Obligatory Gratitude Post, or is it?

This week was Thanksgiving.  Today is Black Friday.   Are you feelin it?  Man, I sure am.  After a month of spending lavish amounts of time with God and writing, my time was not my own this week and I am spent.  Sometimes, that happens.  Life gets busy.  I've had a month of practicing "Be Still" and "Don't Fret" and that is one of the many things I was grateful for this week.  I've got a long way to go.  But this week Isure was thankful for the practice. The practice of finding peace and calm amidst the most dramatic of adventures.  The practice of letting go of what I think is necessary in favor of what God says is necessary.  This week, that means my blog is going to be super short because that is the amount of time I had to spend.  I will save my eloquence, real or imagined, for those who have seen me at my most dramatic, who love me even when they are not impressed by my shenanigans and who laugh at and with me when I need it most. 


That's why I wanted to talk to you about Friendsgiving.  I have a group of friends that have been gathering after Thanksgiving for over a decade.  It started with the lament that our parents always did the heavy lifting on Thanksgiving and we could never be adults and practice making a Thanksgiving meal.  We decided that was a great idea and what else were we going to do with all those Thanksgiving left overs than to share them with the people we wanted to spend time with.  I suggested we make it a murder mystery dinner party and thus our decade long Friendsgiving adventures began.  Over the years we've had a traditional Charlie Brown meal (yes I mean toast and popcorn and all that other stuff) and full on Thanksgiving extravaganza's.  Some times we switch genders just for fun.  Yes, some of my guy friends make very ugly women.  The group has gotten bigger and smaller as life and circumstances change but every year we gather, dress in ridiculous costumes, suffer through truly terrible scripts and laugh until we cry.

In all of our changing circumstances, shapes and situations, we gather.  We gather with our family and we gather with our friends.  We acknowledge that our lives wouldn't be the same with out them.  We shun the world and it's stress fueled impatience in favor of a good meal with those we love.  We don't rush it.  We value it and savor it.  We celebrate having found those just weird enough to think our weird is awesome.

We are intentional about it every year.  We look forward to it, we brag about it, we share our joy and make room on our calendars no matter what.  I may go a little crazy creating costumes for me and my spouse, which is totally what I will be getting back to for my second all nighter in a row, but I couldn't be happier.

I hope your Thanksgiving was allergen free, devoid of flair ups, free from unwelcome drama and full of the peace of God that surpasses all understanding.  I also hope you are thinking more about who you haven't seen in a while than what stores are having sales.  I hope you'll give them a call, invite them to coffee or over for games.  If you're super cool like me and my friends, then consider inviting them over for a little mystery, a lot of laughter and plenty of hokey costumes. 

 But even if murder mystery dinner parties aren't your thing, find your own thing.  If you're into interpretive dance, do that!  If you're into shadow puppet historical reenactment, well that is just way better with a crowd, am I right!  Don't lose sight of what's important.  People over tasks!

These are my people and I love them.  I couldn't be more grateful they are in my life.








Just as a side note, these aren't all the photos, and they aren't in order by date.  It's just a smattering.  If you promise to invite some folks over, I'll share this years photo next week ;)

Intolerant

I'm going to start by sharing something very important....something as weird as I am.  Something extremely on topic.  Prepare yourself.

God uses every bit of our story.  I was thinking about that as I opened up my new box of pots and pans I had to buy because of my hubby's nickel allergy.  I was thinking about how so many of my people, my tribe, have allergies and insensitive to food.  I have a loved one who has struggled for years with symptoms that multiple doctors couldn't figure out and it was apparently as simple (I use that word ironically for those of us with allergies and unexplained symptoms) as cutting lactose out of her diet.  Gluten, dairy, nickel, nuts, onions, ginger, I have friends and family who all live in this awkward state of having to carefully pick what we can eat, where we can go and how pretentious we're going to sound when we get there.  I didn't seek out people of intolerance, but I am so proud to do life with them.  They work as hard to avoid our allergies as we do for theirs.  Part of the reason our friends work so hard to avoid their allergy foods is always individual and usually filled with people along the way that thought they just don't like the food they are avoiding and seem to think its a choice that can be trained out of us.  Sometimes the road to discovering what had been causing all those weird symptoms that the doctors couldn't figure out was a hard one.  We learn to live without those things but we miss them and every encounter that reintroduces those food items holds a vast array of consequences. 

As I was thinking about food intolerance God whispered something beautiful to me.  The care that my tribe puts into caring for our allergies is a very direct working out of 1 Corinthians 8:13 and Romans 14:19-21.

1 Corinthians 8:13
Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble.

Romans 14:19-21
Therefore let us not pass judgement on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother. Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats. It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble

My tribe adjusting our meals for community times of breaking bread (metaphorically speaking, I can't have bread) is an act of love.  We delight in serving each other in that way.  It isn't a burden that we resent, it is one we gladly share because we understand how difficult it is.  The same should be true of our intolerance, our fears and, our weaknesses in life.  They shouldn't be treated as an inconvenience that we must suffer through because someone else can't police themselves.  They should be loads that we share because we have intolerance, fears and weaknesses too and we should understand better than anyone. 

