"Crazy - Filled to Overflowing with Adventure, Risk, and Emotion"

June 14, 2013

I sit here and stare at my computer screen. My eyes just want to close. How to pray, what to pray, nothing is clear – just a jumbled mess of thoughts and feelings and an overwhelming sense of tiredness. The last two days haven’t been bad, just busy – filled with good things, things that needed done, but maybe filled too full. I’ve spent a lot of time with my husband side-by-side, but we haven’t gotten a lot of face-to-face time, and I miss that. I’m really excited about our date night tonight.

I feel like I’ve failed a lot over the past two days – for one thing, my practical preparedness has been lacking immensely (forgetting Noah’s bed, forgetting to pump up the volleyball, failing to plan out what we need for the day resulting in rushed, hurried, stressful mornings). Quadrant two has been neglected. And I need to get back to a level of functioning that allows me to prioritize the most important things in order to live a smoother day.

Thoughts are still jumbled.  I want to pray for my family. I want to submit this day to You. I want to discover exactly what it is on my heart this morning, and I want you to take control of the deep places, the scary corners that I don’t understand.

For a while, I feel like You’ve been doing a great work in my life. Helping me to focus on gratefulness, service, walking in the Spirit. The walking itself does not eliminate the chaos of the day, but helps me to learn how to react and respond to it differently than I used to. I don’t think this matched up with my original picture of walking in the Spirit. I had the sense that if I were to be walking step by step with You, my life would miraculously transform into this bed of roses and everything would be walking on sunshine. My problems would disappear and any circumstances that were not ideal would be swept into glorious graces.

Reality has shown me that the truth of the matter is that life is hard, and when we are walking with the Spirit, sometimes life gets harder. What I mean is that our enemy doesn’t like to see us learning how to live like Christ. If we are going to be believers, he wants to keep us as complacent and minimally effective as possible.   If there’s one thing he hates more than a Christ Follower, it’s a Christ Follower on Fire!

Part of me might want to get discouraged, say walking with the spirit is too much work. I’m encountering more trials now than I ever did when I wasn’t trying as hard. Life was easier when I was just coasting. But what is coasting? Just waiting for the end? What kind of life is that?

If I really want to LIVE and I mean LIVE this life to the fullest, experiencing each moment as a gift that it is and giving all the glory back to God, I have to be willing to struggle, suffer, sacrifice. Ken Davis puts it this way, ... And a life that is truly alive is not “safe, comfortable, passive, and predictable, but crazy—filled to overflowing with adventure, risk, and emotion.”  That’s the kind of life I want to be living.

So I choose right now the struggle. Lord, I know nothing comes my way unless it is sifted through your fingers first, and you have already provided the grace that I need to make it through each moment.

I choose right now to suffer because in suffering, we are made aware of our weaknesses and if we persevere, we come out on the other side stronger. In this world I will have trouble, but I will take heart for my Savior has already overcome the world.

And I choose right now sacrifice because that’s what You chose for me. You paid the ultimate price to call me your child, and You are deserving of every ounce of strength I have every single day for the rest of my life. I will give You my best! I will give You my heart even if it costs me my life! Because that’s the life I want – one that is fully alive (the only way I can be truly alive) in You!

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Rainbow Colors

After Mother's Day and my processing (or start of processing) of where I was, I began to seek more desperately to know what it really meant to live fully alive even amidst the chaos. Here is a piece of my heart...

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.The caption beneath my sketch: "Too many Rainbow colors for my fingers to touch all at once - and they meld into a meaningless muddle of mixed brown as one vibrant hue weeps into another. The monotone mirrors monotony. Each color no longer appreciated for what it is - hurry fades the glory of the moment, the richness of the here and now. Oh, how I long to see the bold beauty of red and take crisp delight in the cheerfulness of yellow. Father, train my toddler hands in careful enjoyment."

Life to Life and Heart to Heart

It has been quite a while since I've written on this blog. And for some time now, I have been wanting to share what God has been doing in my heart and life this spring. I've been on a journey of what it really means to live in the Spirit - to walk, moment by moment in His presence: To live fully.

Saint Irenaeus made a famous statement: "The glory of God is man fully alive." And that's the journey I've been on - discovering what it is to live fully in His presence, each moment, each day. I'm still on this journey, and I would like to take you with me.

