More sleep finally came last night!  I had to go to bed by 8:30 again and did awaken a dozen times but each time I went quickly back to sleep.  Didn’t get up until 4:30 this am.  I finally feel somewhat back to normal.  One of the things I’ve experienced in the last two days is a flurry of emotional angst I don’t usually have.  Because I was so tired each thing I was to do was being met with old anxiety attacks I thought were behind me.  Finally this morning I was able to see all of this as simply a human response to sleeplessness.  Satan was trying to show me it was tied to a spiritual problem, insufficiency, inadequacy–all of the old Earnie attacks.  It worked for a short while but this morning God and I were able to put it back into perspective.

One of the things that happened during my devotions that helped so much was the story in Mark 4:35.  Jesus had finished talking with the crowds of people and told the disciples to get into the boat as they were going to head to the other side of the Sea of Galilee.  Jesus fell asleep and a huge storm came upon them filling their boat with water and they thought they were goners.  They awakened Jesus in a panic.  Jesus commanded the storm to be still and of course the disciples were in awe.  I was hit by the “insert” in my Bible written by Joyce Meyer.  She says, “It is always exciting when Jesus tells us to do something new–like go to the other side of the lake.”  Rarely do we think to ask the questions about how to prepare for this–we let the excitement carry us.  However on the way to the other side a storm hits and we panic.  We wonder why Jesus is asleep when our boat is sinking.  Trust vanishes.  Joyce says that when we have a storm inside us and then one hits on the outside of us, we evaluate the outside one by the fears of our inside storm.  That’s just what I was doing the past 24 hours.  I was inadequate, insufficient, shameful and just plain stupid for thinking I could do all the things I’d committed to prior to our China trip.  It took the past 48 hours for God to awaken in me that I needed to re-establish the PEACE that comes from surrender and let trust be my action.  I didn’t have any angst ahead of leaving for China regarding the work I’d do in return.  Satan just wanted to bring me back to his old stomping ground with me.  In the emotional state I was in I allowed that for a moment.  It is a good learning experience for me and one I’ll remember as I move forward.

Yesterday morning I met with a lady about 12 years younger than me who had been a child when I was a young adult attending our church.  She is a marvelous singer and she was saying she had admired me and my spirit all those years ago.  She had moved away when she went to college and I hadn’t seen her since.  She’d read my book and wanted to meet.  She had come down from Seattle where she lives and had some time.  She needed to know how God had brought me to the point of trusting Him to write the book and share such deep hurt and sinfulness.  As we talked she seemed to relate most to journaling.  She doesn’t do this and in sharing how God has always used journaling as an item that helps me organize my fears and anxieties so I can release them to Him and get His perspective on them, she said that was the message she needed for the morning.

Hearing God’s voice and message and then trusting it fully is a lifelong skill needing to be built and supported.  I know God wanted Kathy and me to go to China and I know He wanted me to return to the things He has me doing when we returned.  Little did I anticipate the difficulty of returning to them after being gone for only 2 weeks.  The good thing–the 48 hours are past, I’m back to being a new creation and ready to move forward in genuine trust.