Being Real vs Being a Doer

I'm going to start this weeks blog with an apology.  When I was writing this I was on day two of a full blown migraine.  I ended up sacrificing the rest of my "computer day" to sit in a dark room.  What it taught me was this.  Oaths are important.  The temptation to run to the computer to "make up" the time I missed was strong.  Instead, I chose to keep my word before the Lord.  What I commit to Him is important and He thinks it's important.  The scripture is clear about keeping our oaths, especially the ones you make to the Lord.  We sometimes fall into the trap of putting the old testament in a category of "not applicable".  For me, it was more important to let my yes be yes on this matter.  So I'm going to post a little late today, I'm going to leave the rest of the post in its original state, and I'm not going to worry about it.  It's not professional, but it is real. 

~

One of the great things about being on "A mission from God" is that He will keep encouraging and reinforcing the message He wants to communicate.  Just like He does in the Word.  If something is important, God keeps saying it.  Have you ever noticed that when you're reading scripture?

God has really been encouraging me about rest.  Sunday, we bumped into a couple God had on my mind all week.  I shared, and she shared, and she encouraged me.  "I was at the place this summer, cutting out social media and releasing, to just be.  Being present in the moment instead of trying to figure out what I can do."

At yoga a few days later, the focus was rest.  Laying down everything and only picking up what God gives you.  Songs, scripture, fellowship...all of it has been pulsing with the message, "Yes, Rest".

So I decided to go back to the Biblical reason why I focus on "do" and figure out what it really says.

James 1:22 NIV
Do not merely listen to the Word, and so deceive yourselves.  Do what it says.

 So, what has God told us to do?  In this context (James):

• Watch your tongue
• persevere
• be quick to listen, slow to anger 
• purge moral filth and evil from your life
• look intently into the perfect law
• love your neighbor

The funny thing is that the only part that comes even close to what I self defined as "do" was to care for orphans and widows in distress.  I condenses an entire book of the Bible into one word that threw my life out of balance.  This is part of the reason why it's important to keep reading the Word of God.  In the larger sense, there is a lot that the Word, or Scripture, tells us that we should be doing, not just nodding our heads at.  The above list is from one small book of the Bible and James (inspired by God) repeats them.  If you haven't read James lately, I recommend reading through it.  

Rest you Say?

This weeks blog is going to be...different.  If this is your first time here then you won't notice so ... sorry for when things go back to normal, I guess.  If you read last weeks blog, What is Rest, then you'll know that I am on a break, a sabbatical if you will.
 

I know, you're confused now.  How is there a blog?  Why has there been a post reminding me that this little slice of blogdom has been launched?  All good questions.  When I set off on this adventure last week I asked myself some questions and I had some questions asked of me.  Walking away from technology and noise can be interpreted as throwing the baby out with the bath water. So I wanted to do two things on the blog this week. 

1. I wanted to share the plan
2. I wanted to share what I did 

First, the plan

I do not plan on becoming a hermit.  I tend towards being a recluse as it is.  No, my goal was to be open for fellowship.  In my opinion, placing rules on a time of companionship is very counter productive and very hipster christian.  So, I didn't require others to go noise free to be around me or even mention to my friends and family that I was going on a technology and noise fast.  This isn't supposed to be about what I can do.  So I'm trying to stay very un-rigid.  I also decided to give myself one day of computer time and see how I did with that.  This was partly because I meet with a writing group one day a week and partially because I wanted to see if I could treat my time with technology in a healthy way.  It would force me to prioritize what I was going to do on my computer day.  So that was the plan.  In my time alone; no noise, no computer, no TV, no search engines.  I wanted to give myself a little boredom, a lot of quiet and the practice time I need to be still.  If the blog looks a little boring today and lacks the fanfare of social media posts to announce it....well, that's because I had to set some priorities.  I chose companionship over tasks and I practiced letting go of what I thought should be done.

Second, what I did

I wanted to spend a lot of time in God's word.  That's a given.  I started out working on my current studies but one of the questions really drew my attention to the question, what is rest?  What does God mean by rest?  Normally, we would assume it means you don't work but scripture also talks about allowing yourself to take care of what's needful during sabbath (ie rescue your donkey).  So what is rest?  That question led me on an old fashioned word search thanks to the back of my Bible and not any fancy website or search engine.  I didn't even ask *insert random gender non-specific robot voiced assistant*.  So, I thought I would share where that led me and what I learned.
The verses that started it all were Psalm 37: 7-11, 34.

        Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices!  Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath!  Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.  For the evil doers shall be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the Land.  In just a little while, the wicked will be no more; though you look carefully at his place, he will not be there.  But the meek shall inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant peace.  Wait for the Lord and keep his way, and he will exalt you to inherit the land; you will look on when he wicked are cut off.

Be still, wait patiently, don't fret or be angry, hope in the Lord, keep His ways.  From here on, I'm going to give you the scripture reference and what I learned.  Like I said, I'm prioritizing my time.  Please look up the verses, or do your own word study on rest.  I think you'll be surprised.

