In His Hands

Kermit, Wee Kermit, and me

If you know me or have been reading long, you might know that I have a strange fondness for Kermit the Frog. This is not, as you might suspect, a lingering obsession left from my childhood, but rather a newer development that has gripped me (and my household....poor Scott).

I grew up on Sesame Street. Well, not on Sesame Street......I don't think there is a Sesame Street in my town. I did watch PBS's version daily, however, and I could tell you all about it. I probably still could. (I remember Grover explaining the difference between "near" and "far," children showing me how crayons were made, the letter S dancing around with scissors to help me understand how it sounded, the monsters' enthusiastic "yupyupyupyupyup," and the normalcy of a 7-foot tall bird like it was only yesterday.)

I don't remember now what my favorite part of the show was. I do, however, know which character has had a lasting impact on me. Kermit. Dear Kermit. Yes, I am a fan of the work the famous green frog did on Sesame Street, not his collaboration with the other Muppets or his earlier work with the Muppet Babies. In particular, I love his musical ventures and his reporting on the Sesame Street news. ("Hiho, Kermit the Frog here........")

This obsession, as it really is, has developed relatively recently, as I mentioned. I don't know the exact moment that it happened, nor do I know why I've been seized by this nostalgia. What I do have, though, is a theory.

Kermit and Wee Kermit playing a trick on me. My, what little arms you have...or is your head just really huge?

Over the past couple of years, I've been through a lot of personal changes and serious struggles. All at once, almost 3 years ago, I got married, quit my job and was unemployed for several months, changed churches, and moved. Everything changed, right down to my name. These were good changes, but they were not without their stress. Around the same time, I began my struggle with depression, anxiety, and agoraphobia, which - as you know - I still struggle with today. I've had a lot going on, and it was somewhere in the midst of this turmoil that I rediscovered Kermit. A remnant of my childhood, he provided me with some comfort when comfort was hard to come by.

My newest Kermit-themed acquisition. It's pretty unfortunate that I'm obsessed with Kermit at a time when the world wants to "go green." Apparently, all it takes is one song about "being green," and you're set to be a spokesfrog.

Don't we all do something like this? We buy trinkets when we're on vacation, decorate our homes and offices with photographs of us with our families, keep memory boxes full of notes and letters..... We hang onto memories and things from the past because they make us happy - encourage us that perhaps because things have not always been as they are now, they will not always be this way, either. Sentimental or not, I think we all have something we hang onto as an encouragement to us when we're down. What we (I'm guilty, too, for sure!) forget sometimes, though, is that God has another message for us:

But forget all of that - it is nothing compared to what I am going to do. For I am about to do a brand-new thing. See, I have already begun! (Isaiah 43:18-19)

God doesn't want us to forget about our past and where we've come from, but He doesn't want us to dwell on them and lose all sight of the fact that He isn't finished with us yet. God has never once brought me to a place in my life where He did not faithfully carry me through it and do a mighty work within me throughout the process.

I recall all You have done, O Lord; I remember Your wonderful deeds of long ago. (Psalm 77:11)

Regardless of where we have been, God is taking us somewhere better. No matter how unhapy we feel now in comparison to how we've felt before, God will bring us complete joy. He isn't finished, and what He has for us is better than anything we've seen or can imagine. What a magnificent promise! What hope!

"For I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord. "They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope." (Jeremiah 29:11)

It is wonder ful to know that our God knows that our present circumstances might not look wonderful to us, so He makes a conscious effort to encourage us. He wants us to know that He understands how we struggle, and wants to give us something secure to hold on to when the storms of life rage around us. We can cling to Him when everything is going down around us, remembering the things He has done in the past and hoping in what we believe He will do in the future.

I'm so glad I have Him when I need assurance that things are going to be all right, because Kermit's fun and all, but he doesn't really seem to have things under control.

Obedience?

I'm sorry I've been somewhat........hmm.........absent. For one thing, my mind has been occupied largely by Mom's struggle and honestly, posting any of my little trite thoughts I tend to post seemed thoughtless and remarkably unremarkable in light of what else I have going on.

