Wrestling with God

The message at church yesterday morning was about Jacob wrestling with God, about how it took wrestling with God for Jacob to find what he was seeking and to be headed in the right direction.

Something I really like about The Flood's pastor is that all of his sermons come straight out of scripture AND are then related to things that would be going on in our lives.

Of course, I didn't even need examples to figure out what I've been wrestling with God about: my relationship with Tad.

After over three years, we are still long distance. This on its own kills me. Now add in all the failed attempts at having him move.

We both thought that when he graduated from NNU he would move down to southern California to be with me while I finished at Biola, and then we would go from there. Well, you know how the best laid plans of mice and men go...

He graduated, finished up a couple classes, and went home. When he visited me for my birthday, we found jobs in LA that he could apply for, and he sent in applications. Not only did none of those places ever call back, but in July he got into a massive fight with his family. He was forbidden to move and told to get a job in WA.

Ok, we thought, he'll work there til I'm done with Biola and then he'll have money to move and maybe his parents will be more open to moving. Over several months he applied to at least 20 different jobs.

Nothing

But, he did get his medical things worked out, and discovered a calling to youth ministry through volunteer coaching a middle school basketball team with his church.

That's when he began applying for the fall semester at Point Loma.

Great, I thought, his parents will be supportive of his pursuing more education to go into ministry, he'll be able to move by the end of the summer.

Again, best laid plans...

Things didn't work out like we hoped with Point Loma. They didn't accept him based on his GPA, which is lower due to all the medication changes he underwent in the last two years at NNU. And the deal with his parents was that he could move IF he got in. Remember that he still has no job.

He would like to move down in the next couple months anyway. Look for a job here in SoCal where the market is a bit better than it is in WA. But his parents still forbid it, and have threatened to report his car as stolen if he leaves.

All this is more than enough for me. But of course there's more. In the last month we've suddenly been averaging two fights a week, when before we only fought once every couple months. Tad has always asserted that fighting is healthy for a relationships; that it's better that we fight and resolve it easily than if we didn't fight at all. But that's a drastic change. It coincides with me starting my grad program, but I can't figure out why that would cause us to fight more.

So, back to the whole point of this entry.

I know I'm supposed to give this all to God. I know I need to.

But I don't know how.

Every time I try, I let go and grab back on again, or I think I'm letting go but have this thought in the back of my head "The second I let it go, Tad and I will be together."

Dear Lord, show me, because I just don't know how.