"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." -Emerson

Thursday, July 31, 2008

And the body says stop....

So, this morning I awoke nauseous...it was reminiscent of the first days of pregnancy. I had a little meeting with John and all his porcelin glory. Ugh. But, then I realized, my body was saying stop. I cannot go any further until you allow me a day of rest, a day of sleep, a day to recover from the constant go-go-go life you've been leading.

So, I am letting my body have its way and thankful my husband is home to watch the ninjacita. I have been reading a book called, "Having a Mary heart in a Martha world," and one of the things that is striking the greatest cord in my life is that there are millions upon millions of needs in this world, but God does not call us to help them all. Looking at the story of Martha and Mary, Christ only had 1 thing for busy Martha to do, which was to be with him that day. Each day, we should strive to complete that 1 thing admist our to do lists and our schedules that God is calling us to do. And today, He is calling me to rest. Tomorrow, it will be something different perhaps.

Here's to seeking to find that one thing each day....

Until next time...
-C.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Bitterness...

We had a great sermon today on bitterness...it is actually in a series on how the little things make a big difference. I think about that concept a lot, I read this book called "The Tipping Point" that was all on how one tiny thing made a huge impact. For instance, in NYC the subways were having a lot of crime. So, some city official decided to have painters come in each night and paint over all the graffiti and such that lined the walls to and from the subways. That little change brought the crime down significantly...

Anyway, I wanted to post the whole sermon on bitterness. I have a tendency to be a bitter Betty and forgiveness is not an easy thing for me. I hope you all gain something from this!

These are the notes from today from the Sermon by our pastor, Josh Lipscomb.

*******
31He told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. 32Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches." Matthew 13:31-32

14Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. 15See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. Hebrews 12:14-15

Steps to getting rid of bitterness:
Step 1.) Stop Avoiding It
Signs of Bitter People:
a.) They Justify their bitterness.
b.) They become overly critical.
c.) They secretly celebrate others misfortunes.
d.) They write off entire groups of people.
e.) They struggle to see bitterness in the mirror.
Step 2.) Acknowledge it
a.) Who/what caused your bitterness?
Step 3.) Get rid of it.
a.) How? (ANSWER: FORGIVENESS)
31Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Ephesians 4:31

Five Steps towards Forgiveness:
1-Be specific.
2-Sacrifice YOUR rights in prayer.
3-Forgive by faith, not by feelings.
4- Follow your words with actions.
5- Remember your own forgiveness.

32Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Ephesians 4:32

8Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. 1 Peter 4:8

******
Talk about powerful stuff! Sometimes we feel as though we have the right to hold on to our bitterness and anger based on the amount of pain someone has caused us. But, the truth is we are called to something more than that, we are called to forgive and to love. It ain't easy, it doesn't come naturally, and we aren't perfect at it, but we gotta try!

I've been holding on to bitterness: some old, some new....my prayer tonight is that God can teach me to forgive, one wrong at a time and that you too can have the freedom of forgiving.

Here's to forgiveness....

Until next time-
-C.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Consumerism...

We are consumers. As individuals, as a collective we just seek out how to consume all things around us. We treat things and people with the same regard as we treat the hamburger that lays on our plate. What can we get out of this? How can this person fill me? Never once stoping to ask the question what we can give.

It should make us tired, all this consumption. Constantly having to find to new friends, a new church, a new home, new clothes, and sometimes even a new life (check ebay....people actually sell their lives.). When the people in our life no longer give us what we think we should, we cast them aside and move on to those who will momentarily fill within us the giant empty God sized void we all have. When the situations we are in are no longer conducive to our wants or our needs, we simply bail out like a pilot in a plane that is about to crash. In our wake, we leave lives. People who do not understand why they are no longer "enough" to fill our ever-consuming hunger. We cannot come out and say, "you no longer are needed" so we work in backwards and manipulative ways to somehow shift the blame onto them.

