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The Wise Woman...

 

          The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down. (Proverbs 14:1)

She speaks with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue. (Proverbs 31:26)

 Wisdom: Correctly applied knowledge

 The definition above is not one you’ll find in the dictionary, but it serves here. The first verse haunts me. It’s one of the reasons I ask people to pray “wisdom, direction, attitude” for me. There are two sides to this anxiety. The first is a fear that I’m doing a bad job of caring for my house and that I’ll go home and find it a pile of rubble or it will become a pile of rubble around me. But instead, I’m spending money to do things I want to do and that I think God wants me to do.

The second reason is that building a house also applies to building a life. For years, my life was pretty well set out. I would work my full-time job and take care of Mom. Then Mom died before Dad, and he became the one I cared for. Anything more than that was a hobby. Building my house? It was already built, and I had no real choices.

Then Dad died, and I find myself trying to figure out how to build my house. What do I want my house to be like? What is the wise way to build a life? Yes, I know, walking with God, within God’s will, obedient to God, and all those other good Sunday School answers. But unfortunately, Scripture doesn’t tell me whether or not to have a garden or what to put in it, or where to live. It tells me a lot about wisdom, but not always what the wise decision. Now that I seem to have choices, what choices should I make?

And how do I make decisions that fit together as a cohesive whole? How do I become the person I want to be? Now that I’m on my own, who am I? These are problems and questions we all face, and that may be one of the big lessons I need to learn. I’m not trying to figure out what everyone else has figured out - everyone else is in the same boat even if they don’t realize it. I just happen to have circumstances that make or allow me to be more aware.

I may also be having the “can’t see the forest for the trees” situation. When I encounter verses like this, I try to look at the whole, when really, wisdom would suggest that I deal with what’s in front of me.

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