March 3, 2014
Rainy morning. They were calling for snow and now it's coming down wet and fluffy. All I can think is: "Please don't stick!" I'm not usually such a winter-wimp, but I am so ready for Spring it isn't even funny.
Been awhile since I posted up my journal... not since the last big entry. Need to catch up. Funny how that happens - I have this kind-of explosion and then go quiet again.
Due to the weather we may not open the store today. Loss of 6 hours on a light work week is going to really put a strain on the budget again. Seems like this always happens when National offers me a job again... almost as though someone is testing me: Are you SURE you want to stay with a part-time job getting paid so little and having a screwed-up schedule?? Are you REALLY SURE?
Makes me wonder if I'm missing something and I ought to go back. I don't want to - but part of me wonders if that's why I should. Sounds stupid I know but I've grown up all my life understanding that you have to do stuff you don't want to do... sometimes I think I twist that mentality into thinking: if you don't want to do it - then maybe that means you're supposed to.
Jason made a good point though - Spring is around the corner - and on the days that it has been nice we have been really, really busy at the store. Hopefully that means that as the weather warms up - things with work will even out. He's applying for a new job at Carter - there's a good chance he might get it - so we will have to see what that means for us too.
Feels like that is our life right now - waiting for Spring - waiting for new beginnings - waiting to feel like we're getting started instead of running behind. I want warmth. I want to be outside. I want to WANT to be outside - and active - instead of cooped up inside - lulled to sleep. I have felt so lethargic and drabby and whiny: Why won't Spring come?
And I feel like I use that as an excuse for why I am staying stuck in all the mucky ruts I'm in:
> Not researching grad schools
> Not exercising
> Not eating healthily
> Being grumpy and morose.
I keep saying, "when I have time," "when it warms up," "when I can get outside and breathe fresh air again."
Feels like those days are forever in coming and I know that we need to learn to live abundantly and fruitfully in all circumstances... but I don't feel that I am doing that well right now.
... Looks like it is sticking and starting to look icy... I might as well resign myself to staying in and cuddling with the cutest and sweetest puppy in the world...
... To lay aside fears about money and guilt about how lazy, fat, and useless I am getting - and focus on the Spring in the heart.
The Easter of our Lord and Savior
My friend
My comforter
My intercessor
Author and finisher of my faith
My life.
Lord help me today to be consumed not by the things of this world that swallow and shrink my world to my circumstances and current situation - but rather to be filled up and expanded by Your life - Your promises, sure in every circumstance - and the new life and renewal and resurrection that is found in Your Son who is fiercely and exuberantly joyful and alive.
May that life fill me today Lord - dried up and dead - may it fill me so that I would be a tree planted by streams of living water - fruitful and strong even in the midst of famine... and winter... and ice storms... and snow.
In your most holy and precious name I pray - Amen.
Psalm 101
I feel like this Psalm is a psalm fathers should post over the mantle of their house. I say that half-joking and half-not - because the first part of the Psalm is pretty awesome - and by the end it gets a little extreme. Definitely one of the more hard core Psalms that I've read... I feel like I can imagine the kid reading that on the door of his father's study before needing to go in and talk to his dad about a lie he told his mom and was caught in - and gulping hard by that last line.
In some ways I'm tempted to feel like the psalm is a little over the top - a little comical in it's extremities - because if all the deceivers in the world were eradicated no one would be left.
At the same time - I do feel like the kid reading this on her father's study door - because this IS the standard You hold us to... this is Your house's motto. I think back over this past week on thoughtless things I said - hurtful, cutting remarks clothed in niceties to "make my point" - gossip about others - perversity of my heart - setting before my eyes worthless things to entertain me and eat up my time.
Because of my unwillingness to hold myself to a life of integrity - I settle for a life of spiritual mediocrity - saying "I try in most of my life to be a decent human being - that's enough - right?"
... I'm often frustrated by the thought that we humans fail more often than we should because we accept failure as a given... as a cop out. We would prefer not to make the necessary sacrifices it would take to truly accomplish all that we are capable of - so we pronounce it impossible so we don't have to try.
I know that too often that is true of my life. I justify it by saying I'm not doing too bad - because really - by the world's standards - I'm really not...
but those aren't the standards I'm being measured by.
"I will sing of steadfast love and justice;
to you, O Lord, I will make music.
I will ponder the way that is blameless,
Oh when will you come to me?
