Settling things...

This is going to be long, and I may not censor or edit so please consider yourself warned when you read this.

For a little over a month I've been looking into moving to San Antonio with my brother and his family. My brother quickly got a job, and Glenda quickly got an interview, but for the last two weeks that I've actually been putting in applications I haven't had one person call me back. I began wondering if God was opening doors for my brother and his wife but not necessarily for me. So yesterday, I informed them, and God that I was laying down my fleece. If no one called me back by the end of the week I would quit searching, quit trying to move. I would accept His answer on the subject and get over it.

Today, for the first time since this all began, I checked my phone and sure enough, someone was calling about my application.

Back up a little bit to yesterday now - when I informed my brother and Glenda (his wife) that I was waiting on confirmation or I wouldn't actually move - my brother almost immediately called me. He said I was scared and that's all that was holding me back. He called me John the Baptist and in a strange way I'd never considered before about JtheB it was a bad thing. But then today, he e-mailed me something else that really struck home with me. He said that our religious upbringing taught us the opposite of the prosperity gospel. It's the gospel that says "If you really want it, God doesn't want you to have it."

In that I could see the truth. The more I want to move, the more afraid I become that God wouldn't allow it.

Go back a little further to a few weeks ago - I felt impressed to be re-baptized. I understand the living death aspect of being baptized and symbolically being raised as a new creature. The closer I got to actually talking to someone about being re-baptized the harder and harder it got.

You see, despite the fact that I desperately love Christ...
Despite the fact that I truly believe He loves me...

I still expect Him to hurt me.

I told you I don't do relationships very well.

But being baptized at 9 or 10 years old (a.k.a. "a stupid kid") is drastically different from being a 28 yr old person that truly loves Christ making a mature decision to die - daily - and symbolically going out of my way to make a specific declaration of that in front of my church family.

That's why a renewed baptism got harder and harder to think about. Wrong though I mentally know it is, it felt like a fresh committment to being hurt. I know better, but the more I thought about it the harder the idea becomes. Now, my pastor is helping by trying to schedule a time and I'm scared to death. Yet backing out is making a statement that I couldn't stand to make to God.

It's frustrating to see I'm still stuck in that little mental rut. I believe so much good about God. I believe everything I wrote during the 40 days of faith. I really do. And at the same time I'm still waiting for Him to abuse me, to hurt me, to use me.

It's ridiculous.

Today, when the phone call came in just as I'd asked God for, I realized it felt a little easier to think about being re-baptized. And I hated myself for the relief. Committing to give your every decision to Christ's will is one thing when you're afraid He's asking you to give up something - and different when you think He's agreeing with you on something.

It shouldn't matter. But the ease of the knot in my stomach told me it did.
God knows I'm human, but I don't want to be. I want to be like Him.