Post #13

I’m feeling reflective today. Not sure why. It’s quarantine day which normally I spend as far away from the hotel as possible. This week’s work site is the first of the season where it’s too cold to go fly so aside from trying to dial in my little indoor drone I’m sort of out of options.

This week’s site is so very spiritually heavy. It’s palpable. I don’t know why any one would allow themselves to be subjected to this kind of…well, fear, darkness, oppression. The hotel has everything blocked off, so the limited number of people staying here are on top of each other. The hotel is also not offering any kind of food service. So the limited number of people staying here, who are all on top of each other, then have to try and find restaurants, most of which are not open, where more people are on top of each other while waiting in the take out line.

At some point I should probably get gas for the rental car. I barely made it all the way here on one tank. I think I’ll just leave for work early tomorrow. I don’t feel like driving around this city looking for a gas station.

Maybe I’lll go for a walk.

I’m hesitant talking about next week, Christmas, not because I have it off, but because it’s getting close to the end of this work season. After this season is over there is no more work scheduled. The past couple of years we’d know about West Coast stuff. We’d know about basketball, Tournament bookings, The Masters. PGA Champs wouldn’t be far behind. This year? Nope.

The thing Covid has done more than anything is expose the weak points in my faith. Going freelance as our full time work brought a level of awareness of our dependency on the Lord which, for a lack of a better description, was new to me. We depended on Him before, but there’s something about having a full-time job that, even when you have to work on the side to make ends meet, gives you a sense of security. Full-time freelance torpedoed sense. Okay, fast forward a year or two, especially past that first summer, and we had a good idea of when we’d hear about work for the next season. Cool. Fast forward another couple years and we made the move to Ohio for a host of reasons, one of which being that I wasn’t working locally anymore. Why stay in an expensive locale if I’m not working locally?

Fox Golf came in the picture. It looked like the Lord was expanding our client base. Cool.

But then Covid hit.

I was sent home at the beginning of the Tournament run.

The Masters then went away.

All golf after the Masters went away.

PGA Champs was paused.

Fox gave away their golf package NBC.

Then there was enough work to get us through the rest of the summer.

Then the NFL started and has not stopped.

And here I am almost one year later in a spiritually dark city on a normal day in the middle of a political pandemic with no end in site having watched the Lord allow what He brought into our lives be stolen by the enemy while two weeks from now I’m back to where I was over the summer; work will again have dried up and I’ll be wondering if the work the Lord has provided in the past be what He sends in the future.

I really don’t want to be labeled as a “doubting Thomas”. I want to be Peter getting out of the boat but not Peter sinking in the water. I want to be the son the Lord wants me to be. Yet I am constantly reminded of John 16:33b, “In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world”; Psalm 37:25, “I have been young and now I am old, Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his [a]descendants begging for bread.”;  2 Corinthians 12:10, “Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”

As I am reminded by my better half, no amount of my “door knocking” has ever, really, resulted in any door opening. The “ask, seek, knock” passage in Matthew, for me, may as well only be “ask” for the amount of success I’ve ever had in seeking and knocking, emailing potential clients, calling potential clients. It’s always been the Lord opening these opportunities. But I’ve never really come to the place where I’ve been exhausted of trying, truly tired of being pushed down, brushed off and aside. Covid has brought me to my knees. The sheer volume of external forces making it impossible for a child of God, husband, father, to be a child of God, husband, father, I mean how are men supposed to fight this? There have been times in life where I’ve said, “It’s a crawl right now”. Not that it wasn’t true then, but…oh, I don’t know, what it really the case? Because if there was ever going to be a time when the desire to follow the Lord ever felt more hindered by the enemy, it would be now.

So, dear Lord, I will stand on the promises found in Your Word. And I pray that, as Your Word says, Your Word does not fall to the ground. I pray that I and my family will be found in the land of of the living and that we will continue to see Your faithfulness as the light of day and that the light of day would never cease. For, as the Psalmist says, “I have been young and now I am old, Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his [a]descendants begging for bread.” As Paul writes to the Corinthians, “Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.” And as Your Son said when He walked the earth, “In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world”. I honestly don’t care what I face so long as I’m following You, facing it with You. Please, Lord, let me be ever more devoted to You.