Sheltered from the storm

¿Y si te deshago tu mundo y luego te demuestro que puedo volver a levantarlo de las cenizas?

Life has been hectic lately, yet we’re still waiting.

Recently I finally figured out all my problems have always had to do with money, one way or the other. Here:

• Earthly dad was waiting to have a somewhat significant amount of it to feel sure about stepping outside of his home, and when he did, he surely followed through with his plans. He’s still waiting to gain it all back; the money he lost afterwards. You’d just have to have a conversation with him, and a short one at that, to figure it out; the only thing he regrets after sixteen years of what was the most excruciating pain for his family, is not having been able to have made it last longer; the money and the pain would be my guess. Everything else is just garbage in his eyes; and what a hard and unjust judge he got to be when those few zeroes on his account made him feel the rush of having power.
• He didn’t pay my studies after a while, but he still keeps the receipts of what he did… just to make sure to get his pay back some day, I would be sure. I was ready to leave college during that time, and what things did God have to do and move just to get me through; I became a loyal servant and a bitter daughter of the most High then and there, because that’s where it began… my broken idea of half-won victories and my never-enoughs. School was paid for but I had to look for pennies left over mom’s car just to last one more week paying the parking lot every day, and go with her to fill up my tank to drive myself. No outings whatsoever, “I don’t feel alright,” or “Something came up, I’m sorry,” was all I learnt to say for more than two years and that led me naturally to no friends, also. I’m sure earthly dad wouldn’t have minded, he has lots of those. Worldly, easy, friends, I mean. He had paid his part to get there and doubled it with mine and my sister’s just to make sure of staying… and left us with none. Going out with an empty wallet was one of my most kept secrets, not because of pride but because of fear; I’ve learnt to be so afraid of not having something I’d need one day… because one day said need might come, right? And don’t even get me started about the things I did need, I dreaded having to ask and become a burden because that’s how I was wired after some time.
• Grandpa got used to holding on to my shoulders to walk when his last half year of life arrived. I was so flustered many of those times because the place he led me to when there had been no other way besides his hands to be used by my true Father (God Eternal), he led me to the bank and after getting some money out he’d extend it my way, all lovingly I would think now, and given me part of it, “For university”. I never directed it elsewhere, I always made sure to run and pay even the last dime. But right there I would’ve wished there had been other way still, because I knew his other kin would have wanted to spit on my face because of the fact. They’ve always been worthier, they would’ve said.
• Grandpa also emptied every last penny he had had for his medical issues, during that year, and more flow didn’t come through his business. He had to go and ask a friend of his to buy something from him on the very last month of his life. He used almost all of it, returned a part to a third party that always used to work alongside him, a weird and somewhat evil one that was waiting for him to pass just to get its hands on Grandpa’s factory. But Grandpa didn’t pay the rest of the invoice as he was meant to, see here: out of eight, he owed six and owned two. But he only lived to pay two, because he needed the rest for his medical bills. And then he moved on from this earth.
• It was with nothing my mom tried to shoo out the evil partner my Grandpa had had, who was not only asking for the rest of his invoice’s earnings the next day after the funeral, but for the more than twenty Grandpa had built as a debt. Almost enough to think of himself owner of Grandpa’s factory. She had to walk with an empty wallet like me for years… until the evil partner left with his own two feet.
• I saw her getting burdened and sick, navigating debts that weren’t hers and problems not carried over by her hands, rather by Grandpa’s golden boys years before he died, with empty coffers. And I got used to this feeling of fear I had known just getting bigger by the second, every day. Money scares the hell out of me. Or rather the lack of it. (Not because I want the yachts, but because I knew everyone would’ve been fine with me and my own sleeping on the ground.) Maybe also the things it makes people do, the lengths all of them go to, covering even hands not with sand but with blood just to have more.
• We’ve always been fruitful in that matter; whenever mom’s had any, she has always looked after others. Her own sister, for instance, she was used to buy double groceries just to give to her in her time of need which came across our time of a little more… but this was years back, before earthly dad decided, alongside anyone else (mom’s sister included), on their, ‘Why should you have? Why you, and not me?’ and after being fruitful on the matter, we’ve always been left out in the cold.
• When the evil partner left, his spy did also, a wicked woman who had worked during 40 years for Grandpa. She, after the evil partner, had been the most grievous problem in mom’s hands; she could’ve cost hundreds of thousands, and we only had the same empty wallet. The waiting game we won the day they left.
• Even hoping got tainted then. Things could’ve picked up… but the golden boys and sister got their complaints through… because of money, too. They wanted us out of the way. It even came to my ears that when mom got to lift Grandpa’s place up, with a minor business deal she had carved with God’s help, they played with the idea of removing her and just manage her work and posible earnings amongst them. Wallet that had been empty she had not yet been able to fill when they came. Much less hers.
• We all lost our old cars last year, here at home. And we have no way of getting new ones… this wasn’t an upgrade; just an elegant downgrade if you think about it.
• We’ve always struggled here at home, but never like these last six or seven years; it truly was a miracle, out short trip to the beach they saw us coming back from… and they made sure to make it also short-lived. Hell has rained on us coming from their hands… because we shouldn’t be able to live if they’re not higher and better, and money is all they think about.

