Archive for 2013

Home Archive for 2013

the day i almost quit.

i almost quit on God.

almost broke up with Him.

for real. and for lots of reasons. i was ready to throw in the faith towel, if you will.

i'd been murmuring, complaining, crying about it all for a while.

i'm sure He heard me. with questions like:

'where are You?'

'do You care?'

'are You good?'

'does it even matter?'

'can I trust You?'

now i can be a procrastinator,

and i'd let this unhealthy, passive agressive mindset go on for way too long.

finally i made a date with God to lay my doubts and fears,

questions, laments and anger out on the table.

i picked a public place in case He wanted to smite me when i put it all out there.

(that's a joke.)

i actually picked Summit cause when the sun comes into that upstairs room in the mornings it's warm and bright and beautiful.

like i wish i could always feel inside about life and God and stuff. so i sat at this table and i pulled out my journal and began.

i started with questions:

'what holds me back?'

'what trips me up?'

'can i change any of this?'

'do i want to?'

and then, for a few hours, i sat.

i was quiet.

i read.

i listened to music.

and i prayed.

and thought.

and wrote.

and at the end of the day, there was no epiphany or vision

or near death 'walk towards the light' kinda experience.

there was just me, saying yes. i said yes. i decided i do want to.

i want to believe.

not by putting on rose colored glasses to block out all the negative that is unclear and confusing,

but with honest realness, looking for answers, wholehearted. open.

i needed to tell God that altho things have happened

that have shaken me to my very core that i still believe He's good. and that He's love.

i wanted to tell him i'm sorry i'd been ashamed of Him because of the

jackassy, ridiculous stereotypes out there that misrepresent Him daily.

that i need to stop hating and be a lover.

to stop being a cynic and be a seeker.

to take one step, just one into the light.

so i did. i said yes. and i took a step. that day.

and the days since. i'm not living happily ever after and i still have so many questions,

but i decided to stay. to walk on. not because i have to, but because i want to.

because i believe that at the heart of the matter, God is love. and that He loves me. and you.

and wants us to love each other.

and that's enough for this day.

encourage

who cheers you on?

who sits on the sidelines of your life and encourages you?

who kicks your butt when you need them too?

who cuts your black eye so you can see?

(like mick did for rocky?)

who's your mick?

who speaks truth to you?

who tells you the hard things you need to hear?

who doesn't let you off the hook?

i'm pretty decent at the 'wow, you're doing a great job.

keep up the good work' encouragement.

when encourage is the cheerleader, i'm your girl. rah rah sis boom bah. and other such things.

but sometimes encourage has to take the tough approach.

the word 'encourage' actually means 'to put courage in.' (shocking, right? bet you never saw that coming.)

the way mick is talking to rocky. he's literally 'putting courage in.'

and the words, they weren't always pretty. but so needed.

i can be way too much of a softie. let people off the hook.

i don't have the courage to confront. i'm too worried about what people will think...

all in the name of love, but is that really love?

truth and love are not enemies. they are connected. partners.

the lesson is in the picture.

mick is about to pull out the razor and cut rocky's eye so he can see.

(rocky DID ask for it but that's really irrelevant to this post.)

a painful but necessary action so rocky could see to finish the fight.

and mick was in rocky's corner, literally, the entire time.

(read the metaphor, people!)

read this for a perfect example of what i'm talking about.
saying the hard thing because it HAD to be said.
how having the courage to encourage changed everything.

i'm gonna leave you with this: love love it. because deep down i am a cheerleader.

ACCEPT, pt2

i've found this prayer site (thanks to my friend Aron Gibson) called pray as you go.
it's a Jesuit site, which means it's a bit outside my ordinary mindset and that's a good thing for me.
the readers are British, which makes listening to them fun.

the site is set up to take about 12 minutes, starting with music, that's varied, eclectic.

today's was classical, choral type music.

the song lyrics were 'You are the center of my life, Lord.'

and then the reader prays this:

'amid all the preoccupation, hassles, worries and concerns,

can i open my heart to God, my guide, my healer, my teacher?

in my mind, can i focus on the center of my life?

can i stop for a moment and listen to God's voice?'

so i stop. and i listen. for God's voice.

now it takes practice to listen instead of talking.

i've been taught that prayer is talking to God and so that's what i've done my whole life.

but listening is key and it's hard.

and what i heard was this:

nothing. zero. zip.

actually that's a lie. i did hear something. this what i heard:

'you're a fake. YOU are the center of your life.'

all i could feel out of this beautiful prayer was guilt.

interestingly, this is not at all what the reader asked me to think about or focus on.

he asked me to open my heart to God, my guide, my healer, my teacher.

he asked me to hear THAT voice.

instead i heard my own voice.

my prideful, self loathing voice.

my 'check the list and show them all you're the real deal' voice.

the accuser's voice.

but NOT the voice of God, my guide, my healer, my teacher.

so i stopped the recording. and wrote this, instead.

in my last post i talked about the word ACCEPT.

and i'm thinking about what it is that keeps me from accepting the grace that's offered me.

when i'm offered unconditional love and grace for living, why don't i just take it and rest in that?