I will walk with integrity of heart within my house;
I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless
I hate the work of those who fall away (give up);
it shall not cling to me.
A perverse heart shall be far from me;
I will know nothing of evil."
I hate the work of those who fall away - I read also - those who give up on living this life...
I have often thought to myself: how many marriages end because the two people give up on believing that they can find reconciliation and new life and new love in You? How many children in this world go hungry and sick and untreated because we have given up on believing that we could change that? Though we have the resources - the effort and the change of life it would require across the world is "too much." How many lives are wasted chasing after useless things - instead of nurturing talents - nurturing life - nurturing beauty - nurturing relationship - wasted - why? Because "that's the way things are" - "that's how things are 'supposed to be'" - what everyone is "supposed to do" - because you "have to do what you have to do" - to make ends meet.
How often do I give up before I even try?
Because I'm "too busy" - because the weather is "too cold" - because it's "too silly - "too expensive" - "too impractical" - "too impossible" - We give up so easily and so readily... and our lives become about telling other people everything they shouldn't try doing - because if they try and succeed we know somewhere inside the question remains: "Did we fail because we didn't even try?"
This is the perversity of my heart Lord.
This is what is in me.
Even in reading this Psalm I say, "but I can't do that - that's impossible - NO human could live with such integrity."
And Your Holy Spirit says, "True... but that's no excuse for not trying."
Even in the little things I think of in cutting out worthless things before me - like mindless entertainment in tv and video games - I instantly start justifying it saying, "It's not so bad! It's not wrong to have!" and it isn't wrong - but I know in my heart that those are things I use as an escape from living a life of intentionality and integrity.
I know when we're all talking about that one person who rubs us the wrong way - that making fun of them, especially behind their back, is wrong and destructive - and I know I could end it by pointing that out - but too often I don't... and even worse than staying silent - I sometimes share a story or a laugh at that person's expense (how telling and accurate that phrase is).
"Whoever has a haughty look and an arrogant heart
I will not endure"
Even if that's ME? Will I refuse to endure that in my own heart?
"Morning by morning I will destroy all the wicked in the land,
cutting off all the evildoers from the city of the Lord."
I am the city of the Lord.
I am the house in which no deceit shall dwell
I am the land of the Lord where the faithful and blameless shall dwell.
Lord - I confess to You the perversity of my heart. My own insistent "excusing" and "copping out" - my own failure. It is true - and I know it is true - that I cannot (no one can) live up to the life outlined in this psalm and the standards to which Your Son lived perfectly - blamelessly - spotless - but that is the life to which You have called me - to press onward -t o lay hold off - to wrestle and train - as olympic athletes wrestle and train to defy the "impossible" as limitations the world places upon us. We know that according to human history such a thing has never been done - such a record has never been beat - but that doesn't stop us from living and training ourselves as though perhaps we may be the first.
I do not have an olympic heart by nature Lord. I don't like pushing myself hard or holding unreal expectations that I know I will probably fail - or at least believe I will fail - at.
I think my expectations of myself and my life are higher than many - but they are not as high as Yours.
And though there is no condemnation in failure - there is also no excuse in giving up.
Even in finishing my time with You Lord - my tendency is to want to tuck this back away where it is comfortable: in theory and not in practice in my life.
My tendency right now is to want to turn on the t.v. - play the video game - escape the ennui of another day stuck inside - when it could be rich with catching up on many things... rejoicing in You... pondering anew what the Almighty can do - since through Your Son you have befriended me.
Through Your Son we have the power and the Holy Spirit to begin living our lives to impossible standards: to loving unlovable others - to living daily lives of integrity - to answering the needs of poverty, and hunger, and sickness, and the desperate need for love and healing - to being fruitful in the midst of famine - to being light in a world of darkness...
And though we are not expected or held accountable to succeeding - we are held and called to and expected to live a life of trying.
That is exciting, and invigorating, and terrifying - and so fragile for me right now. Even now the temptation to slip back into mediocrity and comfortability is strong. Father - help me. Help me to keep pushing like a spiritual Olympic athlete - to do the impossible - to accomplish all that cannot be done - through Your Holy Spirit - through the power of Your Son.
May I overcome the fear and distress and the disheartening that keeps me from even trying - with the help of Your Spirit - Your Church - and Your love.
Create in me a new heart O Lord
And renew a right spirit within me.
Amen.
