Friday's FMF challenge (which I wrote about on my other blog) was the word prompt "Real."
I wrote about how I desperately needed a haircut and was in the process of booking an appointment online. The person I wanted to book with was not available, and I was in too much of a hurry to wait until she was, so I booked with someone else who at one time I had wanted to try because of all the good reviews I had read about him.
As I was filling out the form, I felt a check in my spirit, which I ignored--despite my daily prayers for the Lord to make me supersensitive to the promptings of His Holy Spirit. Bad move!
At first the haircut looked beautiful. One of the most flattering I have ever had. But, as the saying goes, "all that glitters is not gold." When I woke up the next morning, it looked like a nightmare, and even washing it did not restore it to the way it had looked the day before.
I will have to live with the results of my poor choice for a while, but not too long. Hair grows back, and in my case, it tends to do so fast. Meanwhile, it will serve as a daily reminder to not just pray for sensitivity to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, but to obey them when they come--even if they don't seem to make sense. God sees the whole picture, which I do not.
As I was writing that post, another incident came to mind from a very lomg time ago when I had done the same thing concerning a far weightier matter.
I had received a marriage proposal and a job offer from someone who I convinced myself was mature, trustworthy, and responsible, and who I believed when he told me his word was something I could bank on. Nevertheless, I did have some mixed feelings, and I prayed for the Lord to close all doors if this wasn't from Him.
He didn't close any doors, but there were little checks in my spirit. Little red flags the Spirit within me was trying to bring to my attention. In the end though, I chose to ignore them, and saw only what I wanted to see and heard only what I wanted to hear. When both his pastor and mine gave us their blessing, I reasoned that it was a sign of the Lord's blessing as well.
Long story short (documented in my memoir/testimony, Sincerely Wrong: An Improbable Journey), after I compounded my bad choice by trying to help the Lord speed things up, closed my business, and gave away most of my possessions, both the job I had been counting on and the marriage fell through.
Too late to reverse what I had done, I wound up at my out-of-state daughter's house--a homeless bag lady living out of the boxes I had been able to fit in my car, and inhabiting the top bunk of a granddaughter's bunk bed.
By God's mercy and grace, He eventually turned this situation around for my good and His glory, but the many blessings that were to come took a whole lot longer than the time it takes for a bad haircut to grow out.
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