Monument vs Standing Stone

Many of us look back at our lives and can pick out the bad decisions, big and small, that have become monuments to our failures. Sometimes we make the monuments so big we can't move past them.  Sometimes we miss the point of the monument altogether.  

One of my big failures was college. I knew what school I was supposed to go to since my freshman year of high school.  My mother will tell you she hated the school I chose because it was so far away.  By the time I graduated high school and headed off, I had no other direction.  I was sure that was where God wanted me to go.  I went for about a semester before I failed out and had to be shipped back to my parents in shame. There were a whole lot of bad decisions during that time but one of them has come to my mind lately because God has made me aware of the fact that I'm doing it again. I decided to go to college to become a nurse. Was I keen about caring for people, good at math and science, and excited about the field of medicine? NOPE! I didn't like most of those things, and I was not good at them. Why did I choose to pursue nursing. Because I wanted to be a medical missionary. I wanted to be ready and willing to go wherever God wanted me to go. The period of failure that followed left me angry and confused. How could God abandon me like that? I was doing all this for Him! I had to come to grips with the fact that God never intended for me to be a missionary to foreign lands, much less a medical one. I looked at the desires of my heart and misinterpreted how it would look and made the very large mistake of thinking that's what God wanted me to do. 

So often we hold onto the verses that tell us God will give us the desires of our hearts, and that's true, but we fail to remember the other parts of those verses and chapters.  We have to ground ourselves in the Lord first.  To delight in Him, then He will bring about giving us the opportunities to fulfill the desires He designed us with.  Not only that, but God is going to bring things about how He wants, no matter what we have planned.  No matter what or how we thought it would happen.  

My mother told me today that she never understood why I went to college to pursue something I hated. I was momentarily stunned as I said to myself "I was pursuing what I thought God wanted me to do" and I realized I can remember three distinct times when I have said that. College, adoption, and writing. Three major turning points. I don't know if I was supposed to go to college but I can tell you I met my lifelong best friend there. Her family practically adopted me and when my hubby was desperate for a job and we had to leave our state and our families, God provided one 30 minutes from her. I don't know if I was supposed to fail and give up college but I can tell you that I found my husband and my talent when I got home. I have no idea if I was supposed to pursue adoption but I know God has a plan. 

Major milestones have been marked by this pattern. Get a nudge from the Lord, create a picture of how I think that will look, and then go to the extreme to fulfill it.  The beautiful part of a God who is always teaching and growing us into who He designed us to be is the fact that He knows us, knows what we need to learn and keeps giving us refresher courses. As I stand on the precipice of pursuing "What I think God wants me to do" I'm grateful for the reminder today that I need to make sure I'm not more focus on what I can do for the Lord.  

All the hesitation, doubt and caveats I have being battling this year were because I was trying to do more than what God wanted me to do when I knew that what God wanted was for me to spend time with Him. He specifically asked me to "do" nothing. To rest. I've been fighting that hard. I don't want to be lazy. I want to be preparing. I don't want to be rushing to the deadline because I didn't give myself adequate prep time. So the little hint, the gift of a redemptive work for the future, I turned into a mission statement for life. I took that one thing and turned it into a college prep course full of requirements, standards of success and work. The whole time moaning like a toddler about when rest time was going to be over already. I know what God has given me. I know that what He is asking of me right now is not a spiritual workout regimen to prepare for the race. He is asking me to spend time with the source of my fuel. 


Life gives us plenty of chances for self reflection if we want them. I am going to use this moment to turn the monument I was building to failure into a standing stone of remembrance. To remind myself that I tend to focus on what I can "do" for God instead of spending time with Him. To remind myself to strip away my expectations of what I think comes next and let God teach me at the pace He intends. To remind myself that my future is in God's loving hands and it will be for my good, one way or another. I  choose to turn those monuments to my failure into standing stones of remembrance of what the Lord has done.

yarn on the finger

What does a piece of string on the finger mean?  It was a way to remind yourself of something before iPhones and personal assistant devices.  People used to actually do this.  Tie a string or bit of yarn or ribbon around their finger to help them remember something.  Or at least to help you remember that you were suppose to remember something.

I was having quiet time this morning and thinking about how sweet my time with the Lord has been.  I can't remember a time when it has been this fulfilling and intimate and then it hit me.  I couldn't remember... Had I ever had a time of close relationship with the Lord and just forgotten?

I don't want to forget this time in my life.  It's amazing and precious and I have a suspicion it's going to have to sustain me for what is coming next.  So... how to remember.

This blog is a first step.  Writing it down so you can revisit the memory is certainly a good beginning.  Especially if you like re-reading your journal or blog entries.  I do.

The last time I wanted to remember something important, God was bringing me to a lot of passages telling the story of the standing stones of Israel and how they were supposed to be a reminder for generations of what the Lord had done for Israel.  We made stepping stones and stamped in verses and put in meaningful bric-a-brac to remind us of God's provision and adoption.

Mulch has mostly covered them over the years and painful memories have kept me from spending time thanking the Lord for how he has moved in our past, present and will move in our future.  I'll be sweeping those off and doing so now.  I'll continue to explore this idea of remembering what the Lord is doing so I don't forget later.

In the meantime, how do you remember what the Lord has done for you?