Water Your Worth

“Are you okay?!” I ask my child who is in the carrier strapped on my back like a backpack as I asses the situation on the ground sideways with a scooter in my hands and my knees on the ground. Thankfully my son was looking to the right side as we scooted and got thrust off path to the left. As soon as he told me that he was fine, even though tears started combined with “Mama!”; I got us up from the ground, looked at the scooter that is not ours, noticed my busted jeans with a bloody knee and a little scrape on my arm. “Okay, let’s go.”, I say as I attempt to maintain some level of calm for us both while getting us back to the house we were sitting as quickly and safely as possible.

Here is what happened right before. After a couple hours of my son demanding that it is time for a scooter ride I said okay. I was doing some work on my phone with a person I thought might have been trustworthy and there seemed to be some progress in this supposed business that I was helping with. “The enemy is trying to block the lines. We need to pray him out. Satan be gone!”, was the text I received. I am well aware of spiritual warfare and am a prayer warrior, so I agreed with an open declaration of, “Devil be gone! You cannot get in the way of this progress and it will happen, in the name of Jesus release yourself!”. Then, I said that I needed to give my son some attention and would check in after. I took my phone with me just in case I needed to send a code over from a notification for any progress on work.

Now, let me explain some of the backstory before continuing. This man I was working with was someone that made sure that I went to the church that the Holy Spirit had caught my attention about while in an environment that was incredibly testing and in much need of a church community. What I mean by that is the Holy Spirit directed my attention to this church and yet I did not know times of service or anything and then a week later this man came walking through the area I was sitting and asked if I was listening to gospel music and then invited me to the Sunday service at eight in the morning. After a few weeks of going to worship service, Bible study and prayer meetings this man had called me aside after church and said that he would be coming in to some money soon and wanted to try and get me set up in an apartment and asked that I help him with some promotions/communications of his event. I told him that I would help him regardless and that I had recently told God that I didn’t want anything unless it came from Him (Almighty). I had mentioned this because I had already experienced a handful of men who wanted to “help” but it was obvious that there was an extra motive (even if it was hidden to them at first), it is just not worth putting myself and child in any kind of questionable situation. So, I started helping with the promotions and communications of this anticipated big event. I was a spokesperson at the radio station and the news, I talked about it and encouraged participants and ticket purchases. When the event had some snags with the headliner, things started to fall a little bit a part, people were upset and wanted refunds. From here, I am not fully sure on what was going on but I know that he was trying to make a chunk of money back in order to cover all the fees that were taken out and to give people their ticket money back on top of provide a ticket to an upcoming show. I, being American, had more connections in to some sites and operations and had no problem saying that I would help him. There was one person that he started working with and they appeared scammy to me and so I asked, “Do you trust this person?” and he just said, “This is the one that responded to my text.”. We continued to work on different apps and websites and I was helping him establish some organization as it was very apparent to me that he was in over his head and was not able to keep up with everything that he was swimming in. There was another situation that came up where someone changed my attached contact information and then he did not even remember working with that person and then after that someone that he was supposedly working with reached out to me directly and was wanting to work with me without the one I was helping. I kept praying for him while also asking for God’s direction and protection. I was told that I would be paid for the time that I worked with him and for all the help with the current work, there was promises on getting a carseat for us, our plane ticket, etc., but nothing was actually happening. In fact, things just kept looking worse.

So, I did my declaration and asking Jesus to open the lines of progress and communication, told the one I was working with that I needed to focus on my child and took my son for a scooter ride. It was a much needed outing for us both. We turned down to a part of a trail that we had not gone on yet and I stopped the scooter for a moment for us to acknowledge the breeze and how it was blowing the leaves. (I always tell him that God gives us breeze to let us know that He is in and with everything.) Something shifted though, the breeze started to feel daunting, a couple of water sprinkles started up and I said, “Oh… we need to go now.”. My son started to fuss a little bit because he didn’t want to go back yet and also he felt the shift taking place. We didn’t get far in the turn around before a super powerful gust of wind pushed us off the path and in to the ground and all I heard repeatedly was, “I AM IN CONTROL.”. As I got us back on the path after the assessment of everything, I was tearing up a little bit with repentance and embarrassment. I hear the thoughts already, ‘How do you know that it was God and how do you know that wasn’t just some freak wind…?’. I have been living in a very different way than most can comprehend for a while now and have become highly sensitive to a lot of things. I know this, I heard this, I felt this. Then as if to confirm it for me, there was a walker going the opposite direction (the direction back to the house) that we saw right when we stopped to watch the breeze and as we passed him on the way back to the house he was just as dandy as before with no effect or concern of any wind or looming heavy storm.

As we got back inside I cleaned up my knee and jeans and fell to my knees in repentance and humility. I also let the man know what had happened and that God has said that He is the one in control. The conversation continued with a bit of offensive responses saying that, “God gives ideas for wealth, so why am I in the wrong for doing it..?” and a couple of statements about how I need to let go being a mother, my kid needs to experience tough times and that he apparently had one bike incident where he saw stars with a concussion… he had no idea who he was talking to at this point and I could see how he has blinded himself even to simple interactions by being so focused on this money idea. I told him that he was in the wrong, sent him Psalm 62:10 and said, “God told you to let me go. He told me that it wasn’t coming from you. It is time I disconnect before things get really bad.” and then I muted him for a few days and just watched while obeying what God told me to do. I changed passwords on the apps and deleted them and immediately was asked why I did that and to just wait until it is finished along with some excuses. Then a day later he said that he just read what I said and tried to say that he now understood a dream he had and that it made sense and then the next day he sent a sow your seeds link. I blocked him and gave thanks that I was finally able to see him as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I don’t think he was initially but things started shifting and something else I realized is that through it all, he never once helped us out in any way.

It is not an easy thing to digest and far from easy on how to discuss it but God is in control of all things. I think the best representation of this is through the book of Job, the devil had to ask God’s permission go after Job. God had to remove the hedge of protection from Job’s life in order to allow satan to demolish everything but him and then at the end… God made it very clear to Job that He sees all, knows all and is in control of all.

This is a theme that I feel often through my journeying as so many people are saying things like, “Why don’t you do this or that?”, and I don’t have an answer. All, I know is that God is in control and He wants me to let Him do all the heavy lifting and ultimate creating. I got small limit credit cards, they got maxed out and let go of. I applied for jobs, saw scams, tried the water business, taught english online and the only thing that has been working for us is what God allows. I know this even more truly now on the other side of being in a foreign area, put in a shelter and yet still receiving His grace. I know what it is like to be without Him and I know what it is like to be in His mercy… I don’t ever want to test Him or be without ever again.

He tells me to write and be a mom and each day I am given topics to talk about to keep my writing going. This one was extra important and I was not able to finish this day until I wrote about it. I will never forget and I will continually praise our God no matter what I am facing. There is something comforting in having the revelation that God is ultimately in control of all. He thought us in to existence, puts blood in our veins and breath in our lungs, establishes the works of our hands and loves us more than we can ever understand. Doesn’t that alone deserve total reverence and honor?