Bi-polar Faith

   When it comes to tools, I'm not the  sharpest nail in the tool box, in fact, most of the time, I am definitely rusted and bent, and not good for anything when it comes to fixing or assembling anything. I used to have no clue how to use most tools, especially power tools, nor did I ever care to learn.  Anything I knew I couldn't fix or assemble, I labeled as men's work.  For over three decades, I was married to Mr. Fix-it. Whenever he ran into a problem, all I had to to was praise him, assure him that I believed he would come up with a solution, and he always did.  I never had to to worry about trying to fix things or "some assembly required," even during the first six years of our separation. 

    For the first six years of our separation, as soon as something broke, or needed assembling, he was over in a jiffy to do it for us. Unfortunately, there was one thing he did not want to fix, and that was his family, his marriage, and his broken faith in GOD.  I am not sure when his faith in GOD got broken, maybe it was never functional in the first place. When he bought his civil divorce for our covenant marriage, the judge gave him what he wanted, freedom, and me what I wanted, EVERYTHING! I got the house and everything in it, including decades worth of tools and gadgets that he hoarded over the years.  

    I knew that I had to learn how to start doing those things that I had always labeled as men's work.  I had to learn how to use those tools, yes, even the power tools, which I had avoided like the plague, until yesterday, when I managed to install tip-out trays under my sink. I was absolutely convinced that I could do it, even though using a power drill was so foreign and frightening to me all these years.  I knew if I kept at it and did not give up, I would get this job done, even if the tip-out trays did not fit my forty-year old kitchen cabinets.  I knew I could make adjustments if I needed to which again, was nothing I had ever attempted before that. 

  It took me over twelve hours working on what the instruction manual said was a thirty-minute job. Normally, I would never have even attempted such a masculine task, but I had this confidence that seem to come to me, Supernaturally.  Today, while driving, when I was talking to Him, asking Him why my faith was so strong one day, and so incredibly weak and useless another day, the LORD gave me a vision of the two types of screws I had encountered during that "ordeal."  

    For instance, my faith is like that big huge screw with  finely chiseled rivets, but on most days, my faith in the Jubilee Dream He gave me ten years ago this month, is usually more like that tiny worn-out rusty screw with the stripped head, making it near impossible to remove or use.  Like most women, my faith is rooted in what kind of mood I am in on any particular day.  I float back and forth between believing the impossible in what seems more like a delusional Biblical faith like David's, or very depressed days like Elijah, drowning in disbelief.   On those days, I am  convinced that I'll never be able to be used in GOD's Kingdom, because I am convinced that I will be  muddled forever in mourning, grieving a past that wasn't all that great to begin with, but much better than my present reality. I continually lose hope for  experiencing a victorious future. I want to be able to testify to GOD's faithfulness in miraculously getting us out of problems that most humans cannot find their way out of on their own, whether they jumped into that pit of despair and disillusionment or were pushed.  

     I want to give that one person on the verge of giving up the reason that they cling to hope and faith, in not only if GOD can, but that He will. My Jubilee Dream died a few years ago, but Yehovah Rapha resurrected last week.  He brought it back to life with new easy-to-believe details that make so much more sense, based on the past ten years of all He has taught me.  One part of the dream is easy to believe, it's the "too-good-to-be-true" part that I struggle with, because my life's experiences testify otherwise.  That's the part I want to be able to give GOD all the glory of, and relish in the joy it would bring to my life.