Ya gotta have faith....

You ever have one of those days when you try really really hard to just keep your thoughts straight and happy?

I got a crazy phone call today. 

And it's been hard to keep my mind clear.

I drift back to the what if's and whozits and whatzits...

My tolerance/patience level is automatically lower.  I am more on edge.
I want this to be no big deal.  But between my mom coming to visit and all the preparations for that, and now this?  I'm having a hard time keeping balanced.

This call didn't have a number (withheld) and didn't leave a call back number on the message left.
The caller said they would call back.  But when?  If ever.
I am not left hanging.  Again.  Not in a good way. 
So I have to control these emotions I have and thoughts I have while taking care of business at home.

I am praying a lot, and remembering that I am a child of God.
He is in control of my life and I am resting in Him. 
I don't need to worry or be scared or confused or sad.  I know that He's at my side and on my side. 

One of those things where I have to dig deep to get through it. 
But I can.  I have weapons in my arsenal now that will help me. 
I can win this battle. 

This is not the only battle I have right now.  There are a couple major ones.
But I am taking the steps to arm and protect myself against these.
I am LUCKY to be able to do this.
I am THANKFUL I know the knowledge and courage to do this.
I will be a better person and mother after fighting these fights.


Dear God,
Please watch over me and keep me safe today.  Give me the mercy to forgive others as you have forgiven me.  Bring Peace to my heart as I face the challenges ahead of me in the coming weeks and let the Holy Spirit guide me.  Thank you for your love. 

The Good, the Bad, and the Evil

So this weeks sermon was about evil/demons. 
I have such as hard time with the personification of this and relating to it.
But then I decided to let my brain go there - I realized I had to let go in order to understand. You spend all the time thinking about what to do and where to go and what about this or that and then you have those ideas already cemented into your brain.
I like beauty and niceness and loveliness.  I don't like evil and bad things and I don't like to think they exist. 

Spiritual warfare... sounds so made up.  I mean really - we don't live in a movie, we don't live in some alternate universe.  We are in the USA on Earth in the Milky Way. 
BUT...
if you believe in God, why would you not believe in the personification of evil? 
if you believe in day, why would you not believe in night?
if you believe in good, why not believe in bad?  K, so I automatically picture Clint Eastwood making my day, but I'm a child of the 21st century.  Oh well.
if you are going to believe in the "Jesus" parts of the Bible, why wouldn't you believe in the "devil" parts of the Bible.

So I open my mind and I choose to believe and I choose to suppose these things do exist in our world.  It could be an explanation for some things around me. 

It's said that the devil wants to keep us from God.  That is his job, b/c he thinks he can do better than God.  So, he keep us from Him and make us followers of Satan.  OK, so if you are NOT a follower of God, then he doesn't want anything to do with you.  He has no work with you b/c you are already NOT with God.  It's those of us that ARE with God that he wants to corrupt. 
By that line of reasoning, as one begins a relationship with God and nourishes that, does s/he become MORE of a target for the devil/demons/Satan?  Perhaps.  Some would say, absolutely. 
There is a story by I don't know who (C.S. Lewis?) about a church that is full of followers that just go to church and go home, never go out and try to spread Christ's word.  The devil doesn't care about them.  But as soon as they start to do God's will, they are on the list of the Devil's Most Wanted... b/c they are getting closer to God and Satan's mission is to keep us away at all costs.

I always picture a being coming to me and trying to sell me evil, like a bad car salesman or a door-to-door vacuum guy.  But perhaps that isn't the case?

1 Peter 5:8
Be self-controlled and alert.  Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

Such a vivid picture.  But, perhaps he wants to emotionally devour us.  The devil prays on our weaknesses.  Maybe all of our weaknesses aren't physical, but emotional, spiritual, or mental. 

At this point, I listen to myself and I think I sound like a kook.
But I was wrong about Jesus and the Bible before.  MAYBE I'm wrong about Satan, too.

So how do we combat this?  Read the Bible and be close to God. 
What if you don't know what to read?  What if you are being blocked out by the negatives and you can't get to God? (again, sounding like a kook.)

Romans 8:38
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angles nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers [unseen forces of evil], neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Nothing can take God's love from us.  No matter what.
But we always have free choice.  Choice to choose to follow God, or not.  Choice to follow evil, or not.  As so long as we are obedient followers of God, he will be on our side.  Not to say we will never be assaulted.  Just as in any battle, there are scrums and confrontations.  People are lost and people are gained. 

And just as in every war, each battle has to be forgotten when it's over and the fundamentals have to be remembered. 
Pray.  Love.  Follow.

Validation

So today was an awesome day... Big Daddy took M with him to go do his errands... amazing. It was just me and the wee one for most of the day! I love my 3 yo, but man, I needed a break from her bad! The whining, the crying, the but-mommy's... oh man. Makes a girl want to drink.

So with my time of peace I was thinking a lot today. How did I get here? How did I get 2 kids? In California of all places. And I started thinking, man, I'm gonna turn 35 this year. WHOA. That is like hard core official middle age. I remember when I was 25 thinking 35 was old and cremugenly. OR boring at the very least.