• Ex 3:12-18  Rest is holy, consecrated, celebrated, a covenant, abstaining from work, a sign
• Ex 33:14  Rest is given my God, something God gives
• Josh 14:15  Rest is the cessation of conflict
• Josh 21:44  Rest is peace
• Ps 33  Rest is hope & faith in our great God, rejoicing
• Ps 62:1-2, 5  Rest is only found in God, or security and our hope
• Ps 90:17  Rest is settled upon us, seeped in, draped over, soaked in
• Ps 91  Rest is a place of refuge
• Is 30:15  Rest is quietness and trust, repentance and a guiltless mind
• Is 32:17-18  Rest is confidence, security, peace and being undisturbed
• Jer 6:16  Rest is asked for and comes from walking in God's way  

        This one I am going to write out because I want to memorize it myself.

    This is what the Lord says:  Stand at the crossroads and look;  ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will     find rest for your souls.  But you said "We will not walk in it."

• Mt 11:28  Rest is a release from burden
• 2 Cor 12:9-10  Rest is weakness, laid down in humility, for the sake of glorifying God's strength
• Heb 4:9  Rest is belief; utter, absolute belief
• Heb 4:10  Rest is ceasing from work or industry
• Rev 14:13  Rest is ceasing from your labors

This is a much richer, broader, and deeper definition of rest.  This is something I can practice.

Monument vs Standing Stone

Many of us look back at our lives and can pick out the bad decisions, big and small, that have become monuments to our failures. Sometimes we make the monuments so big we can't move past them.  Sometimes we miss the point of the monument altogether.  

One of my big failures was college. I knew what school I was supposed to go to since my freshman year of high school.  My mother will tell you she hated the school I chose because it was so far away.  By the time I graduated high school and headed off, I had no other direction.  I was sure that was where God wanted me to go.  I went for about a semester before I failed out and had to be shipped back to my parents in shame. There were a whole lot of bad decisions during that time but one of them has come to my mind lately because God has made me aware of the fact that I'm doing it again. I decided to go to college to become a nurse. Was I keen about caring for people, good at math and science, and excited about the field of medicine? NOPE! I didn't like most of those things, and I was not good at them. Why did I choose to pursue nursing. Because I wanted to be a medical missionary. I wanted to be ready and willing to go wherever God wanted me to go. The period of failure that followed left me angry and confused. How could God abandon me like that? I was doing all this for Him! I had to come to grips with the fact that God never intended for me to be a missionary to foreign lands, much less a medical one. I looked at the desires of my heart and misinterpreted how it would look and made the very large mistake of thinking that's what God wanted me to do. 

So often we hold onto the verses that tell us God will give us the desires of our hearts, and that's true, but we fail to remember the other parts of those verses and chapters.  We have to ground ourselves in the Lord first.  To delight in Him, then He will bring about giving us the opportunities to fulfill the desires He designed us with.  Not only that, but God is going to bring things about how He wants, no matter what we have planned.  No matter what or how we thought it would happen.  

My mother told me today that she never understood why I went to college to pursue something I hated. I was momentarily stunned as I said to myself "I was pursuing what I thought God wanted me to do" and I realized I can remember three distinct times when I have said that. College, adoption, and writing. Three major turning points. I don't know if I was supposed to go to college but I can tell you I met my lifelong best friend there. Her family practically adopted me and when my hubby was desperate for a job and we had to leave our state and our families, God provided one 30 minutes from her. I don't know if I was supposed to fail and give up college but I can tell you that I found my husband and my talent when I got home. I have no idea if I was supposed to pursue adoption but I know God has a plan. 

Major milestones have been marked by this pattern. Get a nudge from the Lord, create a picture of how I think that will look, and then go to the extreme to fulfill it.  The beautiful part of a God who is always teaching and growing us into who He designed us to be is the fact that He knows us, knows what we need to learn and keeps giving us refresher courses. As I stand on the precipice of pursuing "What I think God wants me to do" I'm grateful for the reminder today that I need to make sure I'm not more focus on what I can do for the Lord.  

All the hesitation, doubt and caveats I have being battling this year were because I was trying to do more than what God wanted me to do when I knew that what God wanted was for me to spend time with Him. He specifically asked me to "do" nothing. To rest. I've been fighting that hard. I don't want to be lazy. I want to be preparing. I don't want to be rushing to the deadline because I didn't give myself adequate prep time. So the little hint, the gift of a redemptive work for the future, I turned into a mission statement for life. I took that one thing and turned it into a college prep course full of requirements, standards of success and work. The whole time moaning like a toddler about when rest time was going to be over already. I know what God has given me. I know that what He is asking of me right now is not a spiritual workout regimen to prepare for the race. He is asking me to spend time with the source of my fuel. 


Life gives us plenty of chances for self reflection if we want them. I am going to use this moment to turn the monument I was building to failure into a standing stone of remembrance. To remind myself that I tend to focus on what I can "do" for God instead of spending time with Him. To remind myself to strip away my expectations of what I think comes next and let God teach me at the pace He intends. To remind myself that my future is in God's loving hands and it will be for my good, one way or another. I  choose to turn those monuments to my failure into standing stones of remembrance of what the Lord has done.

