Daydreams & Nightmares

Today was a bit crazy but altogether not bad...kinda fun. However, it ended with the possibility that I needed to buy 4 new tires. Yes, all four were low for the third time in the last month. The front driver side tire was almost completely flat. At this point, I figured that filling the tires up again was not going to help; that there must be holes in them that at the least needed to be patched.

Sitting in Meineke, texting a few friends, my spirit just started to sink again. I just didn't know how I would react or feel if something else went horribly wrong with anything...but especially with my car, since I have to drive four hours at night on Thursday to Northern Indiana for a dear friends wedding. It just wasn't what I wanted to deal with right now...or even in the near future. Then thoughts of me driving on really bad tires at night and having a blowout, thus rolling my car several times and ending up in the hospital either seriously hurt or in a coma penetrated my brain. Yes, this is literally what I thought about sitting in Meineke waiting for the diagnosis - the worse possible scenario in this situation.

Luckily, the diagnosis was completely positive...what was wrong with my tires? The pin in the core of the valve that you fill the tire with air were loose (unscrewed). It actually needs a special tool to get inside there and tighten them up. They all were just loose so everytime I put air in the tires, it was only a quick fix. The tires were leaking internally because of the loose valve core. Ha! And they didn't charge me for it! Plus, they checked all the tires well. How random is something like? The core of a tire valve is loose? I didn't even know that there was something in the valve that had to stay screwed in...I only thought the cap had to stay tigtened. Go figure.

Anyway, it was a small blessing in a time of uncertainties. However, the minor drama took a lot out of me. This little head of mine has a mind of it's own sometimes...and having the thoughts I did scared me a little. I literally have a tendency to scare myself...but it's also something that I continually learn from. It's like it's an oxymoron: a nightmarish daydream.

But my head has always been that way: imaginative in many ways. I can come up with the most beautiful thoughts sometimes. I've written some of them down; but some I have kept completely to myself. They are so memorable that I don't need to write them down. On the other hand, and without meaning to, some of the worst things can come to my head - the bad stuff of life. I know a lot of it is due to the things around me: media, tv, murder, rape, suicide, war, the pure evil you can see in this world. Sometimes I'm able to put it all in perspective, though. There are times where these negative thoughts begin to scare me but it stops and instead, God intervenes and teaches me something through it. He uses the bad to help me find the good.

Tonight, though I had other plans, my plans were interrupted. And though some won't understand this, I needed to reflect upon why I am the way I am sometimes and why sometimes the little things really throw me off. I took a good long look at myself: I saw the really ugly...but what's more is that I saw the really beautiful.

I got home at around 7:30 p.m...not too late to keep my plans but late enough that I listened to my inner voice. I know that I need to take care of a few things in myself right now. So, I came home and relaxed. About 30 minutes ago, I started to really see a few things...and it took a tv show to show me the path that I needed to work on first. That's when I came to my computer and started to do some research and to truly open my mind to think, really think about my priorities. I have so many; but I'm realizing that none of them are really in the right place on the list.

Truly, they aren't. There are a few in the right slots; but not many. So, priorities, number one. Number two, Faith. Hebrews, Chapter 11...all of it. I've been telling a lot around me that I have so many uncertainties but that God is asking me to be patient and faithful. I have seen now that faith is two things that I'm struggling with: sure and certain. Hebrews 11:3 - By faith we understand that the universe was formd at God's comman, that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. (NIV) Hmmmm....so, right now, I know this is a verse that I have to study, to meditate on, and pray over. The one thing I do know about this verse is that it is a reminder that God made something of nothing; creation was created out of what God commanded. It had not existed before. Translation to my life in particular (or anyone struggling wiht the same thing I am)? Though I can't see what's coming and can only see what's seen, it may hamper me but not God. He is not hampered by what is seen and what is not seen...because He can create anything...just like He has given me a gift to create with my imagination. And what's more, I have a choice of what I create and what bring into existance. I have a lot of other choices, too: like what I decide to do everyday, how I work or don't, how I clean my apartment or don't, how I eat or don't, how I workout or don't, and how, which is the most important, how I choose Him over everything else.

Three, with that realization, I then asked myself, "Well, do I choose Him over everything everytime I make a decision?" I am sad to say that I do not. More often than not, I choose what "I" think is best for "me." There are times that I even know so clearly what God wants me to choose, what the right choice is, but I disobediently choose the wrong one - because I want to. I did it tonight...and clearly knew I was in the wrong. It then created in me and my big, imaginative head things that shouldn't have been there...that I should not have allowed there. But it didn't devastate me because I was able to shoe it away as quickly as it came. In that moment, I realized that I am truly a different person in so many ways. I wondered why there are some things that we just can't see in ourselves or each other unless something random (like needing the core in your tire valves tightened) to see the work that God has done in you and is doing in you. It's an amazing realization...and I feel kinda like there are these arms around me telling me that though I've made, am making and will make many more mistakes that 1) they will be less and less as I grow and learn, and 2) that thought there are so many uncertainties right now in my life (and in others') that He can see the unseen and that's all I need to know.

Oh, and that this big, imaginative head of mine is a gift. I have to see it as such...treat it as such,...use it as such...and choose to give it over everyday to God. The daydreams. The nightmares. They all need to go to Him, immediately...and it's my job (my choice) to give them up no matter how good or bad they may be. He'll to what's right with them.

So now, I'm ready to go to bed and am not afraid to dream. In fact, he wants me to dream and plan and pursue the desires of my heart that He has given me....to know which ones those are. And I do; tonight, He has shown me. :-)