Life is Sweet

I grew up in Iowa and have always loved the change of seasons.

Most of all, I loved summer.
I still do. I love corn on the cob, watermelon and ice cream.
You scream, I scream…we all scream for ice cream!
Lately, I just feel like screaming but…that’s not really the point.

I've actually screamed for ice cream once and woke up yesterday remembering just how awesome that was.

I have lived on the uncertainty of real estate commissions for nearly two decades and somehow, someway, God always provides.

Several years ago, my friends David and Sandy and their children came to spend the night with us in San Antonio. We were going to watch Left Behind and I loaded up the kids (all under the age of 9) and went to HEB Central Market. We stocked up on typical movie watching, non-healthy , kind of kid food…popcorn, soda, chips, etc…

Standing in the long line at the counter, I was suddenly overcome with a strong desire for some vanilla ice cream. I mapped it all out in my head. How much effort was it actually going to take to get five kids all the way to the frozen food section and back?

I considered the challenge course and decided to do without.
Several times throughout the night though, I’d inwardly pine, “Uuughhh! I really did want that ice cream. I should have gone to the back to get it!”

The next morning we rushed around. The Hanschecks were heading back to Corpus and I was running late for church on the other side of town.

Usually, very generous with my giving and tithing, this time, for whatever reason, I debated in my head the whole way over and began to doubt God would come through for me.

There was a $250 utility bill due and my tithe was $250. Or, the other way around, since we’re told to give of our first fruits.

I believe what the word says about money and I thought about it all the way to church that morning. Was I really contemplating stealing from God? Regular church goers know that in Malachi it says, “Will a man rob God? Yet you rob and defraud Me. But you ask ‘How are we robbing you?’”

“In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse, your whole nation, because you are robbing me.” Ouch.

I can hear people saying, “The church is a business and they just want my money.”

This is the part that will start to bore you if you’re not already a believer. But try to hang in there with me cause it’s gonna get good!!

The word says, “Bring the whole tithe (the whole 10th of your income) into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe. Then all the nations will call you happy and blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the Lord Almighty. Put me to the test he says. Test me in this!!! I’m not sure but I think it’s the only time he ever says to test him.

You can me test me, but only if you are grading on a curve and it’s not in math.
Okay, or science, or history.

Well by the time I get there I have somehow let the enemy in my mind convince me that because of my lack of obedience in other areas, this time, it wouldn’t work. God was in fact NOT going to have my back like he faithfully had so many times in the past.

I parked the car, and slipped $40.00 into my bible. Walking in my typical 5 minutes late, Pastor Pat Mulholland is giving his sermon, and I’m trying to slide in on the down low when just as I go to take my seat he yells, “GOD ROBBER!”

With a total deer in the headlights, “Oh my gosh I can’t get away with anything!!!”
I stand up, sigh heavily and say, “Alright already!” and slink back out to the car to get the rest of my money.

I mean His money.

I’m holding it tight in my hands while he goes on, “Now examine your motives here beloved. Ya don’t give to get.”
I’m not giving to get.
“Ya give out of joyful obedience.” I’m joyful.

Scared to death and a little fearful, but I trust you will have my back once again. You didn’t give me a spirit of fear Lord..but a sound mind… Sound mind? Okay, that could be a rabbit trail right now and I’m gonna stay focused cause I’m trying to tell a really great story here.

Head bowed and with an appropriately serious, “Yes, Lord I’m not giving to get but I am giving joyfully and with EXPECTANCY because I know that you are an awesome God and I believe that your word is true.”

As the basket came by I took another deep breathe, said “I’m counting on you…seriously. I need you to have my back here.”

Driving home with the girls I felt great peace. Well, not peace so much because I had my friend Marc and Rhonda’s boys with me and everyone was loud and jumping around all over the back seat. But, a sense of security nonetheless.

Taking the Hildebrand exit off of 281 in San Antonio, I ended up behind a stalled BMW.

I got out, walked up to the window and approached the woman at the wheel. “Do you need me to call someone for you?”
I ask in my cheery, little Miss Sunshine voice. She looked me up and down with pretty much what I perceived as total contempt. Here she was….the perfect Alamo Heights chick with her perfect hair, perfect make up, perfectly clean car and a perfect superior attitude.

“I’m waiting on Mr. Rescue,” she answers with nothing short of a snooty tone. Ha! I laugh, “I’m waiting on my own Mr. Rescue if ya know what I mean!” as I smile and point to the sky. She made a face and then rolled her eyes at me.

I got back in the car and pulled around to catch the next light change. Suddenly, there was a loud rapping on the passenger window. I hit the electric window and she sticks her face in and says, “I have ice cream in my trunk and it’s going to hell. Do you want it?”

“Um? Sure.” It didn’t really hit me until she came back to the car and handed me a gallon of vanilla ice cream.

As we made the exchange, I felt a jolt through my body and heard the holy spirit whisper, “See? I’ve got your back baby.”

OH MY GOSH! Seriously??? He truly does care about the smallest little details of our lives! I looked up at the sky and said, “Oh, My GOD!!!! YOU, are sooo totally the Man!!”

Driving the rest of the way home and smiling from ear to ear I thought about what had just happened and realized even more how unbelievably amazing God really is. You see, if I had gone back and gotten the ice cream the night before, quite honestly I would have bought the cheap HEB brand.

But, when God gives you something, he gives the best. He gave me Breyers real vanilla bean!!

Wow! Can you imagine having someone hand you a gallon of ice cream on an off ramp exit? A few days later, my ex-husband came back to San Antonio for the first time since the divorce and took the girls and I out for pizza.

When we got back to the house, I walked into the kitchen to put away the leftovers and noticed an envelope on the stove with the words, “Jesus loves you.” I hurried to open it up and found $250.00 inside! Just one day away from a disconnect on my utilities, I was praising God all over the place, when my then, 8 year old Chelsea says, “I bet it’s from God!”

“Well, I know it’s from God, but via who?” “It’s from God,” she insisted. “Really, Chelsea? You think that God in all his glory, came down from heaven, walked past the laundry sitting on the couch and put this on the stove….Himself?”

“I know he did.” “How?”
“He gets tons of those kind of envelopes on Sundays.”
Bahahahaha! That right there is the faith of a child!

That is the kind of faith I want to keep with me always and forever as long as I live. I can just picture God sitting in heaven with his big gigantic gold letter opener going, “Well, let’s see what I got today!”

His ways are higher than our ways. It doesn’t make sense and when it's all coming apart around us, we just have to hang on for the ride and keep trusting that He is faithful.

In times like these, it even sounds a little foolish, but I still believe.
And life IS sweet!