Self Discovery on an Adventure: The Bad Stuff

I don't think I've made it clear to everyone that I recently got the chance to go on an adventure in Great Britain.  My group had been planning for about a year and we thought we were pretty well prepared (You can check out the previous installments here first and here second to see how that went). Travel is great because it's full of new experiences, sights and adventures.  It can also be full of exhaustion, confusion and short tempers.  In my pursuit of an adventure to find God in my everyday I discovered some things about myself in the testing ground that the trip became that I was pretty ashamed of.  So what do you do when you discover unpleasant things about yourself when you're supposed to be having an adventure?

My hubby and I went to Great Britain back in our second year of marriage with a friend.  It was an amazing opportunity and I really enjoyed myself.  We had a great time.  Here's the thing, our travel companion thought I had the worst time ever.  Why?  I was overweight and generally unhappy.  It was my normal at the time.  I was getting used to having a chronic illness and getting used to being a wife. 

Complaint was a normal part of my language.  I have since been called out for complaining which made me aware of what I thought was "sharing" and was really the symptom of a heart problem.  That first time to Great Britain was full of great memories but it was a great lesson afterward as I got feedback from my friend.  It made me aware of the attitudes I wear.  

This latest adventure to Great Britain was like a mirror of the first time.  I watched as my travel companion struggled and a completely unexpected thing happened.  I was impatient.  I am appalled to admit it.  Even now I feel ashamed of myself.  My previous esperience should have prompted me to greater understanding and compassion.  Instead, I kept trying to make things better with more planning, adjustments to the schedule, and trying to interact less with my companions.  The truth is, how I do things isn't how my companions did things.  While this led to further frustration, it didn't have too.  Once misunderstanding took root, every word seemed to have the potential to be hurtful.  I tried to fix it by talking less which ended up coming across as passive aggressive and sulky.  I hate those words.  They are ugly words and I hate imagining myself wearing them.

People wear all kinds of weird stuff when they go on vacation.  Stuff they would never wear at home.  Plaid beanies, Hawaiian shirts, lederhosen.  It seems we also wear our dirty laundry.  The secret things we say in the privacy of our minds that we dismiss at home because we can easily brush them aside.  In our safe places, in our familiar, we indulge in them like pieces of chocolate because we can be alone.  We don't have to constantly be on our best behavior.  On a trip, or outside our comfort zones, or during times of exhaustion and pain, there is no where to hide.  Those things we think in the privacy of our mind become an internal snide commentary that makes its way onto our face and out of our mouths.  

During the course of any adventure it is always wise to be aware of tensions and to ask yourself: 

1. Is my behavior adding to or subtracting from the experience we are having?
2. What lingering dark place in your heart came out of your mouth in a moment of weakness?
3. What am I going to do about it?

For Biblical and practical reasons the first thing you need to do about it is confess it to God and then go and apologize to your companions.  Getting it resolved gives everyone the best chance to reset and get on with having a great time.  Once that is done, I find it very useful to write it down and talk to God about it in detail.  While the immediate weakness of exhaustion and stress will go away, the underlying issue that it exposed is something you want to bring to the Light.

   

Discovering unpleasant things about yourself on an adventure gives you the gift of insight.  The opportunity to bring those things before the Lord, confess them, and ask Him to weed them out of your thought closet (to borrow a turn of phrase from Jennifer Rothschild).  It's hard, and it's ugly, but I can't think of a better memento to bring back from any vacation.

I hope my travel companions will look back on this adventure and forget the tensions, spats, pain and frustrations.  I hope they will remember the adventure for the exciting and new experience it was.  Either way, I know I'm praising God for using the adventure to teach me more about Him and who He wants me to be.    

The Search for Real Friendship

Pam sat there with her book open and wouldn't meet anyone's eyes.  Her hurting heart radiated off of her like a palpable wave until finally the dam broke and she began to speak, her voice raw with suppressed emotion.  Pam's story is hard but what came pouring forth wasn't her story, it was her current need.  She wanted a friend.  No one would get deep into the places she needed a companion to share with.  No one would even commit to spending time with her.  I sat in that Bible Study with a group of wildly different women in various stages of life and overwhelmingly the conversation that followed revealed a great need.  Friendship.  I thought it was just me, this loneliness, this ache to pour my heart out.  I had trained myself over the years to resist the urge.  No one had demonstrated the desire to know me.  I can barely get people to commit to hanging out.  In Christian circles we are told that's only right because we only need God.  Only He knows our hearts.  Only He can be a proper receptacle for our struggles.  But as I sat there and listened to woman after woman agree that they couldn't gather good friends no matter how much they pursued it, I was shocked.  It wasn't just me?

Is it a product of our age?  A teaching of the church?  Are we too busy getting out from under our own struggles that we can't spend ourselves on others in times of sorrow or joy?  Is it a generational thing, that we've forgotten how to hold onto people no matter what life brings?  Are there such things as deep friendships anymore?  While God will always be our best friend, the only one who will truly and completely know us and is the only perfect receptacle for our struggles, God absolutely designed us for community.  We are meant to sharpen each other, encourage each other and love each other.  

