He has been attacking me ferociously again, that green eyed Pride Monster. My husband was up for a big raise at the beginning of the year and that got me ruminating. Ruminating for me is never good. I move from ruminating to fixating to obsessing very quickly. I started ruminating about selling our current home and buying a newer, bigger house. My husband calls it a "Big A house". I even had a real estate agent friend come over and do the appraisal and tell me what to fix-up in order to be ready to sell. I have been cleaning and organizing. I started calling lenders. And I started browsing. Oh no, browsing is another thing that is not good for me. Browsing feeds the fixation and speeds up the progression to obsession. I quickly moved from looking at the slightly larger homes with 2 car garages to really big houses with 3-4 car garages. I was getting way over my head.
Ever since I started down that path I have been anxious, and stressing over the cleaning, the financing, and being ready for the spring market. I became horribly sick over Christmas with flu and then pneumonia. Since Christmas was have had bout after bout of sickness running through our house. The end result being that I became even more anxious, stressed, and frustrated that I couldn't do all that I felt like I needed to do in order to have our home ready to sell.
As I moved along this path I kept praying, "This is what I want but Thy will be done." But I didn't really mean it. I wanted that Big A house and I was working to get it. Have you ever played Mario Kart? You know when you are driving the wrong way and that little guy pops up with the Reverse Sign and the warning sound? We he was right in my face with his sign blaring his little horn and I couldn't or didn't want to see it.
My husband who kind of humored me along in the process, probably just because he was loving that I was organizing, started saying things like "I just feel like we need to stay here" and "I just feel like there is still a job for us to do here" and I would nod my head and bulldoze on. Until finally I just could not get those square pegs to fit into the round holes and no part of my plan was working. Then I started really listening to my husband saying, "This won't work for us right now" and "We need to focus on XYZ instead." After some crying and whining I finally said, "OK, we will stay here." And at that moment, all of the stress and anxiety that had been building for months disappeared immediately.
God answers our prayers. He knows each of us and has a plan for us. If we are willing to submit to His will, He will direct our lives and use us to bring about his works. I don't know what work he has for me here right now, but I am going to change my focus to find out and be humble enough to let Him use me for it.
