Refinement

The third I will bring into the fire; I will refine them like silver and test them like gold. They will call on my name and I will answer them: I will say, “They are my people,” and they will say, “The Lord is our God.” Zechariah 13:9

We used to sing this praise song in college called Refiner’s Fire. We would sing it with true worship and desire to honor God in our praise. We would speak the words and humbly bow in His presence with awareness of His desire for us to be righteous and pure. We were in college; so our understanding of testing was a difficult professor, a break-up, a challenging class, an absence of sleep from a procrastination session, lack of funds, another bowl of ramen, and maybe a change of major causing an extension to our tenure. Now were there people in college that experienced greater challenges than that? Absolutely. I had classmates lose family members to cancer and tragic car accidents. I had classmates put on probation because of academic and social choices. I had classmates struggle with accepting who God really is and if he really even cared about them and if he was even real…and I went to a Southern Baptist University.

Now fastforward a “few” years, and I realize that my true refinement was only beginning in college. My husband and I met on the campus of Samford University. It’s wonderful! I hope to send my children there, but it will take my death and their inheritance of my life insurance policy to pay for one semester. (BTW, thanks again Mom & Dad for forking out that undeserved assistance). While in college, I probably experienced the typical difficulties –
1. Learning that my high school, though wonderful, was unable to completely prepare me for the challenges of a liberal arts school – I came through that fire alright.
2. Experiencing break ups with the past and realizing I needed to shed my history in order to embrace my future.
3. Being single – when I was at Samford, it was a little like junior high…right down to the Caf where girls sat at one table and boys sat at another table and looked at each other with those bashful eyes. Silliness
4. Losing my patriarchal grandfather, whom I had grown up with next door and had contributed quite a bit to my life. (insert giant grin here as he was simply a hot mess)
5. My first “C”! And being ok with it.
6. Losing an election and coming to terms with the fact that God had something else for me – something better.
7. Having my apartment flood with sewage (yep, that was awesome – WARNING – DO NOT LIVE UNDERNEATH THE CAT LADY)
8. Changing majors and realizing my calling was in need of refocusing
9. Growing in my faith – and finding friends who would actually push me to be more like Christ

Then life really happened. Some say that Jeremy and I live a life that borders on the edge of a good Job story. In fact, when I first started blogging, the name of my blog was “What the Crap?” I found myself saying that A LOT in our past few years of marriage as things have hit us upside the head over and over again. In fact, after we established friends in Texas, we began to discourage their friendship and send them away for fear that our lives would rub off on their lives.

Since being married I (we) have experienced:
1. Challenging conversations with friends that cost us loss of friendships for a temporary time
2. Struggles with funding as we made combined $14,000 our first year of marriage COMBINED
3. Car struggles – like the still confusing collision with a GIANT bale of hay (not my doings), brakes falling out of a car while driving down a busy city road, air conditioner going out, backing into people in a parking lot (twice), hydroplaning in the snow, tickets for missing stickers, etc.
4. Traveling across the country only to learn that the apartment complex of which you are moving to has you moving a week later and won’t have your apartment ready as you sit in their parking lot with a UHAUL. Yes, my inner beast emerged and we got our apartment.
5. 9/11
6. Working jobs other than education…yes, refining fire
7. Having my car broken into and all they stole was my battery!
8. Having my purse stolen and therefore, my identity stolen (that haunts you for years)
9. Learning Texas history to teach and not being a native Texan
10. Having our home vandalized in the middle of the night
11. Walking with friends through pregnancy woes
12. Graduate school for both of us
13. Infestation of ants in my dishwasher and scorpions in my basement
14. Kidney stones (twice)
15. Losing my mom – the rock of my family
16. Nearly losing my husband - he has cheated death many times, but one time was more terrifying than the others – 108 fever
17. House flooding (twice)
18. Divorce in our family
19. Adjustment to new families
20. Moving now 8 times
21. Car & house shopping (it is a refinement process for sure)
22. Challenges in the employment of the church world
23. Challenges in the employment of public education
24. Grown Up Mean Girls
25. A child with night terrors – which we believe were more than that…
26. Losing a child before meeting her
27. Watching my child lose a friend
28. Hospitalization of my children
29. Depression
30. Going when other’s say why?

There is something that I began in college through the mentoring of great women of faith and through the challenge of great professors. I began to process this concept in High School, but got better at it in college. LISTENING. Sometimes I do poorly at it still, but I feel God speak and literally hear God speak more now than ever. This did not happen because I was lucky enough to be born to a Hannah. This did not happen because I am in the lineage of greatness like Mary. It happened because of my refinement. There are many stages of my life where I found myself struggling with what was going on. There are many stages in my life where I cried out to God and asked him what I had done to deserve this struggle?

Yet, I can tell you on the backside of every storm, I see the rainbow. And I have learned that during the storm, I will hurt, but my hurt can be comforted in the palm of His hand. I have learned that I am allowed struggles in order to boast of Christ. I have learned that in order to become a better person, the refining fire must be “hot” not warm. I have learned that if I am going to improve, there will be more fires to come. I have learned that in order to be one with the Lord, refinement is necessary. I have learned that I am constantly a work-in-progress and I must be OK with that. Perfection is not achieved, but I must live as if it is achievable.