Recently, our hoa (home owners association) board has been giving us reason to have faith. I need to go to bed as my back aches and my eyes are burning and I'm convinced I hear mice skittering about (all in my head I think) and I'm annoyed with the sound of loud snoring. So, all that to say, I enter into this time of process with you, with a tired body and mind!
I don't have the time to go into all the comings and goings, as i can barely make sure I have deodorant on sometimes.
I feel like, at this point in my life, that I'm a different person than I ever thought I would be and that if I had to sum things up "how are you doing Lisa?" I would just give a default answer as I don't even know where to begin. That's unlike me! I'm usually capable of many words.
So, back to the HOA thing. We are on this earth to make disciples of all nations, for one thing, right? I take that seriously and yet I always am stumped at how to do that. I feel like I REALLY, really try at being kind, giving people the benefit of the doubt, explaining things in detail as to maybe clear up any future misunderstandings....etc., etc. and I honestly feel like, on this mission field, it's at times in vane. We are on this board because we keep asking God to take our names off the ballot and He doesn't answer with "yes/o.k.". We are also on the board because in this housing market, we cannot trust our books (104 homes for those of you reading who don't know) to just a volunteer non-Christian. As cruel as that sounds, we are about the only folks in this entire place (we know because we see the books) who even pay on time and have the funds. So, back to the meeting that we just had.
There has been a man who has given us reason to keep having faith in God. He is cruel to us (in the mildest ways, but still cruel) and very sneaky and manipulative and wooing...to other homeowners. He is the biggest back stabber I know. He just puts on all these different faces and "personalities" depending on who he is with. To me andAlan, he does whatever he can to make our lives crazy. For example, I am redoing our lobby and mailroom area. I've paid an interior designer out of my own monies, as to make sure I do it properly and to honestly, be able to tell the board that I did a professional job. I knew it would come back to bite me and it has. After I pleaded with the board to let me paint and redo (there wasn't even moldings or finished paint on portions of our entrance..as in sheetrock/primer) and I got their approval, now they are saying they didn't approve it. Then Tim (the guy I was telling you about) went so far as to have outside friends he knows, email in to the board, pretending to be homeowners complaining about the paint colors. Sheesh. (I did a little research and found out who the emails belonged to and email the people directly) The emails are so slanted and so posed at me, it's just almost crazy...but it really makes the job of volunteering and building a better tomorrow..seem literally impossible. They were calling me and Alan the gestapo at the meeting last night because we want to enforce people parking in their purchased spaces, people paying dues on time, a drug free community, no children in the pool unsupervised..you get it. Alan cautioned them that that time in history was not one to throw in to general conversation to get attention. He asked them to not speak so hostile against him and to try and look realistically at the issues at hand. How did Martin Luther King Jr. do it? How did he just keep trying? They also drop my name with our maintenance guy and are saying all sorts of things from we talk too much together, to how muc money we spend on "non-essentials" such as door knobs. (last time I checked, door knobs are very out of the ordinary purchases...insert sarchasm).
So...(this is such a ramble, but I need to post it, if not for process sake) I'm combatting spiritual forces like crazy...I visually see drug deals going down, try and alert them that I am watching, a man hoped the fence and had a gun this weekI just fear for my kid's safety sometimes. Nevermind the annoyance factor with the loud music, parties etc.. I know that I need to learn who is my Saviour, who is my help and who is my protector, but at the end of the meeting last night, and hearing them argue about money and how we are trying to scam the members and how we aren't honest etc.. (are they really are jealous because Alan is keeping us a float maybe?) I wanted to walk out on my mortgage. Alan doesn't want to because he says that unless he loses his jobs, we won't walk. He is proud of his credit score and he works really hard to keep it high and he feels like integrity isn't walking away. Sometimes I agree and sometimes I am really struggling to see why this is worth it. Physically when I lay everything out, it looks impossible.
And yet we don't feel like God is saying "go" yet. We don't feel like our time here is finished. I was so crushed last night after Alan came up and said they wanted to pay another designer to go up against my designer in a little competition...why? Why can't they just accept the free service I'm doing and be grateful? It's so backwards..the way that I think it should go. Aren't volunteers needed and great? Aren't volunteers saving us money? But if Tim and his groupies and Moe, and his groupies, and these random extreme home owners aren't owners of the ideas, they just trample so hard, there isn't even weeds left!! Let me remind you that we don't get paid or discounted fees to be apart of this. God is working on me..I'm trying to lend myself to Him to just be a servant (not a doormat) and be gentle in my comings and goings and peaceful and not brash, impatient and angry.
So, I went to bed in tears, desperate to hear comfort from God. On top of this HOA stuff, I'm grieving a bit from the loss of the pregnancies. And also the loss of lives and children being without their parents...in haiti. And the dryer quit working yesterday and the cost to repair it is $400, which we were going to go away for Valentines weekend as a family for a little respite. So, as I was crying and just deeply saddened by everything spiritually going on here, I opened my bible and just started reading...if for nothing to just ward off evil.
I finished tonight with the re-reading of Jacob/Joseph and that whole story. Joseph was very mistreated by his brothers. He spent a lot of time in jail. But HE STAYED FAITHFUL in the unfair and seemingly hopeless situations. He honored his father and he WAS KIND to those who wanted him dead. He eventually led 1/2 the nation on a funeral procession when Jacob, his father, died...and they embalmed Jacob..something they didn't do for common folk. But because of how Joseph's love for God shone through him, how his father raised him, he brought many, many people to see that. And he was second in command....because He listened and followed God. I just wept....and I read the story again tonight to the boys and wept. How can I turn my frustrated soul...a soul who loves the Lord, but isn't sure how to deal with drug dealers, gay-anti-Jesus neighbors...how? I've brought meals, I've stood for justice...I've asked others to pray...I want to make a difference.
I want them to see me and see Jesus...this is easy as a kindergarten helper..cutting out stars and smiling to the kids..this is easy as a volunteer at the welcome tent at church...this is respectively easy as a wife who has to serve people who sometimes don't notice...but it's not easy to "those" people. I want to run to the suburbs. I don't want to be "one of them" living here in the ghetto. But I am. I am not here by accident and I am not alone here. I want to show my kids how to resolve conflict, how to see people's messed up lives and respond with care/mercy. I want my kids to see that Jesus works. He works all the time. And I also want to have children who respond like Joseph. I was looking at the word getto and I noticed it was 2 words squished in one... "get" "to". I really want to change my mind and be so in tune with HIS spirit that I see this place as a place that I "get to" serve in.
Can you pray that I'll be encouraged and that we will know how to be Jesus in the middle of very heated, never-changing, board meetings? that we look at this complex always as an opportunity and that the space and the annoyances won't overshadow what we should do as a Christian? O.k. that's enough ramble for now...