I have actually had a lot going on, though to those who see me from the outside (hmm......wouldn't that be pretty much everybody?) it wouldn't have seemed like it. I'm a champion at holding things in and insisting that "I'm just FINE!" when I'm really, really not. For that reason, I get lots of weird looks when I tell people of my daily struggles. (For a long time I interpreted those weird looks as disapproval, but came to realize that it was genuine surprise, because apparently I cover things up pretty well.)

In any case, this past weekend and the past several days have been tough on me. I've been thinking about Mom, of course, and my own situation certainly hasn't helped. Let's see....where to begin?

You all know about the issues I've been having with my job - angry homeowners and all that. What I've tried to keep under wraps, though, is the effect it has had on me. As an anxious person, this has not been good for me. Every time the phone rings at work, I feel physically sick - I just know that this is going to be someone yelling at me for something. I even got a phone call on Saturday morning about vandalism at the neighborhood pool. It never ends, and it's wearing on me. It really is. Every morning the first thought that comes to my mind is that I have to come back to this place, and my body responds to that thought with a pounding heart, nausea, and tears. Every single morning. It is physically not good for me. Last weekend I was to the point of wanting to walk in Monday morning and quit. I like everything else about my job - the stuff I do for my boss is fun and interesting, and I really don't mind that part. What I do mind is feeling under attack and impotent against the things I'm supposed to be handling. I mind it very much, and was ready to tell my boss so on Monday morning. Even if I didn't resign, I wanted to tell someone here how hard this is on me. I couldn't help but think that if someone knew what was going on with me, there would be some degree of understanding if it did come to the point of my resignation.

I got to work Monday morning and quickly realized that Monday would not be the day for said conversation. Our office manager, who I had planned on telling about my problem, was not here, and my boss was bustling around getting his feet back on the ground after a week of vacation. It would not be a good day for him to hear that his assistant was on the verge of a nervous breakdown - seriously. A nervous breakdown, y'all.

Sick to my stomach and on the verge of tears, I sat at my desk and tried to focus on things I needed to do. Every time the phone rang, I jumped out of my skin. Every time I saw I had a new email, I nearly hyperventilated. I was not well. I kept thinking, "I have to get out of here. I can't do this anymore. God, help me with this, because I can't do this. I just can't."

Every time I would think about leaving, though, I felt a little pang somewhere in my stomach. There was the feeling of relief that would inevitably bring, as this aprticular anxiety would let up, but I felt something else that led me to believe I shouldn't think about quitting. There was something in my mind that told me that shouldn't even be considered an option right now. Something in my mind said that I needed to stick it out.

"Why, though, God? Why would You want me to stay here?" Everywhere I turned, I found an answer to that question - scripture, the radio.... A friend's blog reminded me that God has a plan and that even if it doesn't make sense, I need to stay where He has put me and follow Him until He moves me. As I read her words, I thought, "God's not moving me. If I left, it'd be because I am moving me."

Y'all, I've done that enough. If you read my resume (who'd do that?) you'd see that I bounce from job to job to job, usually within 6 to 8 months or so. (Hey! I'm there now!) In that amount of time, I usually get sufficiently fed up and leave.....sometimes with clear direction on where I'm going next, and sometimes with no direction whatsoever. I'm a runner. When things get unpleasant and scary, I run. I just do. I like to tell myself I'm strong, but the truth is that I'm just fast. I run away. I get out before it gets too rough.

I feel a clear message from God here: Stay put.

It doesn't make any sense! Why would God want me to stay somewhere where I'm under attack? Why would He put me - ME, with my serious anxiety problems on easy days - somewhere that causes me anxiety every single day?

He's working on me, y'all. He's doing something here. If I'm honest, I don't like it one bit. I don't want to be here, getting yelled at for things I can do nothing about. I don't want to feel this way. I don't want to feel so helpless, but He's teaching me something here - don't want to speculate what that would be - and He wants me to stay here.

It gives me a lump in my throat, and my feet are getting that itch to run away, but I know - deep in my heart - that if I stay here, God's going to do something for me and in me that's infinitely better than that temporary relief I'd feel if I ran. It seems crazy, even to me, but I feel like this is what I have to do.

