45 minutes alone with....me.

I had an ebay buyer from Bentonville and I opted to deliver her purchase rather than ship it. We chose the coffee house off the highway to meet at 9;45 a.m. yesterday morning.

There was a church sale half way there that started at 8:00 a.m., so I got there bright and early, made my purchases and made it to the coffee shop by 9:00 a.m. I ordered a cup of coffee which took about 5 minutes off my wait. And then I just sat there. For 45 minutes with nothing to read, no tv, no computer, no kids, no dog, no phone, no hubby, just me and my thoughts and eventually...God.

Five minutes of just sitting still is a long time. Forty-five is like an eternity in some ways. It's long enough to open mental closet doors where ugly, disorganized, and incomplete thoughts are shoved.

I prayed. Not like the the laundry list kind of prayer, but the kind where you actually talk to God. And He said, "I'm here."

I confessed sin. When you are a little kid, you think that grown-ups are perfect. I mean, come on...they don't fight with their brother, get jealous of their sisters, be lazy about homework or lose their temper when they can't get their dumb bike chain back on. And then one morning you wake up a grown up and realize afresh just how sinful you really are and that you have not mastered the desire to fight with other people, be jealous for things you don't have, be lazy about your work and get angry when you can't do what you want to do any better than when you were six years old. You may have developed better social skills to hide those things, but it's all lurking there just below the good manners. Quite frankly the only other time in my life that has sucked more than this past year was the year I turned 13. I ran into heartache at every turn that year...driven by exactly the same things that have driven me this year: the desire to be loved and accepted, to matter, to feel safe and secure...back then I desired those things more than any relationship with God, and I still have to fight through that now.

I asked myself hard questions, like "Tell the truth, do you think God is doing a good job with your life?" The answer of course, was a resounding, "No I do not." Clearly, it would be much better if Robb got the managers job so I could stop worrying about money. It would be much better if the house would sell so we could stop worrying about where we live and money. It would be better if the church planting thing was going the way the guys who wrote the book about it said it was supposed to go. Of course, I mean all this in the obvious, "I hate being uncomfortable" kind of way, not the "His ways are higher than my ways" kind of better.

It was a strange appointment. A time to take stock. To be alone with God and myself and get some perspective. To ask forgiveness. To be loved in spite of myself.