I like to think I am not boring, yet. I am pretty tired most of the time and get cranky pretty often. But still wouldn't go to the cremugen category yet.

Then I thought about Sermon this week at church. Jesus goes back to this hometown of Nazareth, drops the bomb that he is God's son, then tells the locals you all are not getting any special treatment just b/c I grew up here, then they want to throw him off a cliff. Then, as my pastor Chris Brown (www.searchablesermons.com) put it, and I am not kidding, exact words, "he pulled the MC Hammer escape. He said, 'Can't touch this' and walked away." And never went back there again. WHAT?

How many times do we look for validation from home? I do all the time. From everyone there. I want them to be proud of me, perhaps a little envious, I'm not gonna lie. And I'm not just talking about family, but friends too, even the guy at the corner store that still recognizes me when I come home once a year.
But do we *need* that? Do we need validation from people back there? It's easy for me to visualize b/c I'm from a place 2400 miles away in Michigan. No, I don't need that. At least, I shouldn't. But that comes from being accountable for my actions and being to stand by them. And know that I have made good decisions along the way. Maybe not right for you or you or you, but right for me. I moved in with my then-boyfriend when I moved to CA. *gasp* Where I'm from it's very conservative and I come from a devout Catholic family to boot. THIS was a NO-NO. And I understand it is in God's eyes too, though at the time I was not close to Him, so honestly, I didn't really care. I'm lucky that it all worked out. We married and we now have 2 beautiful girls. But what if it hadn't? Waaaay tougher. I'm lucky and I know it. Can I say that I knew when I met my husband at a blackjack table he was going to be the one for me. NO. But we both got lucky that night, I guess. HAHA!

As I continue to grow in so many ways, I think about who I need to please and who I need to feel proud of me. God, my husband and myself are about it. I am an adult (believe it or not) and I have to live my life for me and my family. I have to be happy (thankfully I am) and I have to do what keeps me there. Finding outlets, growing my business gives me great accomplishment, raising my children is priceless even though I would like to throw them out the window half of the time.

Jesus won't just hook me up when I need a hand, I have to earn his help. I have to obey his rules and act accordingly in my heart and towards other people. Sometimes these things are not easy. But if we are not willing to take our lumps and do the things that are mildly uncomfortable, then why the heck would Jesus have us? He was a little more than uncomfortable in his life.

After all, if you think about it, by taking those lumps in order to obey God - after it was all said and done, hasn't it always been worth it? If He is the one to always send us down the right path, who else's validation should we need?

Trust vs Control

Can you have both at the same time?
Don't you have to relinquish control at some point if you are truly going to trust?

Have you ever wondered why certain people are always wound up or always frantic?
Why are they always plotting or scheming or figuring or planning?

I think it's b/c they don't have any trust, faith, belief. In anything.

One person cannot do it alone. One person cannot always figure everything out all the time. It's maddening to try to do so (trust me).

At some point in time you have to give your control over to someone else. You have to trust someone/thing else.

I chose to trust God. I was at a point where I didn't know what to do or where to turn or how to go from A to B. But I trusted in God. It took A LOT of practice. I had to train myself to not worry and scheme and lament over all the possibilities or lack thereof.

The Bible says:
Proverbs 3:5-6
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.

TRUST. LEAN. ACKNOWLEDGE. STRAIGHT.

Think about this. Lean not on your own understanding... isn't that basically saying to lean on God. Trust in Him. Obey and acknowledge him and HE will make your way straight.

I don't take this literally. That He is going to have you wake up the next day and have an epiphany. But if you look and think and feel through the Holy Spirit, you will see what the right path is to take.

How amazingly freeing is this? Have you tried it?
Stop pretending you know what to do. You know you don't. That is why you are so beside yourself all the time and worried and upset. Give it to God. Put it in his hands. He has given all of us a structure of what to do... guidelines, rules.
Really there are only 2... Love God and love others.

Can it be that easy?
But think about it -when you are upset at someone. When someone irritates you.
Love them.
When you are sad.
Love God.
When you want more.
Love God.

Isn't loving God, serving God?
Isn't serving God, obeying God?
Isn't obeying God, loving our enemy as much as our friends?

Love God, love others.
Trust in God. Lean NOT on your own understanding. In ALL ways acknowledge HIM. He will make your path straight.

Trust. Obey. Love. Listen.

You know.
Sometimes reality is not reality. Sometimes it so hard to see the truth of what it is, you can't. Sometimes you don't want to see it. You don't want to know it. You don't want to admit it. Admitting trust is admitting you don't have control. If you don't have control, who will?
You can't change the past. You can't take an illness away. You can't make damage undone. But to accept a piece lost, to accept a piece different. That is painful. Don't you need God most of all then? Who's going to pull you through?
No one wants to admit when you are not as you were.
If you aren't there yet, that's ok.
My fear controls me as yours does you.
I'll pray for you - I'll pray for your peace and I'll pray for your clarity.
I'll pray for your ability to trust in God and lay your worries at his feet.

Matthew 6:25-26
"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?
Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?"