For Me?

My church is doing a study for Lent - 40 Day Journey with Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  The devotional part is quick and easy - just a paragraph to read, a Bible verse and a Psalm typically.  However there are thought provoking questions and journaling suggestions at the end of each day's reading.   I'd like to say I will journal each day of Lent, but I've already missed that goal.

The last two days of reading have had heavy emphasis on prayer.  I have felt for some time that my prayer life was lacking.  Perhaps it is because I wait until the end of the day to attempt prayer and before I finish, I'm almost always asleep.  The author here encourages prayer to be a morning ritual, gives the example of Christ praying first thing in the morning and goes as far as to say that morning prayer is "decisive for the day".  He says it helps with the ordering and scheduling of our day.  I must admit that intrigues me!  I'm most often running about with no idea what's next and that means neglect of thing that I need to get done.  But when I read prayer is "decisive for the day" I also see it as seeking God first - it's a choice, a decision we make - to pray.  If we decide to consult with God first, it only makes sense that our decisions throughout the day should also have God in mind.

Bonhoeffer also says that we are to read the word of God as God's word for us, individually - not consulting others regarding what scripture says to them, but reading each passage as if it were written strictly for ourselves, talking with God about our interpretation and not doubting that is the message God meant just for us.  I guess that is the mystery of God, the mystery of the Bible.  That it CAN mean different things to different people yet still be relevant in our lives.  Just because we believe the Bible is divinely inspired by God does not mean that it has to be a literal, black & white translation!  Who could we really trust to provide that translation if that were the case?

I will go out on a limb and say that in reading scripture, we can safely declare that an area where we are allowed to be a bit ego-centric.  As for my personal relationship with God, His word is really ALL ABOUT ME!  I gotta admit, I kinda like that!  I've always had this sort of fantasy in the back of my mind that some day, some man would have written a volume of love letters to me or kept a journal about me or something else poetic and lovely that I would come across.  Dreams DO come true because it was all written thousands of years ago  - and really, JUST FOR ME.  And you have one too!  You have your own book of love letters from that guy.....  that guy who loves you like no other.   It's pretty great to realize that happily ever after is not a myth, it just comes in different form than we are humanly taught.

And that's kind of what Lent really is.  It's a 40 day discovery of all the ways God loves us.  Enjoy your journey!

The Big Easy

I'm a big fan of easy.  I'm always looking for the easy way to cook, clean, fix things, etc.  Most of the time, I can even make life easy.   Easy is always available.  You have a task at hand that looks difficult, walk into Lowe's or Target or Walmart and you're likely to find a product that will make it easier for you.  Even if there is not a product, if you think long and hard, often you can find an easier way to get things done.

But today I wonder, just what are we sacrificing by making things so dang easy all the time?

How do you feel after you've done something easy?  Does it make a lasting impression?

Now - think about how you feel after accomplishing difficult tasks?  What are the things we remember most?  The easy things or the really difficult ones?

Today begins Lent.  To me, it is a time to refocus on Christ and gift of His sacrifice.  Some give up things that distract them from Christ.  Some add in things that will draw them closer to Him.  Some just ignore it of course……..   easy.  Easy to ignore it.  Easy to give up something that was not significant or add in something that you needed to do anyway.  I would venture to say most make it easy.  But my challenge this year is to actually embrace the difficult.  I have decided on something difficult to omit from my life but I'm also adding in something that will be hard to make time for.  I need this time to be meaningful.  I don't want it to be easy.  The easy things fade away.  I want to remember this year as a time that I began to see value in those things that are difficult.

So what are we to do when we are tempted to go back to the easy?

What do we do when we want to give up?

What do we do when we don't know which direction is best?

What do we do when our self will seems to outweigh God's will?

We pray.  And we wait.  And we listen…….  Not easy things to do.  But God WILL answer.  Is He easy to seek, easy to wait for or easy to hear?  No way.  God is not easy.  He may not even give you an easy answer.  But He will give you the BEST answer.  God wants His best for us.  When we look at what we quantify as "best" in our lives, they were most likely things that did not come easy.  To earn "best" status, someone had to work for it.  First place comes after years of hard work and practice.  The same is true spiritually.

Someone very important to me once asked, "What, of value, ever comes easy?" - and what he may not know is that was actually an answer from God.  Nothing, of value, comes easy.  A life worth living can't be easy because easy things have very little value in our lives.  Our effort, our struggles, our mistakes, our heartaches, our sacrifices - those are what makes life valuable; those are what make a difference and mold us into God's best.