But here comes the worst part of the list.

While they travelled and ate and gambled and played with the tarnished earnings they made after selling and breaking everything Grandpa had built:

• I got to think that the day God let me make some money too, or a lot, would be marked as the day of my deliverance. The day He made something big out of the work of my hands, mom’s hands, my sister’s hands, would come to be the day everybody would finally see… He also loved my house. We were also worthy- something big, when He did something big, completely aside Grandpa and earthly dad, and all of them saw it… then, would we have been honored, like His glory does for His kids. His true sons and daughters. When the gifts He alone has given us did great by us, then would everything have been made right, there would we have watched justice be done.

And he never did. Hence, my still waiting.

Our still waiting.

A month ago, He taught me one thing, the one I called Manhattan Hustle.

I was speaking on the phone on a random Thursday. It was a friend of my mom’s on the other side and she was also there. I was getting nervous because I couldn’t understand a word he was saying and I just thought how much more damaged my mom’s cellphone had gotten, it is broken, yes, but it had worked fine for years. I took out mine, which is old. Old and second-hand. Very used; I work with it, after all. I don’t play, I just work and every day I make sure of this. It’s not a coincidence they’re called cell-phones. That day I looked for a cheap, new one, like the one my sister had found to replace mine two years ago. That time, the one we bought was exactly like the one I had lost, same model, very cheap, and we could afford it. Truly cheap. (How I wished it had been a new one, back then, reminiscing on this matter… and how angry I got, spiraling down once again in my never-ending song of never-enoughs…) And to my luck, I found one. It was a higher model than the one she has, which is higher than ours, but works funny because she accidentally broke it after she got it years ago. I asked her, and seeing as it was very little money for what they were selling… I made the purchase. It was early the next morning when the sellers wrote my way, using the platform… asking for money. But things don’t work like that. They were sending the phones from Manhattan stores, or so they’d said, and they now wanted money sent to their personal accounts. If you’re used to purchase online, you know this is a big NO. And so I tried to cancel my purchase. My sister, who had followed my lead, ran to cancel hers but hers got cancelled immediately, while with mine, the platform said I had to wait until Tuesday.

It was a living hell making it from Friday to Sunday. The ‘sellers’ voiced every type of threat my way for not sending them the money, and I was getting desperate… and more afraid. I’ve been getting more afraid as the years pass, I’m figuring that out now and I want not to… but I don’t know how. Remember hope is tainted? I spoke with the platform two times, one on Friday when the threats began, and one on Sunday.

“We don’t only encourage you not to give in to their threats and therefore give them the money, but we ask you not to. That’s the only way we can protect you when the time comes.” They’d said both of those times.

“But when are you intervening? I’m truly worried.” I told the man the second time.

“On Tuesday, the day the platform chose. Be patient. If you have to ignore the app before then, do it. You have to make it until that day and not give in.”

By their threats, my life as I had known it was ending on Monday. I had been a fool, looking for cheap things just to get by, I told myself right then and there. Now I had to be strong, so the app would do what only they knew they would do, because I was also clueless as to why I had to wait.

“These days are more for the seller than for the buyer,” I remembered the young man tell me around that time, “they can make good on what they promised, go back on their erred ways,”

It seems to me, I was waiting for their sake and not mine.

I did. I waited.

The threats remained.

It was Monday night when the notification got to mom’s phone,

'Your purchase has been cancelled, the money is back on your account'. 

And she let me know I was free and unscathed.

The day before the deadline. Things will happen sooner than you’ve let yourself believe.

I was relieved and knew God had spoken: I’ve spent a month now, dividing my thoughts as a mental exercise, looking unto faith, sorting through my perceptions between those which would be the seller’s voice threatening my life by how they sound and what they ask of me, and the platform urging me to not listen and just giving heed to their words… those would be God’s thoughts. Its a bigger scenario the one I’ve learnt to look at with this new approach, but it also got somewhat easier to understand life this way. I just have to listen to Him. No one can hurt me if I listen to Him. But I’ve still been thinking God has been talking about money, sales, and things picking up for the first time in our lives with no one able to tear them down like in the past… I’ve been waiting for Him to give some kind of green light and our work starting to become a flow of money. That was my hope, the way I had thought He would come through… because it’s what everyone hopes for, right?

He let us go to a bazar the week before last. We didn’t sell much.

