I find myself back on road I have been on but with no personal ties other than the relationship I have with the woman with whom I have known for many years. I would like to say she is a friend but like the word “love” I find that the word “friend” is over used and loses it’s value. We have now come up with new acronyms for friends like BF and BFF and yes they may actually be a person’s best friend but where does that leave all the other people we know. Are they simply people we know or do we call them “friends” for the sake of defining who they are. And for whose sake do we define, ours or theirs?

Sorry that was an unexpected bunny trail.

The road I’m back on is the road I travelled with my mom in her last month. I had to work through loving her enough to pray the prayers she wanted me to pray and the prayers that I wanted to pray for her. They were vastly different and it threw my prayer life into a tail spin. Do I pray her heart’s desire to go home now or do I pray my heart’s desire for more time? Wendy is right now where I was. Her mom has decided that she is tired, she has lived a good life and she just wants it to end. She has not been well and she loses ground almost on a daily basis. For the past month or so I have been following along the road with Wendy, listening when she wanted an ear, adding my experience to hers when she asked for it and offering to always keep her mom in my prayers.

Here is where it gets sticky. I have been praying for her mom but it has not been the prayer that Wendy asked me to pray. It’s been the exact opposite as she has asked for more time and I have been asking for His Mercy. It doesn’t get sticky because the perception that my prayers have not been answered because I believe they have been. His Mercy is His and looks different to everyone and for all I know this IS His Mercy at work. For all I know Wendy’s mom’s heart may truly be for more time and in there is His Mercy. Maybe He has something else in the works and He needs to stretch out time, I just don’t know.

I got an email from Wendy this morning telling me to “keep praying girl, your prayers are being answered, mom is doing so much better and knowing that you are praying for her brings her peace”

Gulp. Now what? Do I tell Wendy that I have not been praying for what she asked me to pray or do I keep my prayers to myself? How far do I open this door to her? If I open it all the way will she walk through it with me? Will she want to know more about my prayer life and Jesus or will this kill a friendship in the making?

The only thing I can think to do is to take it to His feet and ask for Him to walk me through this. Prayer is after all, an act of listening to His heart, agreeing with what He has asked for and pouring yourself into His will.

From here I hope to fully restore what I have lost.

This was a week straight from the shit bucket that had sides too tall for me to climb up all because of one thing. The Flesh. This week I gained more insight into my co-worker that pushed me closer to the edge of loathing her and I almost gave in to those feelings. So many times I came frighteningly close to telling her exactly what I think of her but I managed to always come up just short. I did however, tell her to “just shut up for 10 minutes” yesterday as she continued to push my boundaries.

Each day I got home wound up too tight, frustrated by her behaviour and her complete absence of integrity. Each day ended badly for me as I sat and mentally ranted about how unjust my life seemed to be. I work hard, she barely works a little. I am always on time, she is late more often than the morning newspaper. I work each and every shift that I am given, she is lucky if she can work 2 complete shifts in a row. She has asked me repeatedly to lie for her at work, “if I lie for you I can now lie to you” is my philosophy and I’m sorry but lying is not something I am willing to do, period.

That in itself has caused me to twist up as I struggled between saying nothing (not lying for her) and telling my boss what she has asked me to do (setting the record straight). Seriously, do I honestly need this stress in my life? Is it worth $8.00 an hour when I have been offered a job elsewhere?

For me it is. I applied for this job because I was driven to work there, just like I was driven to work at my last job. There are lessons for me to learn there, there is growth for me as a Christian there as I learn how to handle dishonesty through God, not in spite of Him.

So how have I harmed myself this week? I have allowed myself to live in the Flesh instead of standing firm in the Spirit. I refused to lie for her but not because “I am my brother’s keeper” but rather because I was tired of doing all the work while she got by doing nothing. It was my own personal sense of injustice that caused my stress rather than staying closer to God and being offended because He was offended. Hopefully next week will not be as bad as this week was but if it is I have Faith that when I stand in His presence I will handle situations more like He would. That’s my belief and I’m sticking to it.

