A Pumpkin.

Luke and I just carved our first pumpkin as a family. His name is Emmet. He looks like an Emmet. He was originally supposed to have four teeth, but after an unfortunate mishap he now sits in our living room with his three-toothed grin.

Carving him was quite the ordeal, and too see pictures you are welcome to click here. It was some much needed stress
relief and laughter...sawing something open and getting all the squishy stuff out in order to create something... maybe we should do this more often.

We decided to begin the tradition this year of drying out the pumpkin seeds and baking them for a tasty treat. So I was taking some pictures and I realized something--lately I have felt like this disgusting mess that you can see below. I'm this mixture of goop and seeds, neither of which are incredibly appealing as they are, but really just as we call them--goop. It's not really good for anything...it kind of smells weird, and there isn't much use for it. In fact, unless you want to spend some time on it, there won't be any use for it at all. And recently I've felt like God doesn't want much to do with me. Luke and I just sent off our rent check today...and we don't have enough money left to pay our rent in December. I'm frustrated and confused and jumbled. I feel disgusting and vulnerable...we trusted God to help us through this...why are we still without an income when just a month and a half ago we felt so clearly called. I don't really get it. And I feel left alone, just as if we had left this goop sitting in the strainer or on the table to be thrown out with the other newspapers and pieces of unusable remains that are left after making a jack'o'lantern. But just like Luke and I are not content to let the goop be thrown out with the trash, neither is God willing to let Luke and I be (hopefully). But it's not going to be pleasant. Before we can be used the goop and slime has to be sifted and cleaned out. And then we might have to go through an intense drying-out (like of our savings maybe?) and probably some intense heat before we can come out all roasted and golden brown and ready for use. And maybe that's what's happening now. Right now our little pumpkin seeds are sitting on the oven drying out and Luke and I are in another room. Maybe, if pumpkin seeds could talk or think, they might be thinking we had abandoned them. We had grabbed them out of their cozy little inhabitance of a pumpkin and plopped them into a cold environment. Then squeezed them and roughed them up and separated them from the slime they've always known (not a very comfortable process, I can imagine...) just to let them sit on the stove on a cookie sheet. But they are not forgotten and they will be used...they just need to wait until they are ready.

Trusting in God is hard. And I'm, honestly, not very good at it. I am a selfish and spoiled child and when it hurts and I feel alone I question a lot. But I've always been able to come back and see the ways He's pulled through...and I'm trying to trust that He'll do it again.

I'll let you know how those lonely little pumpkin seeds turn out...

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, "O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king.
But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up." (Daniel 3:16-18)
...Oh that I would have faith like this...