A Ginormous Recap...

Wow…it’s been a while. I’m not really even going to try and recap all that’s been going on. It’s been a long time since I wrote. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve pulled up a new doc to start a new post and then got distracted at work or wherever. For some reason I just can’t write when I’m at home…I’m actually at Panera. Oh, how I love Panera! Their free Wifi and Toffee Nut cookies are the best ever!

I think one of the last things I wrote was about the car wreck and all the drama that that entails…and that was in January! Already a year! Craziness! God has brought me so far this year…in soo many areas. It’s been an emotional, hard, difficult, awesome, mind blowing, scary and so exciting year. A journey. God has been wooing me for several years and I’ve sort of just ignored His call. I have been shown through so many things that God loves me, He is a faithful God, He is not going to force me to do anything, He is a funny God, He wants to be the most important person in my life, He wants to be my everything. I have come to a point of where I can honestly say, I’m scared of completely letting go and giving Him control but at the same time, I’m so excited to see what’s going to come from it. I have come too far to turn back now. It’s been a long road and a hard road to get to this point. I have learned things about myself that I didn’t know were there, things that I would have never thought could have applied to me. In the learning of these traits or issues, I have finally allowed myself to become vulnerable and try to work through them. Things like, a strong need to be in control…aka a control freak! Now, in my mind a control freak was someone who was neat and organized, had lists and sort of OCD. That is most definitely not me! I am nowhere neat, and the organization in my life can only be defined as organized chaos! I make lists, only to forget them at home! For me, being a control freak is more a need to know what’s going to happen. I need to be in control because I can work on it, know what I’m working toward and have it done the way I want. In this year, God has been showing me that I can’t have it both ways…I can’t sit and pray for Him to show me His will and claim that He is Lord of my life, and then not let go of the reins. It’s like I was sitting there with the remote control, saying, “God, you pick what we watch…but I’m going to keep the remote.” That’s not really letting Him pick…I still have the control to decide whether or not I stop on the channel He decides. That is not surrender. That is not letting go and letting God. And yet that is what I have claimed to have done in my past, and what He desires most from us. I have always, sort of taken comfort in Ps 37:4. “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Well, first of all, I always sort of blew right past that first part…the whole delighting in the Lord part…It’s only been in the last couple of years that I really even noticed that part. And it’s key!! So I started trying to make some changes in my life…changes in my priorities. All good changes, but to be honest, the only reason I was doing them was to get what I wanted…to get the desires of my heart. Now, how is that letting go? Is that true delight? I’m thinking not. While the changes I was making were technically good changes, the motivation behind my making those changes were not. I was still working according to my own plan. My own desires. I went on and sort of just said, well, I’ve made the changes. I’ve started reading my bible and going to church more. I’ve been praying for my husband, praying that I would wait for His time and His plan. But, and that’s a big but, I didn’t do it for the right reason, and so I started to feel like I wasn’t getting through to Him, like He wasn’t listening and so I felt let down. Was I mad at God? No, I really don’t think so, I sort of had the mentality of, now, this doesn’t make any sense…I am trying to do what you have commanded us to do, and not live in sin, but all these other people who are dwelling in sin are getting what I want. They are getting married and having kids and they don’t care about whether or not they are living according to your word! I was more disappointed and feeling let down than angry.
So God had sort of been dropping hints, boulder sized one, all year long about this thing…about my true motivation, my surrendering to His will and letting go of the control. I mean, I was getting it from everyone and every possible situation. Every sermon, even at different churches, every song and every book/devotional would talk about how God wants nothing more than to have us completely surrender and wanting to be in complete control of our lives! Hellurr…I mean, I was starting to expect it! All these hints started to make me look deep into my heart and soul. I started breaking down everything that I have believed and lived my life according to…from going to church, to the meaning of Worship. Here did these beliefs come from? From my parents? The church? God? It’s a little disconcerting to go through this time after being raised in church, because one of the first things you have to overcome is your pride. I didn’t realize that Pride was such an issue for me but God showed me, in several painful and even hysterically funny ways that it is. I had to overcome the fact that everyone expected me to have already sort of mastered this thing called the Christian Walk. I felt like I couldn’t really say that I was questioning things about my life and God. Not that I doubted my salvation but that I was making it my own. I firmly believe that that is something that everyone has to do. When we try to live our lives based on our parents and family’s beliefs, we are doing nothing more than playing a part. We act according to the role we were born into. I never really did any research about God, Christianity and faith. I just took what my parents raised me to do and how they were doing it, and copied after them. So I learned the part of a good little Christian girl…and I learned it well. Now, I’m at the wonderful age of 29 and I’m being called to admit that I don’t have it. I don’t read my bible every day. I don’t pray every day. I hadn’t surrendered all. But I could sing that song better than anyone…I even know the page number it’s on. (Page 275 in the Baptist Hymnal, the 1991 edition, if you were wondering.) I could sing it, all the verses and yet it was empty. I no more meant those words than when I sing I Was Born a Coal Miner’s Daughter or something like that…cause we all know I was not born to a coal miner. But I could sing those words. That doesn’t make it true though, does it? That’s what I was being made to realize. I’ve also found out by talking with my family and friends that it’s something that everyone struggles with. And no one told me this because?!?!? Not saying that knowing that others have been through this season would have made a huge hill of beans difference, it could have. I know that it wouldn’t have been something I felt I had to hide or be ashamed about. Knowing that you are not the first going through this makes it easier to bear for some reason. Maybe it’s just because the others are a tangible sign that you can make it through this time. Or that there are people who can give advice. I know one of the biggest things that bothered me when I was initially going through this time, was the fact that some people didn’t want to talk about their faith. I didn’t doubt their faith or salvation but I was like, hellurr, we’re supposed to share our faith with others and if you can’t share it with someone who’s not going to attack you over it, than who can you share it with? Or how will you be able to? I seriously was asking everyone, why do you think we do… or why is this the way you do it… did your parents raise you in that way… did you ever even question any of their/your actions… The list of questions went on and on. I could tell that I was upsetting some people, especially some of my family. They thought I was trying to attack or rebel or something, I don’t know. I knew that I wasn’t but expressing my opinion or thoughts is not always easy for me when I’m talking with them. It’s totally true what they say about the hardest relationships in our lives will be those with our family. I’m going to have to do a whole other post on that subject…believe me, it’s a doozy!
So I’m going to wrap this one up because I need to get to my eye doctors and figure out how much worse my eyesight is! Yay for getting older! I will do my best to wait as long for the next post. There are so many different ideas and thoughts running about in my head that I have got to get them out…God’s been showing and teaching me so much, I could write for days!
Thanks for reading...