. But the song feels unfinished, because everything else isn't quite as fantastic as that big, booming, rolling bass. It just feels...off. An unfinished thought.
It isn't enough to satisfy.

Finally, tonight, it hit me. My heart was broken by the news of a dear friend in need of some serious prayer and love. Satan is fighting for her soul, and I was torn by that. I was there. I was that girl. My mind, went straight to the selfish way of thinking,
How can I help her?
I can't go see her. I can't send her mail. I can call her, but I hate the phone, so maybe another day. So, I decided on a letter to give to Steph going to go visit her. All day, my mind wrestled around in my head trying to find the words to say. What can I say? What words will help? How can I tell her what I know? How can I help?
I put off writing that letter until 10:30 tonight, when Steph told me I couldn't write Chris's birthday card until I had written her.
So, I sat down, stalling a little bit by cutting out pretty paper, picking a pretty polka-dot envelope, picking the perfect pen color. And then I sat down.
Finally, I found the problem.
How can I help?
Do you see what's wrong with that sentence?
I.
Me.
Myself.
How can I help?
I then knew why I couldn't think of anything. I was trying to figure out the words that I could say to bring joy and life into her life. When in reality, God is the only one who can do that.
I started to write.
I started to tell her how I felt. How I knew what she was going through.
And it bothered me. I even wrote it in the letter, "I feel like this letter is going all wrong."
Finally, I stopped, and thought about it.
"God, I need to know what you say about this. How can you help her? What words will heal her heart? What do you say about it?"
And finally, I found a place I love in the Bible. Hosea.

14 "Therefore I am now going to allure her;
I will lead her into the desert
and speak tenderly to her.

15 There I will give her back her vineyards,
and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
There she will sing as in the days of her youth,
as in the day she came up out of Egypt.

16 "In that day," declares the LORD,
"you will call me 'my husband';
you will no longer call me 'my master.'

God, romancing her. Showing her. Loving her. Isolating her, so all she has is Him.

And then my heart sank.

I had lost track of the day God did that for me. I had lost track of the fact that God doesn't only love the people around me, He loves me too. I had lost the idea that I am intimately known and loved too. He led me to that desert, and spoke softly to me. And I had forgotten that.

How prideful, to think that I could offer anything to that girl without Him.

How prideful, to assume I could come up with the words that would even slightly calm the storm in her.

How prideful, to think I had God figured out.

How prideful, to think my words were my own.

How prideful, to think I was enough without Him.

Pride. I have a lot of it apparently.

And that needs to stop.

Right here, right now.

I will mark this as a day of change. No, it's going to just go away over night. But I will fight for that, because I am nothing without God. And to assume I am, is absolutely foolish of me.

God died for me. And I never even deserved it. I should know better than to cast Him aside in my life, and assume I could handle this racing car around a spinning track I'd never driven down before blindfolded. I can't handle that! God is the only one that can.

And I'm giving Him the driver's seat.

Because I know He's the only one that knows my destination, He is the only one that can get me there.