When I woke up this Thursday, after dealing with the aftermath of weariness and lagged work due to the bazar… I felt afraid once again. I had hoped… hoped things were about to pick up and the bazar would have been our beginning. But it wasn’t, and we didn’t. How will we sell our production now? What will happen with all of it? It’s great product, gold in my hands because I use it myself… and no one wanted it. I cannot change the prices because it is due to our high-end materials it has become a great product, hence the price; it’s not a whim, it just is. If a marketing expert took a look at everything I do, they wouldn’t teel me the wrongs in my strategy… they’d tell me how my products are messed up for the world we’re in and the sell more-waste more-lie more-hide more system everyone submits to. They don’t fit but I cannot change them, because of this. I want to be true, and sell true things… substantial things. Clean things, higher things.

But life didn’t change, once again. My heart fell to the floor, fear rising… and hope… still tainted. Things aren’t picking up, therefore its all downfall until we hit the ground… and hit it hard; we don’t have a lot of time left, either.

And then this Saturday came to life.

The Golden calf.

Just like in the story with God’s people and the gold they came out of Egypt with that later turned into the calf to which they chanted in adoration for having brought them out of slavery…

…hoping on things changing due to our beautiful products, the work of our hands… would be a terrible mistake. My waiting on those to do the job when God let them, would have revealed a heart that believed it was those who delivered me sooner or later; that until those arose, I did too. That would’ve meant not God honoring us, no, but Him just giving us money and so now we’re saved. It would also mean, then, that truly… like with the rest of the people we know… we would be left believing that just because we made money then God looked down on us and smiled, and loved us, and so, delivered us.

See? Hope is tarnished, just not like I thought.

When did we let the lie come in as His people that it is from anonymity and lack of money that we have to be delivered?

What about Pride? Envy? Fornication and lust? Anger? Hurt? Sickness? Lying? Stealing? Lawsuits and disputes? Hate among brothers and sisters? Hate towards our parents? Hate towards our Heavenly Father in our inmost hearts?

The day I began selling my books life would pick up, that was my hope.

The day He looked my way and loved me enough to give his life so I could keep on breathing… this was his gift.

The day I believed in Him, and decided to follow no matter the cost, no matter if I indeed lost everything as I did, was the day of my deliverance.

I could cross every point on the list above just because no matter what happened, God was there every time and so I survived. Because He was present, I came and went every day with an empty wallet, and friendless as I’ve always been I’ve never been void of conversation. He’s always been there, listening, and also speaking. He’s my Best Friend today because of this, and I can truly tell Him anything and He answers. He’s let hard things come our way and fended them just as easily. The evil partner did leave His ground one day, as his weasel spy did. The golden boys have been called once princes- once gods- by my God, and once set to be judged as men because of all of their doings. Wrong-doings. (See psalm 82 for this, which He gave me this year before the summer and its darkness came) The day He let my earthly dad walk out, He took His place… and He nurtured and brought us up as His own. Grandpa tried, Grandpa listened during his last days, but what’s more, his sickbed wish, “I want to see you and your daughters be alright,” God has fulfilled and will continue to; empty wallets but we still eat, study, create, by His words, and we also have hot showers and a warm (even if it is a bit crowded nowadays) refugee. All of this is what they hate, His giving us breath and bread and water, when all they wanted was death.

But all they get is what they wished for us, on themselves.

What we’re waiting for is only another kind of Tuesday, other one we’re waiting to see arrive, and it’s nearing, coming, and I know it’ll be by Monday night when God- Abba, comes in. I understand also it is because of them we’re waiting; for their sake… maybe they’ll wake up before the end comes. And we will wait, we do.

But this thing that’s coming is not money, or sales, or travels… it is far greater. It is higher:

It will not be because of money or fame or yachts and travels, nor food, that we’ll know and therefore tell the world He moved, but because of His love being revealed once again and His honor and grace changing our garments into crowns of joy, healing, people running His way and us calling… and many more things I’ve still not gotten to understand.

No, my books wont save us, nor my hair care brand… not my sister’s fiery jewelry…

Yes, we have only got to wait and listen and obey and hold on to what He’s saying,

but what He’s saying, is not what were expecting.

It is far greater, just like His thoughts. Just like His ways.

Do you like this christmas tree, Abba? I asked Him two days ago, while looking at one at the mall that looked pretty. Not because it is a christmas tree, for I know you care nothing for this holiday, as for the rest, but because it looks pretty. I could easily lose my identity to Yours, love what You love, like what You like, You know? I wouldn’t mind, now. And even if You brought someone else into this equation… He’d have to love You the same. If he did… now that would be a dream.

The next day He let me eat cinnamon rolls with my family before noon and I felt happy.

Yes, He’s changed everything, but everything He’s built in the land of the ruins is far greater. Truly I couldn’t doubt I’ll further see His hand moving and loving us not only back to life, but into goodness, His goodness, here in the land of the living.

Hope should not be tarnished anymore, even if I was fearing our time was almost up- it could never be- until He says so.

-SFTS