Trust

Matthew 6:26, Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than that?

Many times during the course of Karen’s illness I worried about all the medical bills, losing Karen’s upholstery business and that income, the work I was missing, and many other things. Also during that first year, Audrey was trying to make college decisions and I was sick with worry about how in the world we were going to pay for that.

Karen wasn’t well enough to make those University visits during Audrey’s senior year of high school and so Audrey and I did them by ourselves. The money always seemed to somehow be available for the medical, and the other things but I had no idea how we were going to fund college.

As we made those visits and asked those questions and prayed it seemed that the answer kept coming back to Eastern Washington University. It just seemed so clear to both of us that this was where God wanted her to be. I didn’t have enough money to fund an in-state education, let alone an out of state university. I must be reading God wrong I deduced. That can’t possibly be where Audrey is supposed to go.

One day at work, all day my spririt was so troubled and I was praying and questioning and crying and praying some more. I will never ever forget in my life that afternoon when I came home from work. I called Audrey and Karen into the dining room and with tears in my eyes I said. I don’t know how we are going to pay for it. I don’t know the answer. People may think I am a flake and out of my mind. I don’t know anything except that somehow, by faith, Audrey, you are supposed to go to Eastern. We both knew that but couldn’t get our minds to grasp what our hearts knew.

On that day when the decision was made, I could literally see a black cloud lift from that dining room, and our house and our hearts. Things started to happen and in some of the most incredible ways, God provided again and again and again and it really was the right school and it has been evidenced in many ways and many times.

Why do I not trust sometimes when I know what the answer is. It’s a struggle I deal with many times.

For the last several years there have been several nesting pairs of geese just up the river in a field each spring. When they begin to nest, the adults come down each day and walk up the beach and poop in the yard. It’s early in the year and I always just figured they were fertilizing the grass down by the beach so I never really cared. I watched them a lot one year and I noticed that in a few weeks, after the chicks had hatched, the adults bring them down the river and up on to the yard. Usually there are 20-30 chicks depending on the year. It occurred to me as I watched them that where the adults had been pooping for a few weeks, there were now bugs for the young to eat. It’s so incredible to think that there was a plan and a purpose all along. I saw poop, God saw a plan, even for the birds of the air. I’ve had those hard days and scary days and times of worrying when all I could see was poop. I just need to assure myself, as do you, that we need to trust God and his awesome plan. Even when we can’t see it, we have to know that it is there.