What I knew had been coming for 4 months finally arrived on Friday. An announcement from our head office of the closure of the Sullivan cafeteria. Just 8 short months after a major renovation of both the dining area and the front end equipment the cafeteria is still bringing in a very slim profit. This one can’t even be blamed on the rising costs of goods but rather the blame lays squarely at the feet of the those who are running the cafeteria. I happened to be at the Sullivan when it reopened it’s doors following the renovation and grabbed snippets of the “how we can make this successful” meetings. Each meeting made my head hurt as management seemed bent on making everything over complicated by introducing more new items to the menu along with higher costs.

Honestly they should have been looking at how they could move people through quicker (which was the majority of the customer’s complaints) rather than trying to figure out a way of making the customer spend more. The customers are people who have only 30 minutes for lunch so speed of service is their major concern. These customers are captive, as in the cafeteria is the closest eating establishment that won’t or at least shouldn’t gobble up all their half hour just to get their food. This is by far the easiest customer base to grow and yet the death knoll has begun. Rather than revising the menu by adding several new items the concentration should have been on ways to improve the already working menu by adding a little something to each item, like flavour.

Having eaten there myself I can honestly say that I wouldn’t pay any more than $3 for any menu item and I think airplane food is good. The hot food prepared there is sorely lacking in flavour and all of it tastes the same, blah. Sandwiches tastes like, well, sandwiches and no one thought it would be wise to charge more for sandwiches made on demand. Every morning some poor smuck prepares 30 sandwiches for the cold case that customers can get themselves that have the basic ingredients on them, all for the price of $4. On the cold line sandwiches are also available but you can have your made just the way you like it. Every ingredient available can be put on your sandwich (there are over a dozen “extra” ingredients) all for wait for it, the same $4. Hmm is it me or wouldn’t everyone skip the premade for fresh made.

By revising the menu head office has upped the cost of goods and missed the demands of the customers which were simple. Find a way to get the food out quicker, time is very precious when you only have half an hour and 10 minutes spent waiting for cafeteria food is 7 minutes too many. Come the end of September the cafeteria at the Sullivan will close it’s doors putting the 3 full time employees out on the street and stranding several hundred customers. My heart aches for “John” and the 2 other women who have stayed at a job they don’t even like for more than a decade in support of their employer.

Seeing how we get all our baked goods, meats and fresh vegetables from the Sullivan I wonder how much longer my own little shop will stay open. If our costs increase because we have to get our goods from a local provider our customers will simply go elsewhere. Although an increase in costs will bring us into line with the majority of our competition (which are all a 5 minute walk) once again the customer service end will cause the bell of death to ring again. I have been covering a lot of shifts lately for my boss beyond her 3 week holiday and people have made it quite clear that they are fed up with her nastiness.

Given her attitude of “if they don’t like it here they can go somewhere else” and the closure of our supplier the shop will most likely close before the end of the year. Sadly I have 4 days scheduled at the Sullivan next week as one of the women takes their holiday and all I can think about is “how can I get out of this”. If I don’t have to work those days we’ll leave this little red rock a few days earlier for our holiday and I don’t think I’ll be returning to my old job. My boss has gotten well, let’s just say even harder on the head and I have reached the bottom of the bucket of Grace for her.

Customer service should be a shop’s number one priority. If you can keep your customers happy they will work with you to increase your sales. If you piss off your customers they will go elsewhere and by word of mouth, work against you. Sadly our head office is all about the money and can’t seem to connect the dots that end at increased profits. I guess “John” and “Sally” really do fit in with corporate theme and I’m actually the odd duck.

We were at a Vineyard conference this past weekend in Sussex N.B. to “do the stuff” from Gary Best’s book Naturally Supernatural and it was the weirdest, best conference I have been to. What started out to be a “fun” weekend complete with staying in a townhouse with friends got sidetracked. Normally I get into a mindset for conferences like this last one in a cloud of trepidation. Actually, mind numbing fear would be far more accurate. I’m not sure why or how it happens but I psych myself out so much that I need to be isolated from everyone when I’m not in a workshop or Worship or having a meal. It is super destructive to both myself and the folks that are around me and yet I am powerless to be any other way.

I was really looking forward to spending some quality time with our friends and having the much coveted accomodations of a townhouse but Knew that we were to make room for someone else. Little did I know that finding other accomadations was to be my first act of immediate obedience. We really wanted to stay with our friends but it was not to be. Turns out I would have been better off sleeping in the car, the ladder that was to “aid” me up to my top bunk was missing and every time Steve moved I moved too.