How Christ must utterly be in tears over our society and over each us? He came and asked how much more can I give? We come and ask how much more can I get? I know His heart must break knowing that He gave His all to people who don't. How it must hurt for Him to be consumed by us and spit out when we feel we no longer need Him. We all know this feeling: that friend who seems to fall away for no apparent reason, that company that gives us the option to "retire early" as our services are no longer needed, the child who begs us to stay out of their lives as they don't need us anymore. We all know this element of Christ's pain, it consumes us. But yet still, we don't acknowledge this consumption within ourselves. We don't recognize that we are doing the exact same things to our God and those around us. I wonder, what if we did stop consuming? What if every person on this Earth decided to stop consuming and start giving? How much pain could be remedied? How many fears could be alleviated? How many wars would end? How many lives would be put back together after the Humpty Dumpty tumble they've endured? What if we did follow JFK's advice and stopped asking what our country, our friends, our church, our spouses, our children, our situations could do for us and asked what we could do for them? Could we change the world?

I like to think the answer to that question is yes....are you willing to find out?

Here is to giving more...

Until next time-
-C.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Underneath it all...

Lately, I have been intrigued by the fact that most things in life are not as they seem. People, situations, circumstances all have something hidden underneath that can surprise us. The beautiful girl who feels ugly and worthless. The seemingly happy marriage that is really broken and finished. The confident one who hides their fear and insecurity. This is life. There are just masks upon masks on everything, but when you do discover the truth, it can be shocking.

I guess I take things at face value a lot of times, which is strange as my background is in psychology. I take people to be what they reveal. I accept situations as what they show while wondering what is truly underneath. But, the truth of it all is that nothing is what it seems. We have to dig deeper than this blind acceptance. Once we do, we can discover truths and people who need our help, situations that need to be fixed, and circumstances that are begging for rectification.

I watched this video recently called "The Last Lecture" by a professor who is dying of cancer. He gave a speech at a series that the University held in which professors gave their pearls of wisdom if it were to be their last lecture. For Randy Pausch, it meant more than the trivial follow your dreams speech, it was his chance to reveal the truths he has learned in life to his students as well as to his children. He said something that has stuck out to me. He said that if you wait long enough, people will surprise you in a good way. I think about this a lot lately as things have been revealed that prima facie were quite another. I am trying to accept this as a truth in my life and I am trying to learn the art of patience as I wait to be surprised by people. But, the cynic in me wonders if people will ultimately just fail due to the hurt and brokenness inside of them.

Sometimes, though, before we can be surprised by those in our lives, we have to reach out to them and let them know that they can reveal what is hidden. We have to make them feel as though they can change our opinion and we are worth being surprised. We each have an opportunity as we face the tumbling down of the walls that hide the truths in the lives around us. We have the opportunity to react in a way that shows love and understanding rather than disgust and judgement. We have this opportunity, but will we take it?

I hope we can each make the most of the opportunities given to us, whether it be the opportunity to take off our own masks and show the truth or to accept someone once the facade is broken.....
15Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, 16making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. 17Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is.- Ephesians 5:15-17

Sorry this one is a little random....

Here's to acceptance...

Until next time-
-C.

Check out "The Last Lecture" on this page:
http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Conscious living....

So, this is going to conclude our journey through all things melancholy. I gave myself 1 week to enjoy my pity party, play pity party games, eat pity party foods, and then once the week ended, so must the pity party. This entry serves as the last nail in the coffin. I thought what a better way to end this party than to try to put into words what has gone on with me the past couple of weeks.

There are turning points in everyone's life. Things that stop us in our tracks. Sometimes it can come in the form of something big and tragic or sometimes it can slowly build and build like a snowball. Either way, we all have these points. The "whats" are not important in all of this. They don't bring any deeper understanding so I won't harp on them. It is the "what nows" that really matter.

The Bible talks a lot about us being refined like gold. Like gold, we are all riddled with impurities and imperfections. Like gold, we all go through times of pressure and of heat and through these times, the impurities and imperfections are separated and we become a purer state that God intended us to be. Basically, we go through times where God whittles away the junk that lines our life.

