How Long Until I Believe God?

It's been forever since I posted. There's been no news, no pictures, no updates---just silence. I think that silence is a good indicator about how I've felt lately. I LOVE being married, but I have no job and stay at home with our puppy, Maple, all day. If I had thought that when I got married that I would be doing this maybe I wouldn't feel so down about it. The truth is though, this is not what I expected at all.

I expected to have a job. I expected Tommie and I to get home from work, both talking about the challenges of our days filled with pleasing our bosses and sipping coffee-like drinks to keep up with the workload. Instead, I didn't get a job when I first got here and I've spent most evenings asking Tommie about work and telling him about the challenges of my day filled with keeping Maple from doing her business on our carpet and how the laundry or meal didn't turn out just right.

Don't get me wrong, it hasn't been bad, it just wasn't what I expected and I think for a while it got me down. I've been reading DONALD MILLER's book "SEARCHING FOR GOD KNOWS WHAT" and it's been talking about our need for God to tell us who we are. In fact, Miller suggests that as humans we are formed to have something outside of ourselves tell us who we are. In the Beginning, that person was God, but after the Fall, that relationship was broken and we've been searching for that voice ever since.

This makes sense to me. I've been looking for a job position, a husband, a group of new friends, or my status to tell me who I am. I've been looking for the difficulty of my day, the amount of praise I receive from other people---all of these things I've been hoping had the answer to who I am, and hopefully they would say that I'm amazing, beautiful, talented, smart and, above all, needed. But they haven't said a word of that. Instead, my lack of a job has said that I'm lazy, not good enough, small, insignificant. My simple days have told me that I'm not special, that I could be replaced. Though my husband tells me wonderful things, he could never live up to the voice I NEED to hear.

God tells me those things. It's just that lately, I haven't even bothered to hear who he says I am. I haven't spent 20 minutes listening to what God has for me, who he says I am or what He says I can do. It's all in the Bible too. It says in Romans that there is no condemnation in Christ- I don't have to hear the voice that tells me I'm nothing. Throughout the New Testament it says that in Christ I am a new creation-I'm not simple or boring, I'm brand new and I am in the image of Christ. In the same vein, I am created after God's own image--physically or not, that means God will tell me I'm beautiful and exactly what He wanted. The Bible also says that by God I am loved...I am not insignificant. I am needed. I am loved by God and in Christ.

I need to change the way I measure who I am. I need to believe God when He tells me who I am. When it's God who measures me I can be happy doing anything because He's there, whispering in my ear and in my heart, "continue this way my beautiful girl, you're doing great." I think that's why 2 Corinthians talks about doing everything as though unto the Lord: we really are meant to please our God first and foremost. His voice is the one that matters.

So apron or suit, carpet cleaner or laptop, high heels or socked feet, walks with the puppy or days at the office, whatever I do, I know who I am-not because of what I do, but because of who God says I am.

I believe Him.