Proverbs 18:24 English Standard Version (ESV)

24 A man of many companions may come to ruin,

    but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

Proverbs 18:24 is often used to remind us that God is always a better friend to us than any other but an examination of the verse reveals a more subtle truth.  There is a difference between an acquaintance and a friend.  The Proverbs are full of exhortations to surround yourself with wise people.  We are called to avoid isolation; instead, we are called to fellowship.  To hold each other accountable and encourage one another.  To love one another.

While marriage and family seem to be understood as areas of our life that are full of struggle, and therefore require effort to maintain, we have forgotten how to put effort into our friendships.  How to love through disagreement.  How to spend our time lavishly on a friend in need.  How to be more interested in being real with and for someone.  The frightening truth is that the lack of practice giving and receiving real friendship has handicapped us as we practice a friendship with a God who wants to be closer than a brother.  For Pam, she has no idea how to resolve a relationship with a God who hasn't been the friend she wants.  She can't even find an example of the body of Christ being a friends heart to her.  Like many, a disappointing attempt at friendship means walking away.  They weren't real friends to begin with, our hurting heart says.  Can you see why that proclivity might not be serving us in our friendship with God?  

It is clear that this truth has been noticed.  Blogs and sermons are trumpeting the call to hospitality.  They are encouraging us to open our doors and invite people in.  I want to add my voice to that call in a slightly different timbre.  Don't just open your doors out of Christian duty.  Open your hearts along with your doors and share yourself.  Take the time to get to know someone, don't just wave at them in the hall at church and consider them a friend.  Know their struggles and be a safe person they can talk to.  The church has taken the call to be the hands and feet of Jesus literally.  We fulfill our obligations to greet or serve communion or teach Sunday school and forget that the call to be like Jesus includes other "body parts".  Our ears, hearts and minds are also tools God uses to minister.

Be a real friend.  Reach out.  DON'T STOP!!!  

If so many of us have experienced the disappointment of failing to find real connection, that hurt is going to take some effort to overcome.  Be persistent, find your tribe.  Invite someone to join your adventure!

Linkups:

   

Comparison - Inspiration or Pitfall?

Greetings you awesome people!  God has been working on something in me for a while and so today I'd like to talk about comparisons.  There are a couple reasons for this.  

One -  the blogging/writing word demands that you self promote until your sick of yourself, and the idea you ever wanted to be a writer in the first place, much less have time for actual writing.  All of this means you are constantly looking at other peoples stuff so that you can figure out how to do the blogging/writing thing better.  

Two -  it's a common problem.  It isn't reserved exclusively to us creative, writer types either.  It feels pretty impossible not to compare ourselves to others.

The problem of comparison is a tricky one because it has some slippery slopes that lead most people to recommend you avoid the hill all together but that's not really practical.  Learning and growing usually requires reference material.  Looking at a reference means you are looking at someone with more skill than you.  In fact, Jesus is our ultimate reference material.  The ideal to which we strive but will never attain on this side of heaven.  Not to mention we are observational creatures.  We look around.  We see stuff.  Some of that stuff is what we want for ourselves.  It can inspire, or it can lead us into a pit.

One of my groups of Bible Study ladies felt prompted to start a study on this subject and so we went and picked up the new Lifeway Study, Rachel & Leah.  At the time we decided to start this study, each of the ladies in my group shared how they were struggling with comparision in their lives.  For me, it was looking at all these well put together websites, social media accounts and blogs.  It was observing those who had acheived a level of success in writing and recognizing my lack of skill in comparison.  It was disheartening.  What's worse, I didn't think I had a comparison problem until I was prompted to share.  

This is going to be a mini review of the study itself because the journey that my group is on can't be communicated without sharing how we're interacting with the Bible Study.  

We don't like it.  Each of us has struggled to get meaning or insight or connection with any part of this study.  Some of that is because we just think differently than the author.  Some of it is because my ladies have been in consistent Bible Studies for decades and this study is just not our speed.  It doesn't erase the need or the prompt we've had to address our comparision issues.  We are praying this study has impact because it's a neccessary topic but we've been disappointed that this wasn't the huge revelation we expected when God lead us to this study.

Well, God wasn't finished with me yet.  My husband and I just started attending a new church in our area and in the bulletin was an invitation to a Summer Ladies Small Group covering the book, Unseen.  I stepped out of my comfort zone and decided to join.  I knew from the description I saw of the book that this is what I needed to continue the learning process of addressing comparison in my life.  I'm only two chapters in at this point but I can tell you God is building a lesson plan for me.  A side quest on my adventure.  A beautiful reminder that what I see as delays on my journey towards something amazing or significant aren't delays at all.  

Comparison can be a tool that you use to inspire yourself; to give you hope that, with endurance and practice, you too can reach your goal.  It can also be a tool you use to build envy, resentment, despair and surrender.  

There are many ways to combat negative comparision but I'm going to start with what I believe is the foundation.  As I have been reading Unseen, I began to look at how I viewed my mundane moments. If my mundane, nowhere, "normal", boring moments are actually the perfect opportunity to hang out with my best friend, that changes everything.  Doing chores is so much more enjoyable when done with a friend nearby to have a conversation with.  

And suddenly we aren't comparing our lack against someone else's bounty because we are full up!  Your bounty may be different than mine but we can rejoice in our mutual abundance!  