Flyswatter

I am an anxious person. I always have been. My mom will tell you the profound truth behind that statement - in elementary school, I had something to worry about for every day of the week.

It doesn't take much for me to get myself wound up so tightly that I can't move. Thoughts of things that are happening, have happened, might happen, will happen, or may never happen are enough to paralyze me. I worry about how people see me. I worry about my future. I worry about my family. I worry about my job.

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (Matthew 6:34)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. Mom used to tell me that worrying is like rocking in a rocking chair. It gives you something to do for awhile, but it doesn't get you anywhere. Yeah. I know. All words. Very nice things to think.....until your mind is paralyzed and you can't think of anything at all.

For most of my life, I thought that the worrying was the problem itself, rather than being a symptom of a greater issue. As I've gotten a little bit older, though, the fact has become hard to ignore. I can no longer pretend that I'm just a worrywart and leave it at that. The worrying is bad enough, but the real problem is that my mind does not know how to stop. Any thought that comes to mind has the potential to paralyze me. These thoughts can be, literally, about anything. They come at any time. The one consistent thing about these thoughts is that they do not go without a fight. My mind is a battlefield.

"Your mind and your spirit certainly do work together. Satan, of course, knows this fact, so he attacks your mind, waging war against you on the battlefield of your mind. He wants to overload and overwork your mind by filling it with every kind of wrong thought so it cannot be free and available to the Holy Spirit." (Joyce Meyer)

Few things ring so true with me as the fact that I am under attack. The first time I heard that analogy, I trembled. I knew I struggled with some things, but it had never occurred to me that this fight I had been in for so long was, in fact, a war. This struggle I'd been dealing with was, in reality, a battle. I knew I felt like I was up against something, but I never thought I had an actual enemy. While I may be a worrier and I may create problems for myself that are not really problems, this one was real.

As in many things in life, simple awareness of the problem was revolutionary for me at first and actually helped me to make some headway. Once I knew I was up against a real enemy, I felt stronger to fight it. I wasn't imagining this one. This was real, and I needed to fight.

As you can imagine, though, that only lasted a short while and the situation worsened. I won't try to analyze whether I became complacent and thereby opened myself to greater attack, or whether the attacks actually got more severe, but I do know one thing: the battle was on, and I was losing. Badly. Quickly.

I've been many routes. I've tried many different things to help clear my mind of these violent thoughts - these attacks on my existence. Try as I may, they never let up.

Recently, I was thinking on this struggle and an image came to mind. This image - this illustration - helped to explain why my struggle is so constant and why - despite my greatest efforts - I can never feel victorious.

Imagine a little girl - perhaps 6 years old. She is sitting in her room, playing with her dolls as little girls do. She is immersed in her own little world of tea parties and handsome princes when suddenly, into her room flies her brother. He is 4 years old and brings with him the mayhem that follows little boys. He runs in circles around his sister, zooming a toy airplane around her head and mimicking the roar of a jet engine. She tells him to stop, and he laughs as he makes fun of her little girl's games. She swats at him with her hand and he - encouraged by her irritation - continues. She starts to cry and he believes he has won. She continues swatting......and he continues running and roaring. Her world has been turned on its head and she is powerless to reverse it. Her enemy bothers her for the pure sake of bothering her, and won't quit as long as her defenses are so weak. She is whining, and he is winning.

He is winning, that is, until the little girl wises up and realizes that she has a proven method of defense that she is not afraid to employ. "Mommy! Make him STOP!" Mom comes in, tells him to leave her alone, and she is free to return to her little world.

(I don't have children and it's been a long time since I've been around any such situation. However, this is how I imagine it could be, and it works for the purpose of this illustration, so bear with me.)

In my battle, it is I who am immersed in my little world and vulnerable to a sudden attack from an outside enemy. It is I who find myself, suddenly and without warning, completely disturbed and upset. It is I who, despite the persistence of my torturer, swat and cry and whine.

Given the tactics and motives of my enemy, this defense is anything but successful.

