Have you been tackled by God lately?

I’m pretty hard headed. Ok, I’m real hard headed. For many months, we have struggled with a pretty bad situation with our house/morgage. A situation that would take WAY too long to explain, but that is based on a tax mistake made by the title company that has caused our monthly payments to go up almost $700/month. Since then, I have fought and struggled with anyone and everyone that will listen to try and remedy this mistake. I’ve prayed – and in desperate attempts to get more money have looked for worked, which I don’t really feel is in the best interest for our kids, but neither would foreclosure. In all of this process, I have at times forgotten how to trust God, and have decided at times that I am tired of waiting on him for an answer, and have tried to take things into my own hands – despite what I feel God says is right or wrong. The trouble is this – that anything that I have tried to do has fallen apart, caused me to stumble, doesn’t quite work out, and has ended up costing us more in the end than it would have if I would have just waited.

Right after Christmas, we were all outside playing with our new bikes and scooter and skates and such. Whitley – my very hard headed two year old, insisted on testing the boundaries between the sidewalk and the street. I normally do a pretty good job of staying on top of her and making sure that she remains on the sidewalk – but the phone rang and because we were expecting a call from our mortgage company, I insisted on taking the phone outside with me and answering it. Well – like they say – in a split second, here’s pretty much what happened:
*phone rang
*mom turns around to go into the garage to answer the phone
*Whitley sees her opportunity to dart into the street and makes a break for it
*Whitley does not see the giant SUV speeding around the stop sign corner right in front of our house headed straight for her and I doubt that the driver saw her
*Nathan, my ten year old sees Whitley, sees the car, and sprints down the driveway yelling
*I answer the phone back turned, in the garage
*Nathan continues yelling, Whitley does not stop
*Car does not stop
*more yelling
*crying
*I turn around and see Nathan on top of whitley, the car fairly far away, and Whitley screaming and crying, hang up the phone and run down the driveway.
My first reaction was to yell at Nathan for tackling her to the ground. He is eleven, he should no better. I let him have it – when are you going to learn, you can’t hit your sister… much less SHOVE HER TO THE GROUND????

Then he explained. “She was running, mom… she wouldn’t stop she wouldn’t listen, I couldn’t get her attention – so I didn’t know what else to do. You weren’t here, so I was just trying to protect her. That car would have hit her.” Tears streaming down my cheek, I just thanked God for his protection and for allowoing my eleven year old son to be so vigilent. She wasn’t hit. Thank God. Thank Nathan.

The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom.
2 Timothy 4:18

Then it hit me. Like a bolt of lightning sent straight from heaven. Many moments in these past few monthsI have felt shoved down. I’ve cried in agony over what this mortgage situation is doing to our marriage – to our finances, to our family. But inside of this moment, I realized that I am a child of God. That I may feel tacked to the ground, but if I stay inside of God’s will that even though I may feel hurt and rejected and insufficient, that God is looking out for me. Like that oncoming car, He can see the bigger picture that I cannot. Sometimes I won’t listen. God can’t seem to get my attention because I am so focused on what I want to accomplish, that He has to TACKLE ME TO THE GROUND to protect me.

I know, ouch. Have you been tackled lately? Not so much fun huh? But hang in there – God see’s the bigger picture and He loves you! And so do I!!