God is always going to be the catalyst to a healthy view of your life.  I can look at my friends immaculate taste in design and sigh with joy or sigh with envy. I'd rather sigh with joy and share in the look on God's face as He looks with love on His precious daughter.

I do recommend you pick up Unseen.  I invite you to join me in reading it.  Let's talk!  Your invited to come on the journey with me.

Linkups:

   

Belligerent Depression

Yesterday was a hard evening.  I made my hubby a delicious meal, planned something special to show him I loved him and gave him time to relax playing his favorite game.  I was especially pleased and happy.  In that moment of happiness my hubby said something I'm sure he thought was a joke but hit me like a ton of bricks.  Instantly I bottomed out.  My joy fled, my happiness dissipated and I spent the rest of the evening silently seething.  I felt the depression circling my heart.  By the time my hubby came to bed I knew he had no idea he had hurt my feelings so I told him.  My hubby is famous for being Capt. Oblivious (yes I capitalize it, he has "super powers".  Capt. Oblivious is his hero name)  He is also sensitive and loving.  He doesn't like to have a break in our relationship.  It makes him extremely anxious.  But I couldn't let it go and I knew I wasn't just skirting depression, I was actively choosing belligerent depression.

Over the years I have learned what is and is not acceptable during an argument with my spouse.  I learned this at the expense of my amazing husband I am ashamed to say.  There are many reasons why my husband and I don't spat very often and one of the big ones is that I'm usually in the wrong.  Even if I'm right...

This isn't a commentary on who wins arguments, because if that were my goal I'd "win" every time.  My husband would acquiesce and apologize.  I could rule him like the queen of hearts.  My reign would be cruel and terrible.

In our first year of marriage God made sure to teach me some powerful lessons in submission.  My husband has a quiet, patient spirit that God designed to be the perfect mate to my impulsive, blunt spirit.  It took me a while to figure out how my big personality was supposed to submit to my husbands humble spirit.  It's a good thing God got started on those lessons early.  I needed lots of time to learn.  While learning that lesson I discovered something about myself.  Sometimes I get mad or depressed.  Randomly, without warning.  My husband, being a convenient, safe and non combative target, most often becomes the focus of my ire.  Sure, I get upset under the pretext of something he has done "wrong".  Some word or thoughtless action that hurt my feelings.  Years of marriage have taught me that my anger and depression have almost nothing to do with my husband's actions.  He hasn't changed.  The thing I laughed at last week suddenly becomes the thing that sends me over the edge today.

In the midst of hormones and whatever else is going on in my brain and body it's been difficult to stop myself from taking it out on my husband.  For the first few years I would remind myself that being mad at my husband (especially for as long as I felt like being mad) was like kicking Bambi.  Staying in an angry or depressed state for as long as I "wanted" to just made it more and more difficult to figure out how to extricate myself.  That's when I started the ridiculous habit of  the "Stupid Fire hydrant".  I had been punishing my husband with my anger for a time and I knew it was wrong.  I couldn't think of how to dismiss my anger until a red fire hydrant caught my eye.  God whispered quietly to me that my anger at my spouse was just as pointless as being angry at a fire hydrant.  I don't know what God did  but it felt like he supernaturally increased the amount of fire hydrants on that trip home and I just started saying "stupid fire hydrant".  After the first two times my hubby and I both began to laugh.  That allowed me to dissipate my anger and talk to my husband again without an agenda.  As my hubby and I approach our second decade of marriage I have learned how to apologize for getting upset and depressed.  I'm not apologizing for being on the "wrong" side of the argument or for biological predispositions.  I'm apologizing for reacting wrong.  My confession and apology to my husband aren't about making him feel like a lord over me (if he even noticed things like that)  but about me and the attitude of my heart.

Even after years of practice at asking myself if I am getting upset or depressed because of something my husband has said or because there is something going on in my mind or body, I still mess up sometimes and react wrongly or choose to cast blame at my spouses feet.  It's gotten easier to apologize over the years but every once in a while my pride stands in the way and the upset lasts way longer than it should.

There are consequences to stubborn pride and belligerent anger.  I know enough about my cycle of depression to be aware of the warning signs and for me it usually begins with pride and belligerence followed by isolation. God knows my family history, I am fearfully and wonderfully made after all.  If He hadn't taught me how to notice my reactions, submit, apologize and re-center I would continue down the depression spiral.  So I gave up my belligerent anger and appologized.  After years of practice it's no longer easier said than done, it's just done.  I appologize and let it go.  You can too.

What are your triggers?  What sets you down a negative spiral?  Do you have a hard time letting go of being angry?

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My Resurrection

After last weeks emotional blog I felt it was time to share my story with you all.  It's a fitting week for me to do so too because this is the story of how my heart died and was brought back to life. 

