Awesome Love

Benny Hester sings a song called "When God Ran." It starts off with a list of some of God's characteristics: "Almighty God, the great I am, immovable rock, omnipotent, powerful, awesome Lord, victorious warrior, commanding king of kings, mighty conqueror." Then it goes on: "And the only time, the only time I ever saw Him run, was when He ran to me, took me in His arms, held my head to his chest, said 'My son's come home again.' Lifted my face, wiped the tears from my eyes, with forgiveness in His voice He said, 'Son, do you know I still love you?'"

I think I manage to avoid some of the obvious sins, but I've left God, hurt Him, many, many times with my not-so-obvious (to the world anyway) sins. Like my lack of faith. Despite the countless number of times that He's shown me how much He loves me, whenever I get into a rut or things stop going my way, I feel like He's abandoned me, or that He's let me down. I stop believing in His plan. Especially when it comes to my career-life, I've spent the last few months wondering if He has a plan for me at all.

I've been struggling to deal with the after-effects of giving up my career as a lawyer: the loss of salary, the loss of prestige, and of concomitant self-respect. My husband ran into a partner that I used to work for, who told him that I was one of the best associates he'd had. Immodest as it sounds, I knew it already. I was a good lawyer, a very good lawyer. But that just makes it harder for me to feel like I've done the right thing, dropping my job when I was doing so well.

What makes it worse is that my mental struggles over the rightness of what I've done have made it harder for me to write. And that, in turn, makes me feel even worse about giving up my legal career. All of this sends me whining back to God: "Why, Lord? Why are You silent? Why aren't You leading me/telling me what to do?"

I've been looking for signs, even though I know God is more subtle than that. I had to leave the house today to run an errand. I was wearing my college sweatshirt. Driving over to the store, I was, as usual, thinking about my job-less state and wondering whether I should just give up on the writing thing, feeling bad about being "unemployed." It was the middle of the afternoon, the time of day when those gainfully employed are not free to run around to the stores. An old man in line ahead of me looked at my sweatshirt. "I went to that college," he said. "Are you in school there?" "Graduated," I said. He looked at me, "Graduated and not employed?" I muttered something and left to go wait in another line. I can't stand nosy strangers. But the same thing happened in the other line! Another old man, another conversation about my sweatshirt, another remark about how I'm not working.

Coincidence? Some sort of sign? And if so, of what? Is He trying to tell me through these various old men that I should get a real job? I feel like I'm having a panic attack, my anxiety rising up through my throat and choking me. Lord, I do believe. Help me in mine unbelief.