Perplexed...

...but not despairing.

Well, according my schedule based on time I have left to finish The Enclave, I needed to get three chapters completed a week. Last week I did indeed do three chapters. Unfortunately one of them I hadn't counted in my assessment of what I had left to do, so I really got only two chapters done.

This week, I ran into a series of severe time inconsistencies in the narrative I had no idea were there and set about fixing them. That's led to yet another recasting of events in chapters 15, 21 and 25. And to perhaps changing quite a bit of what's going to happen in ch 29, which is where I left off with the other plotline in this book of two parallel plots/worlds last week.

So. I don't think I'm going to meet my goal this week either. (What a shock! LOL) But that's okay because some very cool stuff has been happening spiritually. The last two messages (tonight and last night) from GBC were amazingly on target with what I was experiencing. Or, considering how often that happens, maybe not so amazing, but I guess it's not a bad thing to be continually surprised and delighted when God makes it so very clear He knows exactly what's going on not just in my life but in my head, and answers me.

Anyway, today I was thinking that it must really be my fault that I've had such problems progressing through this book. I just must be failing to exercise the proper self-discipline. I need to be more disciplined. As I was concluding this, I remembered there was a quote on the matter somewhere in one of my little books I gather such things. I went searching for it, but couldn't find it. Oh well, I must not have needed to read it.

Four hours later the message from the pulpit tonight said the exact opposite. It's not a lack on my part. It's God putting me into a situation where I'm not comfortable, where I'm not being successful, where I'm perplexed (and the definition of that word was so right on target it blew me away: "not to know what to do, not to know what to decide, not to have enough resources, to be embarrassed!").

God's the one who's releasing this story, and I've always known that. He's not doing it as fast as I'd like because it's a distressing situation. It's a pressure situation, a perplexing situation and those are the situations where He is really able to show us His love for us. It doesn't make sense from human perspective, because we don't show love for each other that way. But He knows what's best and the only way we're going to learn certain things, and the only way sometimes we're going to see His hand in a way that will really make an impression. That's usually a pressure situation. The one I'm involved in right now demands that I just keep going back to him again and again.

Today I likened the experience to chasing madly after a rabbit over hill and dale, down one street, then another and suddenly the rabbit leaps through a wall and disappears and you, chasing it, crash hard into the same wall and fall stunned in the street. That is literally about how fast a thought line, a plot line, a flow of words and thoughts can dry up on me. I'm following a promising sequence along, and suddenly hit a dead end. What would I do if I'd really slammed into a wall and lay there in the street, no idea whatsoever where the rabbit is now or what to do about it? I'd go to the Lord. What do I do now?

So I did. And a little later something else developed... I don't think I have quite managed to express what I'm trying to. I think I must still be processing it all.

But it was cool to be told this wasn't my fault. That everything that's involved in this situation is by His decree for my blessing and His glory.

"We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body... " 2 Co 4:8-10

And now, I shall go and ponder this further.