So the day started well, I finished all my packing in good time, got all my fragile objects tightly packed up and in the living room ready to go, and was so organised I thought I'd even go and check where a good place for the van to park was. That's where the day got interesting! I went and grabbed my keys and checked round the block for the best place to park up whilst we loaded the van. It looked like if we were quick it could stop right outside - 'perfect, now just to go back into the house and wait' I thought. I grabbed my keys and went for the lock. The key wouldn't go in. I looked down. Wrong keys. New keys. Not current keys. I don't swear and normally am not even tempted to but at that moment I came pretty close. (Didn't in the end - just ended up sounding like Moss from the IT Crowd going 'flip flip flip' for about a minute!). I have good A-Levels and a degree, would like to see myself as someone with a bit of a brain, and have never forgotten my keys in the three years of living away from home - but today I didn't even have the common sense to check and picked up DIFFERENT KEYS! IDIOT!
After the huge humiliation of admitting what I'd done once the van arrived, I found myself wondering what the heck to do with myself, and I thought - 'hey, I could go to church!' Now, being locked out of your home with nothing except a set of keys to a house you can't get to has got to be one of the worst reasons for going to church ever, but, thankfully God is bigger than our motivations.
I really, really did need to be at church. I don't know whether this was God's plan or God just using my stupidity but the fact that it took me to not be physically able to get back into the house before I decided to go to church showed that I'd strayed some way.
My time there already started well, before the service I got talking to someone who directs and is working on a short film for which he may need an editor, so he took my details. Which was just what I needed because I don't want to get out of practise at editing fiction whilst I'm running for Deluxe 142.
But that was just the start. I went and sat on my own because I had a feeling God wanted to deal with me and I knew I wouldn't be able to fully let go with someone I didn't know very well sitting next to me. I got a bit teary during the initial worship, realising how rubbish a person I'd been recently but it didn't go all that deep. The sermon was on Luke 7:36-50, and bottled down to being about control, and I started to realise just how much I'd been trying to control of my life, and take all of God's grace and ask Him for success at uni/work on a daily basis but never actually giving myself over to Him.
In the worship/response section I just fell apart. I mean, I totally broke down. It completely hit me that my heart had not been for God in a very, very long time. My heart had been 100% for success. Instead of work being just one area of a God filled life, I found myself praying just to ask for work to go better. Now obviously there's nothing wrong with bringing your hopes and dreams to God but I've been very single minded of late. Now, this is where it became so apparent why I needed to be at church. It's not like I never fell apart at uni, but most of the time I covered it up, and even when I didn't, I never really wanted to deal with it, just rant. Even though everyone at uni was lovely and amazing to me, uni is a place of learning, and naturally people aren't looking out for crybabies like me so I managed to hide it several times. Church is a little different. People there are looking out for each other, and specifically looking out for people blubbing away like me. They expect God to be working in people and look out for it. I never have the guts to go up and ask for prayer but a lovely lady spotted me and took me over to pray for me.
I cried and cried and cried. I can't say I had any big, sudden revelation or anything, just begged God to 'sort me out.' I always get a little jealous of people who talk about pictures and messages from God or amazing spiritual experiences because I just tend to cry. A lot. But the lady kept praying and even though I didn't have some big vision or anything I did calm down without having to force myself to, which I believe must have been God for me to have got quite so stable so quickly. The lady who had prayed for me chatted for a minute or two. Everything she said was great and true, but one thing really stuck out, I'd previously told her a little bit about my heart being for success more than for God, and she said this - 'You're already qualified.' This amazed me. Even though I'd mentioned about wanting to do well at uni I hadn't said at word about the who 2.1 fiasco, but she'd said something that hit exactly where it needed to and at last just began to make me feel at piece with my grade. I mean, I'm never going to be happy with it, but I do believe those words were prophetic as they just began to put things into context - something that many people have been trying to do for me.
I'm not going to pretend I'm there yet, I've struggled all my life with God's will versus my own personal success and I know deep down that my heart is still in the wrong place-I have a lot of work and relationship rebuilding to do. However, that realisation was the first step and it was an urgent one that needed to be taken. And I wouldn't have taken it if I'd picked up the right keys.
So yes, I need to hire another van. Or be very nice to someone in London with a big car, and right now even though God did some amazing stuff I'm still very annoyed at myself for being quite so stupid, but in the years to come I'm sure I'll look back and see that moment of realisation as much more important than a bit of money lost on a van!
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