Think about it! The enemy prowls around like a lion! What good is it going to do me if all I do to try to stop him is tell him to "quit it"? Why should he stop if he believes he has me where he wants me?

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:3-5)

Unless I call on someone stronger to fight for me in this battle for - literally - my life, I will not win. I may as well sit on the floor and cry, unwilling and unable to defend myself. This method will not work. It never has, and it never will. It never will. I need someone stronger.

I have a weapon in my arsenal stronger than anything this world or my mind can fathom. I have a weapon that divides soul and spirit, joints and marrow (Hebrews 4:12). I have a Defender that spoke the universe into existence, reverses the decay of death, and promises victory in the end. I have Jesus, and He stands ready to fight on my behalf when I call to Him.

My swatting is useless until my hands lift up to Him.

My cries are useless until they fall on His ears.

My war is not of this world, but - thank the Lord - neither is my weapon. Like the little girl, I only have to remember my Savior is there and believe in His power to save me.

Landscaping

I got home from the gym tonight and was spending a little quality time with Kitter in the front yard when some little white flowers caught my attention. Obviously, I knew they were weeds - we haven't done a speck of landscaping, so any flowers that pop up are definitely a mistake. My first thought, though, was, "How great is God that he would even make weeds pretty for us to look at?"

Then I went a little deeper. Yeah, they're pretty little white flowers, and yes, God made them. My mind started running rampant with a comparison of those weeds in my front yard and the sins in my heart. Bear with me, please. I don't know how far I can take this, as all analogies break down eventually.

You see, weeds - especially those adorned with little flowers - look nice at first, don't they? These weeds add a little color to my otherwise bland yard. When seen as sins, these weeds are better explained. Perhaps lying gains its appeal as it gets me out of a tough situation, or gossip strikes my fancy when it makes me feel better about myself. Getting out of trouble......feeling good about myself......these aren't bad things, are they? They're nice ideas, and the "little sin" that gets us there is appealing and so easy to be drawn to. Likewise, the eye is easily captured by the one or two spots of color in a dying yard, even if those flickers of color are weeds.

When we focus in and are aware of one or two of the weeds, we feel pretty good. We think we can handle that, if we even need to. We don't have a problem, really. It's pretty well under control.

That's how things look when we focus in so closely that we think we only have one thing to deal with - we're only one step from being where we need to be. We think we're close to being a clean palette. It's not so bad.

When we step back, though, things look differently, don't they? Suddenly, by just taking a step back and getting a new perspective, so many other things come into view and the scene isn't so pretty any more. It's overwhelming. We can never take care of all of that! That will take forever! It's hopeless!

In this desperation, we might resort to running around frantically, snatching the weeds up and hurling them away. We do anything we can to make things look good on the surface, because we cringe at the idea that someone else might see the imperfections for what they are. What we neglect to realize, though, is that while the first flowers are gone after our first frenzy, the roots remain, ready to grow back thicker than ever. The problem is still there, lurking under the surface. It waits for the perfect conditions to rear its ugly head again, ambushing us in our complacency. Desperation will never rid the yard of its weeds. A real overgrowth of weeds can only be taken care of by Someone who knows what they are doing. A serious problem like that can only be remedied when we are willing to ask for help. Our desperate yanking on the weeds is only making things worse and causing us to feel bad. The situation is hopeless in our own hands.

The wonderful and hopeful thing is, though, that while we see a weed-infested, overgrown, unkempt area with no hope of improvement, God sees potential. He sees a clean slate and the possibility of a perfectly groomed landscape. He knows each and every type of weed that threatens our view, and He knows what it's going to take to get rid of it for good. He knows how long we've struggled with it. He knows what foolish methods we've used to try to get rid of them, and how long we lived with the weeds before we even recognized them for what they were. He knows how badly we want the weeds gone, because He wants them gone, too. He knows how beautiful it can be without them. He wants that for us. He made us for that.

All we have to do is stop yanking on the weeds, admit that we need some help, and allow the Gardener to do His work. It'll take a little time, and it won't be easy, but genuine beauty will be unveiled when it is finished.