I met my husband at my very first theater audition.  I was depressed at the time and just wanted to feel useful, like something was going right in my life.  God drew me to this audition for many reasons, there is no doubt.  When I walked up to the building the first person I saw was a handsome young man sitting outside.  I thought, "this guy is cute"!  so I went inside, sang my little song and was then told to go to the back dance studio to practice a group waltz as the final portion of the audition.  I didn't know anyone and while everyone paired up because they all knew each other, I stood there.  I stood there until I noticed that same cute guy shyly not pairing up with anyone either.  It looked like he wasn't pairing up with anyone else on purpose just so I didn't have to be alone.  This had never happened to me before.  I had never really dated anyone and certainly no one thought I was attractive enough to flirt with.  It must be a mistake.  He was just being nice because he knew I was new.  I was cast in the chorus but as rehearsals progressed I proved myself, and as others dropped out of the show or failed to show up to rehearsals, I was slowly but surely bumped up the cast list.  I made friends and felt like I belonged for the first time in my life.  There was only one problem.  That cute guy turned out to be the BIGGEST dork ever!!!  He kept hanging out with the people I was hanging out with but I was never going to consider dating him.  Nope.  By the time the show opened I had made it all the way to supporting lead and that dorky guy and I were cast as husband and wife.  Little did I know that his mother, the pianist, and our director were plotting almost from the beginning to get us together.  By the time I decided that he was a safe guy to practice dating, because I hadn't really done it before, we had an interesting kerfuffle which I will save for valentines some year. 

We were married amidst layoffs and terrible jobs.  We planned our wedding on a budget on our own because we were going to be our own dorks and tradition couldn't hold us.  My parents were quite upset with us for a while.  My hubby was laid off before the wedding and was scheduled to start a new job right when we got back from our honeymoon.  Jobs in the tech industry were struggling at the time.  A lot of people were out of work and struggling to find and keep jobs so we were really grateful to not be in debt because of the wedding and to have God timing on my hubby getting a new job. 

Here's where things get....hard.  Two weeks after we got back from our honeymoon I was hospitalized with a blood clot from my groin to my ankle.  I didn't know it at the time but God performed many miracles for us during that time.  The first was that my hubby's new job allowed him to get on the insurance plan as soon as he started.  At the time it was customary to make a new employee wait until the next signup period or at least 6 months.  This unusual circumstance no doubt saved us from a lifetime of woe.  Preexisting conditions are no joke and insurance doesn't like covering people they know are sick.  They aren't allowed to discriminate if you have insurance and get sick but they certainly have a choice if you were sick before you were covered or if you have any lapse in coverage.  Getting sick on insurance has saved us a great deal of money and heartache and I know God did that for us.  The second miracle is that I lived.  I waited 3 days to go to the hospital because I thought I just had a charlie horse.  I was in so much pain.  While I was in the hospital, part of the blood clot broke off and went through my brain (which is how you get a stroke) and my heart (which can cause a heart attack) and ended up in my lungs.  I was told I had a genetic, hereditary blood disorder.  This meant I would be on blood thinners for the rest of my life.  It would be extremely dangerous to attempt to have children.

This is not what a newlywed wants to hear.  I knew my hubby wanted to wait at least five years to have kids and since I had no strong feelings one way or the other, I had agreed that was fair.  Now we had to decide if we were ever having kids.  After another layoff, and a very long time of searching for a new job, we decided we needed to look outside of our home state for a job.  In our first year my husband was laid off twice, I found out I had an illness we would have to treat the rest of my life and we had to move away from all our family.  He was laid off many more times in those first few years, we lost his mother to cancer and we couldn't afford to visit her until it was too late because of another layoff.  While those first years were very hard, God used them to teach us how very good He is.  He brought money out of nowhere to pay bills that were due because were were faithful to tithe even when we had almost nothing.  He brought helpers to fix issues we had no idea how to deal with and had no money to pay someone to fix.  He provided a job interview while we were waiting for my mother-in-laws funeral.  A job he got and the job that brought us home. 

We didn't have all the information back then about therapies and making the attempt to have children with precautions but I'm not sure if it would have changed our decisions.  We decided to forgo having our own biological children. 

A visiting missionary to our church in Ohio talked about children in the orphanages of Europe that no one wanted because of their nationality.  I felt such a stirring in my heart.  I was convinced it was the Lord. I started to research adoption.  We...okay, that's not fair....I finally settled on China.  There was reportedly a large number of girls in the system because of the one child policy.  The rules for China required us to be married 5 years and be 30 years old.  My birthday, 2007, would meet everyone's requirements and I was so sure ...

...so utterly sure...

That God had arranged it all as a beautiful gift.

