The Math Of God.
Every October my older brother Eric organizes a “Man’s Weekend” up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. This is where he gets together with a select group of friends to play poker, smoke cigars, shoot guns and eat manly food like steak and potatoes. Aside from the eating, I attend Man’s Weekend for none of those things. I go there to watch DVDs with Ken, the guy hosting the whole thing. (This year we rewatched the excellent Firefly series, which he thankfully introduced me to a few years back.)
As I drove back to Lubbock from Tulsa, I had a good 7+ hours to think and pray. I listened to various podcasts (Andrew Wommack, Charles Stanley, InventRight), but eventually turned everything off and just drove in silence, pouring my heart out to God.
And my heart wasn’t happy.
Since May of 2008, God’s been faithful in everything He’s called me to do. In creating Mills Creative Minds, in giving where He’s led me to give, in placing my ideas into the hands of other people to develop – in everything. Everything I’ve needed or cried about, He’s brought me to it and through it, respectively. But as I drove I was increasingly frustrated, and I let Him know it.
Ever since Kara was born back in June, I feel like I’ve been moving in slow motion. All the projects that I’ve been working on are slowly, very slowly, coming together. But there’s still so many questions and worries trying to take root in my mind. What if the ideas I’ve handed off don’t make it to market? What if weeks and months pass and I’m STILL where I am now, making little visible progress? What if, what if, what if?
The primary factor of my frustration was my lack of time. Last year I had a good 5 hours a day to devote to my ideas and educating myself in how to protect and license them. These days I’m pretty much limited to Tuesdays and Thursdays, with a paltry three-hour window on each. So going from 25 hours a week of productive, devoted work time to a meager 6 hours was… well… downright depressing.
So I poured my heart out to God, in shame and frustration. Why did He order things the way He did? Why did He call me to work on my ideas, to work on a book and now care for a newborn – all at the same time? The task seems impossible sometimes, because what I have to offer is so limited and what needs to be done is so overwhelmingly huge. I’m stuck at Point B and I’m trying to get to Point Z. And I’m strapped to a tortoise for a taxi. It just didn’t make sense.
And then God spoke to me. Kind of.
He didn’t speak audibly, or even with words. He just flipped a switch in my head and reminded me of a story from long long ago.
Jesus was teaching a large group of people, and they were getting hungry. When his disciples came to him and complained that he needed to send them away to they could eat, he threw them for a loop.
“You feed them,” he said casually.
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