Writing - healthy habit or unnecessary evil?

I continue to let this go - this writing that I used to be so passionate about.  It was a form of therapy to me at one time; an outlet for undefined emotion - a way to work out my thoughts and give words to my feelings.

What I've noticed since I quit writing regularly is that I find it increasingly difficult to communicate effectively.  I was very in tune with my thoughts and feelings two years ago and I now have a hard time   processing emotion.  The only blame I can put to that is that I no longer have time to stop and just *feel*.  It's go, go, go which makes time for writing a luxury for which I have no budget.  Sometimes sleep is just more important than thought…….

Or is it?  What causes sleep to take precedence over other healthy habits?  Depression, health issues, or just pure avoidance?  Am I afraid of what I might encounter if I just sit down to process it a bit?  Am I just so stubborn that I don't want to confront the negative feelings that might be surfacing?

Possibly it has nothing to do with anything negative at all.  When I quit writing, it was when I was incredibly happy.  My best blogging took place when I was unhappy and when life began happening the way I wanted, it was all too easy to quit writing.  Who wants to hear about pure bliss anyway?

But why must I limit myself?  Lent is upon us and we will be doing an interesting study at church throughout the season.  The study provides journaling/blogging opportunities and I'm kind of excited about that.  I want to make time for this again.  Instead of giving something up, I'll be adding this in.  Adding something has always worked better for me than giving something up.

So - let's see.  I'm going to be blogging away, but I'm not sure how personal this will get.  I'm still very cautious what I put out there for all the world to see.  Some of it I will post, some of it I won't.  But I will be back in the game - the game of knowing who I am, what I feel and how to process all that.

Life is rough.  Might as well leave a record of our struggles.  At the very least, someone somewhere will know they are not alone by reading a blog that some random individual was bold enough to put out there.  For now, it's late and the need for sleep is trumping my need to vent, or think, or process.

Of all the ways we are loved….

God loves in so many weird ways.

Just when we are ready to give up, He often works on the hearts of those we love.

Turns out, I have not lost in love yet again but could be possibly be working on the greatest (albeit most complicated) love story of all time.

What, of value, comes easy in life?

I can't turn my back until all hope is dashed.  I thought hope was gone last week.  I was wrong.

There is hope.  There is faith (more than I knew).  AND there is LOVE.  Not just between two people but from the God who cares for them.

Luke 12:27 - Consider the lilies…..

2014

What a difference a year makes.

Obviously I am not who I was a year ago.  A long string of disappointment has left me weary, disgruntled and jaded.  2013 rang in with incredible hope and so much awe of how God works and how much He loves me.  This year I question that.

I have lost in love again.  I could say it was due to poor choices but I really don't believe that.  It started as something good and God breathed but turned on us both.  Wish I knew why or how.

The thing I have come to realize is that we don't get to know why or how on most things.  Sometimes we sit in awe over the good things and still wonder why God blesses us so.  We sit in tears over the hurtful things and cry out asking why and feeling like we don't deserve the hardship.  If we take a really honest look however, we realize we do deserve it.  We also deserve the good.  So why the paradox here?  Because we are neither inherently good or evil we are just human and we have choices to make - sometimes easy, sometimes not.  We can control our own choices but we can't control the choices of others and there are consequences no matter what.  Our choices have consequences for us and for others - and others' choices sometimes affect us even if unintentionally.

So even when you finally get a good grasp on your own life and feel  you have control - someone else who doesn't have control over theirs can still interrupt and wreak havoc on your order.  Someone whom you love, someone who loves you.  Love doesn't cancel out bad choices.  Love can seek the best in someone but only for so long.  Eventually all that energy gets used and the love gets depleted.  It's not love for others that wanes, it's love of self that gets stolen.  If we lose our self love then we die a bit inside and become no good to anyone else.

So I'm back at it - blogging to find Aimz again.  Learning to love Aimz again and in the process loving Christ like I should have been doing all along.  How many times must I learn not to put a man above my God?  Am I spiritually retarded or is there something else He's trying to tell me?  Only 2014 knows and it will likely take that long to discover myself again.  This will be a year of living in the moment, no assumptions, no expectations just breathing daily and taking life one step at a time.

James 1:2-4 Consider it pure joy my brothers whenever you face trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.  Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, no lacking anything.

Discipleship, Christ likeness, and other mysteries

So.....

 Many things have been churning in my mind and for quite some time.