I had been debating writing blog posts about my experiences and what I'm learning, but I don't think I can embellish it any more than my heart has already expressed it. The best way to speak to a life is with a life; the best way to speak to a heart is a heart. So, if you will allow me, I would like to share my journal/prayers with you so you can see what God has been doing in my heart - my struggles, my triumphs, my deep emotion. Warning: some of this is raw, but I know that transparency and openness opens the doors for greater growth.

Over the next several days, these posts may be a little longer as I am trying to catch you up on the last few months of journal entries. I pray that your heart is challenged as my heart has been. Blessings on you!

Journal (starting Mother's day 2013)

 

May 12, 2013

 MOTHERS DAY! And I really wanted to even avoid getting this time alone for my heart in the first place. It’s just too overwhelming. Nothing even makes sense how I could ever reconcile who I am and who I feel I should be….Thinker, future planner, organizer, doer…. Or present, in tune, involved, fully alive. They seem opposite and scream for each their own way. The pull between the two nearly ripping my heart in two right now. Demands, demands from my own needs, demands from my kids, demands from life – both controllable and uncontrollable. Some things I can make fit, barely. But what about all the others that threaten my very existence?
 

No longer bound to the law – but to love. How many times do I choose not to act in love each day… Love God, first and foremost. Love others. But I almost err on loving myself – and that’s not love to either God or others. But then I ask the question – Doing budget, and paying bills – who is that loving? Is it merely a necessary evil? A demand on my time that has no morality or reward? What about if I didn’t complete those things because I wanted to use that time to “love” those around me …. When the electricity, gas, and hot water go because we cannot afford them, and we have no food on the table because we cannot afford it….who is that loving then? So it does have its place, but what about when Eli and Gabe are vying for my attention and I just need to get it done so that I can play with them, read to them, or get them something else to eat. How do I communicate the importance of what I’m doing to such little minds. And when I’m interrupted 12 times in an hour, it takes so much longer to even get done.
 

 So then back to the main question. Who am I? Who did God create me to be? Surely they can be reconciled!!! God would not create something impossible. He has a special plan, a special purpose, and I want so badly to live up to that full potential. But how?
 

 I feel I repetitively ask this question. So what am I missing?
 

 I try to fit in big rocks first – but what if You have too many?  The handles of the pack just keep breaking. If I cannot figure out how to carry simply my big rocks, how can I keep carrying everyone else's? Even if they are little ones, I cannot carry them if my pack is dysfunctional.
 

 What’s the secret? I know it’s not merely planning, organizing, and thinking…some of it has to be deeper – trust, listening, waiting, walking, stepping, thanking, being. How do you learn each of these things if you’ve never been taught.

 

 

 I really never had a good example of that kind of lifestyle. Don’t get me wrong, I had great parents, but they didn’t know how to BE well. They did a great job planning, thinking and doing. But being, what is just being? I know that cannot be one’s mentality at all times, but how do you adapt that mentality if you’ve never been shown?

 

5/13/13

Father, I’m torn. I read Rachel’s blog about all of the weight that she has lost and kept off, and I too, want to go on some radical, body cleansing, diet to lose weight fast. But I know in my heart, my purpose for that rapid weight loss would be for my own benefit – the way I feel about my body and the way that others look at me. In my heart, I also know that my body is your temple, yet I haven’t been treating it as such recently. Though I’ve been doing some workouts and eating somewhat healthy, I’ve continued to go to eating first when I am emotional or tired. I’ve filled my house with sweets and felt like a victim that must consume them so that they will be gone and I can start over again. I’ve become a slave to that which I worship. Food. Body image. Exercise. There’s this ambiguous thought of the perfect weight and body that I should be, and really, my focus has been on that rather than my heart before you and my submission to your will when it comes to my body and mind.
 

 Lord, I am not my own. I am bought with a price, created in your image to be like Christ Jesus. I have been given his Mind. I have direct communion with the Head, and I want to grow as you have created me to grow – in my heart, my emotions, my mind, and my body. I confess that I haven’t been living in the freedom of the Spirit – I’ve been living according to some sort of rules and regulations (what my body should look like, be capable of, and human ideas of nutrition – or rather weight loss strategies.)
 

 The weight is not my problem – my focus is. I long to understand the way you created my body. For you created both it and food. You created nutritional systems to be utilized to their fullest potential, and I long to grasp that. You’ve also created my mind. Give me wisdom as I search for your best. Help me to understand that my focus should be on your glorification in my Body and not my glorification. Forgive me for my selfish, idolatrous focus. Help me to fix my eyes on you!



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