Right up front I would like to admit to never reading Gary’s book, I have seen his book, OK so I actually read the front and back cover but I have not read anything inside. Unless I need to know the material in the book for a workshop I will not read it. I prefer to hear, from the author themselves, why they wrote the book and what do they want the reader to get from the book. Editing is very subjective and much like seeing a movie that is based directly on a book I see no reason to view it through an editors eyes. Movies from books are usually very disappointing, you know all of the characters, the plot and the ending. All the little subtle changes that they make to make the movie more interesting only spoil the original intention of the book and I’m not a huge fan of Hollywoodization.

So back to the conference. Part of the “doing the stuff” from Gary’s book was healing prayer. When I was growing up the Church that I belonged to had a prayer chain but not like you would think. This chain was not links of people who prayed but rather it was the chain you had to follow. First you bring your prayer request to the Youth Leader who in turn brought it to the Prayer Leader who then brought it to the most junior of Priests who brought it to the the next least junior…………..Eventually your prayer request might make it to the person who was responsible for prayer if it passed in the next Board meeting.

Prayer requests often took an insane amount of time to come to fruition and most people (myself included) simply abandoned their request. So we’re in the middle of a workshop getting practicle “how to” instructions for healing prayers and the call goes out for anyone who is suffering with well, anything. There were groups of people who had been given prayers and  there were poeple in need of healing prayers. So up I pop from my seat and head to my particular prayers for healing, more instant obedience. Funny how God will lure you with one thing and BAM heal you of something else. I went to a specific group of prayers for healing for these old stiff and achy joints and instead had life of a completely different stream spoken into me.

I went for a second time for healing prayer for a problem I have been having for pretty near 6 months with my jaw and subsequently my ear and once again His healing touch restored me. Once again He spoke words of a different problem and prayer once again renewed for healing in that area of my life. My joints are still a problem, the pain in my jaw was almost instantly better but has actually started to get worse (could be His prompted for me to see maybe a doctor or something). The problem with my ear was gone within a few minutes of the prayer starting and has not returned.

Through all of this I let go of more of me by being immediately obedient by going up for prayer in the first place, not once but twice. He tricked me by using ongoing physical problems in order to bring out heartache and wounds that He wanted to heal. God IS good and faithful in His words of wanting so much more for us, even if He has to trick us into asking.

One of the things I do really well not just as a Christian but as a human being in general is second guess myself. Second guessing is something that I usually reserve for acts of good deeds, I rarely second guess things that I should’nt have done, really there’s no need. If and when I do something I shouldn’t it’s immediately obvious to me. But good deed usually lead me to battle, with myself.

Shortly after becoming a Christian I began to do things that would bring Honor to God and to try to demonstrate what the Kingdom looks like to folks who don’t know Him. Someone once said to me that the work that I do stores treasure in the Kingdom and I’ve always hoped that it isn’t being stored for me but rather for everyone.

In the weeks leading up to the very first Free Clothing Day that our Church held I waged a war of epic porportions with myself. I second guessed my ability to pull this off, second guessed His choice of leadership for such a program and second guessed it’s value. This went on every day, several times a day and even several times an hour in the days leading into the Free Day.

It’ amazing how God takes the smallest things to encourage us, to show us His pleasure in us. In one of the videos of the Alpha program, Nicky Gumble discussed how God gets our attention and he suggested that we’re looking for a big neon sign. I was one of the people who was looking for a big billboard or neon sign from God to let me know if I was on the right path or not.

I had heard of a story about how God delivers His neon signs and I thought WOW that is sooo cool. Then I began to put together the pieces that I had ignored as blind luck. I had been finding dimes in the weeks proir and had dismissed it as blind luck. Funny thing is though I always find pennies and quarters when I’m out and about, never dimes.

In the weeks leading up to our first Free Clothing Day I was finding dimes at a rate of 2 or 3 a day. Each and every time we have our Free Clothing Day or when I finally walk out the things He has asked me to do I find dimes. If I’m getting richer ten cents at a time how much richer is Heaven getting. Finding dimes is like that old song “pennies from Heaven”. If you’re beating yourself up wondering if God really cares about you or not take a look at the “blind luck” happening In your life and say thank you to the One who cares enough about you to send you pennies from Heaven.

Last Saturday after finally stepping into something He had asked me to do I began to find dimes again, I’m getting richer indeed.