ACCEPT \ek-ˈsept\

so many many questions and thoughts around this.
today, i'll start here.

what's the difference in accepting and settling?

how can i be my best me and still accept who i am?
like deep down?

how can i expect the best out of people (like love does) but still take them for who they are?

what if accepting what IS ruins everything that
COULD BE?

how can i make peace with accepting what i hate but have no power to change?

more questions than answers today. i need wisdom.

'Among my most prized possessions are words that I have never spoken.' ~Orson Rega

when you talk as much as i do, you say a ton of crap you shouldn't say.
in the 52 years i've walked this earth, i've said some heinous things to people i love. on purpose. because i was mad. or right. or even because i was the mom. or the wife.

and i've also said lots of things that aren't really bad or wrong, per se , but offended the hearer. because i was thoughtless. quick to speak. getting my $.02 in. being funny. sarcastic. maybe not WHAT i said but HOW i said it. dang, i suck at that.

then there is the volumes of useless words that pour out of my mouth. words that aren't wrong but have no value whatsoever. like zero. just blabberyness. talking just to hear myself talk.

like a strom thurmond filibuster.

the thing about talking is that it's REALLY HARD TO LISTEN at the same time.
a goal of this month of blogging about words is to speak less and listen more.

how do you do with that?

'...be quick to listen and slow to speak..'

when Jesus says 'bajabas'

bajabas (ba-ha'-bəs)

i learned this word from the fabulous Gabrielle Lorraine Carvell-Vaughan. (i actually think the word became a part of my vocab when Gabs was here in the Hville and maybe the word actually came from Andrew Capets? but nonetheless she gets the credit because i associate the word with her.)

anyway, 'BAJABAS' is an AWESOME word.
it means 'gotcha.'
and today, Jesus said 'bajabas' to me.

i'm minding my own business this morning, making smoothies and lunchies for my men, chatting, drinking coffee, all the usual. At some point, Algie said some thing that i thought was judgy about someone. and being the good wife that i am, i quickly pointed that out. quoted him some bullshize, eh, truths about kindness and living a life of meaning, etc...yada yada yada.
and then i pulled out the big gun.
as he was walking out the door, i yelled, 'would you have said that if Jesus was here?????' (hear in my voice 'oh yeah, baby. no trumping that comment.')
cause you know i'm all Christ-y cause i am practicing lent and just got back from storyline conference and work for God and all...

feeling a little uneasy about that last exchange, i justify it in my mind. 'speaking truth is loving someone.' 'it's my job to hold him accountable. he wants to tell a better story with his life. how can he if i don't help him?'

so i sit down to read and meditate and pray as i've committed to do more regularly during Lent. see that story here. and i read about Jesus as Immanuel, God with us. and as i'm writing about this, i think, 'how will i live differently if i believe this about Jesus? that he is always with us.'
i start thinking about Algie. and what he said. and what i said. and it occurred to me that if Jesus had been physically standing in my kitchen drinking a blueberry smoothie, i would have TOTALLY let him call Algie out about being all judgy. and i would have minded my own business.

Exactly.

Don’t condemn others, and God won’t condemn you.
God will be as hard on you as you are on others! He will treat you exactly as you treat them.

You can see the speck in your friend’s eye, but you don’t notice the log in your own eye. How can you say, “My friend, let me take the speck out of your eye,” when you don’t see the log in your own eye? You’re nothing but show-offs! First, take the log out of your own eye. Then you can see how to take the speck out of your friend’s eye.
matthew 7:1-5

parking lot prayers

my celebration of Lent this year includes giving up apathy (toward my relationship with God in particular) and putting on intentional devotion. it’s a long and drawn out story but the short version is that as someone who works for the church, i.e. for God, my own personal faith can be sucked into the ‘work.’ so for lent, I’ve committed to daily spending time with God thru prayer and journaling and reading through the gospel of Matthew.

I’d like to say that I hope out of bed every morning and spend and hour in devotion but honestly, i don’t have that habit and while I try to start my day with this practice, it’s sometimes difficult. which is why I found myself here.

this is the view from my car at Canyons restaurant parking lot in Blowing Rock. I’d taken my daughter Molly back to school at ASU and in the rush to get out the door, I’d bypassed the journalling. so as I’m jamming to mumford and sons and heading back to Hville, I look to my right and see this view.

stunning…

so i whip my car into the parking lot, stopped and pulled out my journal (I take it with me everywhere) and wrote my breath prayers.

“Jesus, maker of these mountains, be near to me.”

“Jesus, light of the world, show me the way"

“Jesus, who said to Thomas, ‘see and believe’; show me who you are.”

maybe you don’t know how to direct your prayers to God. you don’t have to be an MDiv or a PhD (sorry, Mike) to discover names of God to use in breath prayers. you can google it. ‘names of God in the Bible.’ here’s a link: http://christianity.about.com/od/biblestudyresources/qt/namesofgodjesus.htm

my hope is that prayer; really talking to and listening for God, becomes as natural as breathing.

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