This is what caused my funk. The past couple of years I have really been struck by the brevity of life. How our days are truly numbered and how God gives us each moment expecting us to squeeze every last drop out of it. But, in our imperfect, impure human state, we don't and instead, we just float. We just drift, allowing life to happen to us. We become like a feather just falling from the heavens, twisting and turning in the direction of the wind, rather than like the bird from which the feather fell, driving our direction with the flapping of our wings. I was becoming angry and frustrated at myself for being a floater. I was becoming angry and frustrated at those around me for being floaters. I wanted to shake everyone by the shoulders and say, do you not know that your days are numbered? Why are you wasting your breath on words that are lifeless? Why are you wasting your energy on movements that are without purpose? But, most of all, I wanted to shake myself and get answers to those very questions.

So, I made a pact with myself. The pact was to live consciously. To allow every move I made, every word I spoke to have meaning and purpose and life. But, instead, I found myself falling back into a state of floating. Just allowing life to happen around me. Allowing my words to be diseased with anger, bitterness, resentment, criticism. Allowing my actions to be lifeless, meaningless, worthless. I could not bring myself to do the very thing I wanted and knew that God wanted me to do.

I felt like Paul:

15I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. -Romans 7:15-20

Then, it hit me. I was a floater because I was trying to make myself a conscious liver (a person who lives, not the organ...). I was trying to use my own strength, my own abilities, my own drive to force myself into doing something that is completely unnatural to myself and everyone else. My frustration was in my failure.

I cannot be a person who lives consciously...on my own strength. I have to constantly be reminded. I have to have someone tell me what I am doing has no value and to make a different choice. I have to have someone to tell me that the words I am speaking are breaking someone down instead of building them up. I have to have someone tell me to turn off the distractions of "life" and to focus on truly living. And much to my dismay, they can't just tell me once and I get it. They are going to have to tell me each and every moment of each and every day. Luckily for me, that is why God gave us the Holy Spirit. The ultimate reminder to live.

All the time I was worrying and getting frustrated by trying to figure out how to live consciously, I found the answer. I found it right where I should have looked in the first place, not within my head or my hands, but in the word of God. Apparently, I am not the first person to go through this refinement process I've gone through these last couple of weeks...David did too. In fact, Psalm 143 is almost a "how to" of conscious living:

Step 1: Admit that you cannot live consciously on your own strength.

Psalm 143
1 O LORD, hear my prayer, listen to my cry for mercy; in your faithfulness and righteousness come to my relief.


2 Do not bring your servant into judgment, for no one living is righteous before you.

3 The enemy pursues me, he crushes me to the ground; he makes me dwell in darkness like those long dead.
4 So my spirit grows faint within me; my heart within me is dismayed.


Step 2: Turn the focus from your iniquity to God's greatness and strength. Focus on what He can do, not what you cannot. Oh, and don't forget to stop and reflect...(The word Selah means to pause and think about what is being said)
5 I remember the days of long ago; I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done.
6 I spread out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land. Selah

Step 3: Ask (or in some cases, cry unto) and trust God to show you ways in which you can live a conscious life, a life filled with meaning and greatness rather than a life filled with monotony and mundaness.
7 Answer me quickly, O LORD; my spirit fails. Do not hide your face from me or I will be like those who go down to the pit.
8 Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.


Step 4: Rest in Him.
9 Rescue me from my enemies, O LORD, for I hide myself in you.


Step 5: Be seeking, willing and ready to learn God's will. (Insert Pinocchio singing here....) And always let your conscious (aka the Holy Spirit) be your guide.
10 Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good Spirit lead me on level ground.


Step 6: Recognize that there is a real enemy who desires you to not live a conscious life, an enemy who wants you to be a floater through life. This enemy will pursue your mind and fill it with thoughts of doubt, frustration, depression, anxiety, and all sorts of other lies in order to keep you from living consciously. Ask God daily to keep this enemy's voice silent and know that He can.

11 For your name's sake, O LORD, preserve my life; in your righteousness, bring me out of trouble.
12 In your unfailing love, silence my enemies; destroy all my foes, for I am your servant.

My prayer for you, for me, and for all those I know and love is that we will be constantly reminded to live consciously, that we will no longer accept a mediocre life, but only accept the great life that God has in store for us. My prayer is that you will have a constant reminder to be the bird, not the feather.

