Jess got a job in one of the nearby towns.  It pays 1/3 of what her old job paid (hourly) and they gave her 6 hours this week.  I’ve hit a couple of dead-ends on my own hunt for a job so far and have just been more focused on making the house a home first (more on that this weekend).

I’m not very good at math, but I know much less money than we made before isn’t going to cut it, especially as we have most of the same bills still in AZ, in addition to the new bills we created around us to support adequate living conditions here.  Hehe, okay, enough context…

Tonight as I was working on the house, a thunderstorm swept through Whitesburg and brought back the memory of me as a little boy, lying in my bed, terrified of the late night monsoon storms back then.  There wasn’t anything I could ever do to control the thunder.  My greatest efforts to somehow conquer my fear only led me to think about it more, and then only fear the storms more.  Even Penny Bear was of little comfort.  There was, however, one solution that always worked:  Being with my parents, in their bed, always made me instantly safe.  I can’t recall the storms even being there once I had found a warm spot under their covers.

The fascinating thing about real growth…  about spiritual growth, is that it progresses in reverse.  I don’t have to become stronger or more capable to become better…  It’s better to become less.  I’m becoming like a boy in the midst of a 2 a.m. thunderstorm and finally realizing my life for the situation I’m in:  being a child allows The Father to BE The Father.  Therefore, being like a child is the best thing to be.

I see more than ever that, in “my own bed”, so to speak, things can only get worse, or at least, stay frustrating and terrifying.  There I feed the fires of fear with the fuel of anxiety.  Anxiety, at best, leads to illusions of solutions, wrapped in a wasted lifestyle of striving.  Then I feel a little less afraid and a little less child-like because I haven’t sunken.  I believe the lie that maturity is keeping myself afloat.  Days, months or years later, there’s the realization of time and energy just spent treading water…  water that is still crashing on our heads…  water that we could have been walking or running on all this time… if only we had been like a child.

It’s taken us moving into the literal and metaphoric storms of Georgia to help me realize that I need to be more like a child, not less like one.  I don’t need to lie in the bed of treading water and hope it ends with retirement.  That’s not what “becoming like a child to enter the Kingdom” looks like.  Just as when I was a boy, I can enter a place where I’m instantly and utterly safe as an adult too… but it still takes the mindset and actions of a child. 

Best part of all, that’s just step one.  Abandoning that bed and knocking on His door is just the introduction to adventure.  As I peer inside, I see that He’s not just offering a warm spot in a safe bed…  He’s also running through a forest with a sword, shooting blue fireballs… He’s dancing in a hall filled with instruments playing themselves…  He’s creating doors that open to other worlds, and we are all allowed to join Him!