So I settled in to wait.  This is the part of the story that I tend to like to fast forward through and just give the highlights.  I started learning to speak Mandarin and my hubby started to learn to write it.  We started gathering the things we would need to submit and started early enough to plan to submit our packet on my birthday exactly.  The adoption process is not fun.  For anyone who hasn't been through it I will tell you my experience.  You are judged unfit by assumption.  You must be trained, evaluated and observed to prove that you are fit to be a parent.  That some how, your lack of ability or inclination to biologically reproduce means you lack the presumptive ability to parent.  Now I understand logically why all the classes, evaluations, paperwork, counseling, and monitoring should and do happen.  It doesn't negate the feeling of judgement no matter what kind of attitude you have about the process.  It's stressful and emotional.  Despite the stress and emotions, I was convinced this is what God was asking us to do.  Those moments of stress and tears were born with a sense of anticipation.  I knew God was doing this and I had waited on Him and nothing could defeat me!  As I waited for the last of the paperwork to be notarized and affirmed by two separate countries I was living in such a heightened state of excitement I'm surprised I didn't injure myself.  My passport came during this time and while I was traveling from the copy place to the post office to mail the copies, my passport disappeared.  To this day I have no idea where it could have gone.  I thought this was the end of the world.  Passports don't come overnight.  I had to report the passport missing and get a new one and then go through all the notarization and approval.  I knew that the adoption agency wouldn't translate and finalize the packets until everything was present and accounted for.  I also knew there was no way that it would happen by my birthday because of this one incident.  There was weeping and wailing.  What can I say, I told you I was very emotional.  I finally calmed down enough as I waited to remember that it wasn't that big a deal.  I had built my birthday up as some kind of mecca and I had to confess it and move on.  The new passport came and the paperwork avalanche had one last round to make but I sent it off with a resigned peace.  

...and God once again showed up...

The adoption agency had been translating our packet and it was sent on my birthday, 2007.

and I was convinced...

so utterly, joyously, elatedly convinced...

That God had arranged it all as a beautiful gift.

I thought it was the best birthday present I have ever gotten.  I had never felt like I had heard the voice of the Lord so clearly in my life.

I thought I had learned to wait in those first five years.  I had no idea what waiting was.  

My heart died a little every month after that.  The 6-8 months that were listed as the wait time when I first looked at China had become 9-12 months when I submitted my paperwork.  Her name was going to be Isabelle Lynn.  Isn't that beautiful?  Every month we waited, the wait time got a month longer.  I mean that literally.  In the beginning they would send reports each month, in a newsletter, that included the anticipated wait time.  Eventually they stopped putting a number because it was too depressing.  Waiting for a specific date is nothing compared to waiting for an unknown.  After years, we decided to try domestic adoption while we were waiting in line for a foreign one.  I wanted two kids and so this seemed like a good option.  After a very painful process, and a very large misunderstanding, we were denied.  

It's been over a decade since this time in my life.  I can tell you that I have cried so hard I made myself sick.  I prayed so hard I made myself sick.  We waited.  We waited years.  I can tell you from personal experience that

Proverbs 13:12a New International Version (NIV)

12 Hope deferred makes the heart sick,       

That anticipation turned into bitterness.  The surety that God had arranged a beautiful gift turned into a doubt.  Little by little my heart hardened so I wouldn't feel the pain anymore.  I convinced myself it was the only way to stop myself from sinning.  God is good, God is just, God is sovereign.  So I bundled up my questions and doubt and locked them behind a stone.  Many years later we finally gave up waiting.

Life continues through pain.  I cried on occasion after that.  Whenever strangers asked me how many kids I had.  When loved ones ask why we don't try again.  When friends jokingly "offered" to give us one of their children.  Every tear was dried quickly and walked away from.  There was nothing I could do about it.  Nothing I could do to change it, so why dwell.  Each poke at my stony heart got easier to deal with. 

I know this is a long set up.  I wanted you to see that I thought I was doing what God asked me to do.  When I failed at the adoption I thought I was doing the right thing by casting aside my hurt and living in the belief that God was sovereign and I must not have heard Him.  For years after that I lived in a void.  I didn't hear from the Lord at all.  I didn't feel His presence.  I thought I was being punished.  I examined myself for sin but didn't feel convicted about anything.  I cried out to the Lord and heard nothing. 

A few years ago while I was studying scripture God, in His great mercy, showed me something.

Ezekiel 36:26 New International Version (NIV)

26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

I wasn't hearing from the Lord because I had hardened my heart.  I had closed myself off so I wouldn't feel the pain but I forgot that would mean that I couldn't feel love either.  This past year has been all about exchanging my heart of stone with the full knowledge that it would bring some pain back with it.  Pain and questions and doubt and fear.  I'd happily endure all of those things to get the voice of my Savior back.  I can't live without Him.  So in this season of remembrance, anticipation and rejoicing, I celebrate the heart God resurrected in me.  I recognize my time in the grave that helped me get a little closer to understanding what Jesus did for me. I acknowledge Christ's sacrifice, sorrow and separation and hear the echo in my own heart.  A heart that was stone and is once again flesh.  I will celebrate with tears of joy on Sunday because Christ is alive and so am I!    

Have you hardened your heart to stop feeling some great pain or loss?  

Are you ready to give up your heart of stone?

Are you ready to delight once again in your Saviors presence even if it means you will share in His sufferings?

I hope you are, because there is no joy without Him.  
I quoted the first half of Prov 13:12 because I wasn't sure I could claim the second half.  "...But a longing fulfilled is a tree of life."  While I don't have children, the Lord has still fulfilled a longing.  I long to be close to Him.  That is something I know God will accomplish.  I will never have to doubt that God will do it.  I will never have to fear that I am wrong to pursue it.  

I hope you will have reason to celebrate your own resurrection.  Into new life, into a fleshier heart, into new hope...no matter what, to celebrate with our Savior as we celebrate our Savior.  I certainly will! 

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