I have highs and lows like nearly every other person on earth. I know that no matter how pumped I am today, in a few days I may feel completely deflated. It’s called life. Because I know this about myself, I prepare. But all my efforts to keep my attitude good and keep going are hampered if I am not also doing one very important thing. Come read about the secret sauce that keeps me going!
After 30 years of marriage, the Hubs and I both have had wonderful days and some exceeding trying days. The other night, we were reminiscing a bit, reminding each other of the beauty of our love story. He mentioned regretting one particular shortcoming of his. I mirrored his statement with a regretful statement of my own shortcoming. He shrugged. Then he said the most profound thing....
Maybe you’re a flexible person. I’m not. I have gotten much better at rolling with it. But it has been a process. Relinquishing control is hard for some of us. Trusting is hard for some of us. I began learning of the destructiveness of control in my teen years. After all, if you want something done right, do it yourself, right? Wrong. My attempts at controlling life led to a life out of control.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I genuinely feel like I’m failing, like I’d be better off if I just bowed out. The tears flow for me some days. I question if the Lord has changed His mind about His promises or if I heard Him amiss. But as I watched one season of "The Great British Baking Show" for the second time, the Lord spoke something profound to my heart.
A couple years ago the Hubs bought me a telescope. Calibrating the “finderscope” that came with it, we had to make sure that what was a close distance away was perfectly in focus. Only then could we look into the depths of space. Very interesting and profound. Read the blog to hear how the Lord showed me the knowable things in life that made the unknown things clearer.
As is true for all of us, there was a war being waged over my childhood heart and mind: Whose words would I allow to shape and mold me in my formative years and even in my adulthood? I believed the words of others. I accepted the labels others plastered onto my identity. In the process, I betrayed myself, my true self.
Last year was an intense year of wandering in and out of brain fog for me. It’s better this year, as the Lord begins to heal and restore all that last year stole. But the lost feeling reminds me of another time I predictably feel a fog roll in: on the battlefield. I’m not speaking of a tangible battlefield, but the battlefield of my heart and mind when the enemy hurls his flaming arrows and the fog of war has me reeling.
All of us go through them; none of us enjoy them. Trials. We’re told to count them a joy (James 1:2). But we are also told that God, though He does not send them, will use them. He will turn them for our good (Romans 8:28). During my most recent trial, as I prayed and journaled with the Lord one morning, I made a list. I called it my, “Things I want to gain out of this trial” list.
Someone leveled some pretty gut-wrenching accusations at me. I had humbled myself and apologized for any conceivable culpability, but when I shared them later with the Hubs, he had told me the accusations were unfounded. How are we supposed to humble ourselves, but not let a false accusation dominate our own opinion of ourselves?
There is a GAP. A distance between reality and what we have hoped for. And until we learn to forgive the gap, we cannot embrace the reality we have been given. Will you forgive the gap or live in a perpetual state of grief, disappointment and hurt?
On this week’s blog, I’d like to invite you to read a guest blog I wrote on the Modern Day Marys site!
When heartbreak and pain comes, we often can get by for a time by using an arsenal of coping methods to silence our pain. But what if God wants something more for us? What if He doesn’t want us to go on “coping”? What if healing is what we are missing out on by coping?
When truth is maligned, twisted, perverted, I find my desire for peace taking a backseat and my desire to not see lies propagated and people oppressed comes to the fore. I have outlined what is actually being said in the Greek and why it was being said. I also share several passages of Scripture that really shed light on God’s heart when you dig into the original language. I also found why church history tilted so strongly in this repressive direction.
Life often threatens to pounce. I am often, way too gullible and unaware that “the game is afoot” and, in my ignorance, get tagged into running and chasing and left huffing and puffing. Learn what tools the Lord offers to keep us from the wearying, out-of-breath life!
If God is speaking by using imagery that we don’t fully understand, it behooves us to LEARN IT! That’s where understanding COVENANT comes in. It is the imagery God has used from the beginning of time, imagery with which we have become unfamiliar. Let’s learn a few things about it and why it is important to us NOW!
It’s way too easy for us to imagine that we will know what to do and how to react in the moments we are called to follow onto the waves. It all seems so straightforward from the sidelines. But it is in the stepping out that we find out what is really lurking inside our hearts and minds.
Are you in need of some practical ways to get and KEEP joy in your life? I learned so much about this as I taught one of my own daughters how to choose joy over moodiness.
God knows, understands and has compassion for all you’ve been through. He will deal appropriately with the areas of your life where you’re weak and sensitive. At the same time, He desires healing and growth for you. How did the Lord show this to me at a coffee shop?
As a young teen, I would worship God when the songs in church moved me, but when it came to finding love, controlling my tongue or being honest, I was moved by my feelings and my fears more than by God. How much of my life is still this way?