 I'm perplexed about faith and religion and church and the like. Strange, isn't it - to be still so unsure of one's spirtuality after having spent one's whole life IN CHURCH ? 

My faith is intact and STRONG. However, I don't fully grasp what I'm doing here. Why is church so important and what is my role? One can have faith without church and many people attend church without faith. Why am I so drawn to it and why is it so important that my loved ones share that with me? I honestly don't have an answer for that question just yet.

 And we are taught that we are called to be disciples - followers of Jesus. We are also taught to be Christ like. So, does that mean that as we follow Jesus and His teachings, we become more like him? Do we? ever? I mean, it seems so ebb and flow.... Sometimes we are very on cue with Christ, but others not so much. I would think that if you truly follow and spend time with Christ, this should be a constant - not an ever changing cycle. Perhaps that is just the human part of this. We are moody and emotional and NEVER constant.

 So it is, I suppose with our relationships. Not just with Christ, but with everyone. I don't like it. I'm tired of emotions. I'm tired of good days, bad days and in between days. I crave consistency.

 Because this is beyond my control then I must make choices that provide stability in my life and maybe that's where church comes in. It is one constant that has alway been a part of what makes me feel whole. It is the one place where most everyone there (for the most part) knows how love should go - even if they don't always practice it.

 I can't control how others love, but I can control how I choose to do it. If I'm true to my instinct, the best way is always the way Christ loved. It's far from the easiest way or the most comfortable way but it seems to me that He modeled it this way for a reason. My instinct also says that although people may come into our lives randomly, we are still to love like Christ loved. Sometimes that means that our love is not returned the way we would wish. Sometimes that means our love is ignored. Sometimes, life takes our love and stomps on it, or poisons it with cancer, or gets angry with it. Sometimes our love is overshadowed by other human distractions or worse, completely rejected.

 I believe that we've experienced all of those at one time or another and I'm positive that I haven't always kept on loving. In fact, I've done the opposite in most scenarios. But mistakes are how we learn. Ease and comfort don't work. Sometimes we have to be uncomfortable, sometimes our feelings have to get hurt, sometimes we have to take life's arrows in the gut - but we can't let those things kill our love. We have to keep loving. The only way to guard our hearts is to keep using them - even when it goes beyond our human will to do so. Don't let your love die.  It's the only way to live out Christ's legacy.

And God said, "No."

When I was little, I asked God to make candy be as nutritious and low calorie as vegetables - and God said NO.  When I was a teenager, I asked God to make me naturally thin with no acne and God said NO.  When I was an older teen and dealing with the first phases of an autoimmune disease, I asked God to heal me and God said NO.  When I was in college, I asked God to show me the right career path and God said NO.  As a young adult, I asked God to help me understand my husband and God said NO.  As a young mother, I asked God for more sleep and God said NO.  As I neared my 40's, I asked God to heal my marriage and God said NO.

Sometimes all we hear is NO, NO, NO.

After all of those negative answers to my questions, I pouted for a bit.  Then I cried.  Then I spent time angry at God, asking why.  Why must life be so stinkin' difficult?

But after the biggest NO of my life (the divorce), I began to realize that those negatory answers might have been the very clearest pathways to some of my best YESSES!

When I realized candy would never be as nutritious and low calorie as vegetables, I eventually decided I liked my leafy greens.  YES!  When I realized that I would have to deal with my weight and the occasional pimple, I learned to look beyond the physical and realize how much more there is to a person - including myself.  YES!  When I figured out there was no cure for my autoimmune disease and God wasn't going to heal me, I found ways of coping and new medications were developed that ease my symptoms.  And it's not life threatening or severe enough to be debilitating so I really nothing to complain about.  YES!  I may not have ever found the right career path, but I got to spend time as a stay home mom.  YES!  I'll never understand men, but I've got some really great girlfriends who understand me.  YES!  I may not have gotten more sleep as a young mother but I'm getting quite a bit as a mother of teens which may be even more important.  YES!  God didn't heal my marriage, but He did heal my hurts and help me find myself again.  YES!

Sometimes NO is a YES waiting to happen.

So, I've had a few NO's lately.  And I pouted.  And I cried.  Got mad.  Asked why.  Just like before.  But at the same time, I'm not too terribly upset over them because I know that there is a yes waiting to happen, when the time is right and when I've learned what I needed to learn from the no's.

In the meantime, I'm looking back over all the yesses and learning to be thankful for the no's.  And that's what helps me sleep at night - knowing that no matter how hard life gets, there's a reward around the corner or maybe a chance for me to be someone's YES.