I finished this minutes ago, only to find parts of my work lost due to a low Internet connection. Someone wants you to not hear this, which means it is the very thing you need to hear.

Here is to conscious living and no longer drifting....

Until next time...

-C.

Friday, July 11, 2008

Basketball...

So, last night I went to the gym by myself. Rick has had late flights allllllll week long so I recruited Navy, one of the single guys down the street, to come study here while Grace slept and I worked out. It was a perfect plot that only required me to make a pot of chili beforehand.

Anyway, so I get to the gym and get on the dreaded cardio machines. I hate cardio. I do it because I know I need to, but oh how I despise it. As I am working out on the death machine, I look back and my eye is caught by the empty basketball gymnasium behind me.

For those of you who don't know, growing up, I was a basketball fanatic. The Chicago Bulls were my life and I spent grades 6-8 in exclusively licensed Bull apparel. (Yes, I was a tomboy...get over it.) Michael Jordan was my hero and I would always imagine my basketball rolling away, only to be stopped by Michael's foot, and the question, "Want to play?" like it happened to the kid in Michael Jordan's playground (if you haven't seen it, you must...Mike is not quite an oscar contender).

Anyway, so I decide to scrap the torture device and go the basketball court. I hadn't played in years, mind you, but it was this insane rush of emotions...yes, emotions, over shooting some hoops. All of a sudden, I felt like me for a minute. Memories of running up and down the court in practices and in games came flooding into my mind. The sound of the shot clock ticking down, everything just hit me. And in that moment, I felt so alive.

It sounds stupid, I know. But, I have been in a "funk" lately. I know why and I am dealing with it, but for a moment on that court I remembered a passion of mine, a love of mine. To get back to one of the things I used to do for me, a thing I used to do to clear my head, was amazing.

As a momma, you tend to forget those things that made you happy before your child. You tend to forget the things that make you, you. Last night, I was reminded and I am so happy I was. I'm gonna start playing more. Who knows? Maybe my jump shot will return (wait, no...I never really had one.) or maybe I'll just feel a little more like me.

For those of you concerned about my recent "funk", I am happy to report that I have reached my deadline and the pity party is coming to a close. Time to suck it up and walk it off as my husband would say. Thanks for the prayers and good thoughts!

Anyway, here's to finding a piece that was lost....

Until next time...
C.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Redirection...

This week or past 10 days I should say, has been a time of redirection for me. One of those times of epiphany and change. It is hard when those things happen because you yourself will often notice or feel a change, but those around you do not know how your thoughts and your actions have been redirected.

My trip to NC caused me to go through a lot of changes. I spent several of my days there going to the hospital to visit our dear family friend who suffered a brain aneurysm. I believed in miracles before, but seeing her going from a period of a potential deadly situation to recovering to the point of being released from the hospital in just 10 days, reminded me of God's miraculous power. It also served as a reminder that we just never know what tomorrow or even the next moment, can hold. She bent down to pick up something from under the washer when a blood vessel burst in her brain. One moment changed her life in a very real way.

These past couple of months, I was getting closer and closer to the verge of getting off track: prioritizing things above those that should always hold the highest priority in my life-My God, My family, and myself (not in a selfish way...). Unfortunately, sometimes it takes a near disaster to redirect us.

We also spent 3 days at the Mountains during my visit. I cannot describe in words the breathtaking majesty of the area we visited. I am not even a mountain person, but I could not help but be amazed by God's craftsmanship. I laid on the back deck our final night and just stared at the stars. It was incredible. I could never have fathomed to create something like stars, but God did. Sometimes I move so fast, I miss those things. I am tired of missing those things.

The point of the scary stuff in life, the near misses and the actual hits, is to get us closer to understanding that we just don't know what any moment in our life is going to hold. We have to live each moment with that understanding or it all is for naught. We have to live each moment understanding that we only get one shot at life to make it the best we can. I needed redirection before I got off track. I hate the form in which it came, but I needed it. I thank God for it...

Sorry for the continued lining of melancholy...it will get better, I promise.

Until next time...
C.