Since I lost my job, Rene' and I have faced many challenges, trials and pain. In all these things, I always intend to be like Paul and "run the race well" but continuously fall short of that. I want to be a "saint". I want to walk around beaming at everyone, flashing huge smiles with grace and peace oozing out of my pores. The reality is however, some days I am accomplishing something just getting out of bed.
Maybe your brain turns the same mental somersaults that mine does. My brain tells me:
It's all your fault.
God is punishing you for_____________. (Fill in the blank with everything from eating the last Pop Tart to missing church.)
If only you hadn't _____________, none of this would have happened. (Fill in the blank with everything from gotten a degree in psychology to gossiping.)
If you had read your Bible more, God wouldn't be punishing you now.
You should have prayed yesterday, today, five minutes ago....if you had, none of this would have ever happened.
God is mad at you.
The other day, I was listening to a message given by an old friend of mine, Pastor Mark Anderson at Ashland Christian Fellowship. Mark gave a message about the methods that God uses to mold us into the people that God wants us to be. Mark said many things that resonated with me, but there were two thoughts in particular that revealed to me my heart and my profound ignorance in the ways of God. Firstly, Mark shared that persecution, pain and problems are the tools of the Almighty God. This was an idea I had no problem getting behind. Don't I know it by heart already? Then as the message progressed, Mark shared the sovreignty of God and the idea that He has a plan for our lives. Then he said this little prayer; "God, I know you well enough to know that if there were an easier way to grow me, change me and make me better, You would do it because I know that you are good all the time." Why was this prayer so profound to me? Because I realized I don't know God well enough to trust that He truly would find other ways to grow me if He could. I don't trust that God is good all the time. When things are difficult, challenging or hard, I go into "default" mode. Instead of reaching into a tool chest full of what I know about God, I reach into my yucky, dark, dank past and pull out everything I have ever done to deserve these hard, challenging and difficult times. I do it because those are the thoughts that are easily within reach. The truth about God and the knowlege I have of Him is buried under all the muck and when I am in trouble, I just don't have the strength to dig deep enough to get to the treasure underneath.
The solution for me is obvious. I need to move the "good" stuff to the top of my tool chest. I need to learn more about God, His nature and His attributes. I need to fill myself with truth so that when bad stuff happens, I have someting to reach for that is good, true, holy and pure. What I am going through HURTS, STINKS AND IS AWFUL!!! What I am realizing about myself though is that my first thoughts are usually not the right thoughts. My "default" is actually a fault line of weakness that causes huge spiritual earthquakes and heartaches in places God never intended there to be any. Truthfully, I don't know or even have one iota of what God is doing in my life. I know He's trying to teach me something and grow me, and slowly, I am learning, His ways are best because He is good---all the time.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Friday, June 22, 2012
The Secret-Jesus Style
Do you remember a few years ago there was this super popular book called "The Secret"? It was an international bestseller and millions upon millions of copies were sold. Now, I confess, I didn't read the book, but I did peruse the web site and this is what it said about "The Secret":
"The Secret has been passed down through the ages... coveted, hidden, lost, stolen, bought for vast sums of money, and known by some of the most exceptional people who ever lived: Plato, Galileo, Da Vinci, Beethoven, Edison, and Einstein, to name but a few.
The Secret book reveals how you can change every aspect of your life. You can turn any weakness or suffering into strength, power, unlimited abundance, health and joy.
Everything is possible, nothing is impossible. There are no limits. Whatever you can dream of can be yours, when you use The Secret."
(Copyright © 2007-2012 TS Production LLC)
Doesn't that sound AMAZING?! THE SECRET, was coveted, hidden and only available to the greatest, richest, awesomest people on the planet...not poor schmucks like you and me. But somehow, this woman Rhonda Byrne, a former television writer and producer from Australia, discovered IT---THE SECRET to a successful life. THE SECRET to getting everything you or I could ever want. THE SECRET to a fulfilling life, health, wealth and prosperity. Holy moses, doesn't that sound just---unbelievable?
That's because it is.
I have been going through a real period of remodeling in my Christian life. God, in His infinite love and mercy, has looked upon my heart and soul and pronounced it to be "Not Good." I would love to be able to report that I have been gracious, teachable, humble and moldable during this process, but I don't want to get struck by lightening or have my nose grow to the size of a redwood. I have suffered a lot during this reworking of my heart, (mostly self-inflicted) and have gone to God's word again and again searching for something, THE SECRET to help me navigate my way through this time. This morning I came across this little gem:
"I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned THE SECRET of being conent in any and every situation, whether living in plenty or in want. I CAN DO EVERYTHING THROUGH HIM WHO GIVES ME STRENGTH." ~Philippians 4:11-13 (emphasis mine)
I have read this verse a gajillion times folks. A GAJILLION! Today however, God revealed to me the true essence of what Paul was saying. God revealed to me THE SECRET!!!
The secret is that I can do all things through Christ because HE is my strength. It doesn't matter what it is, what the circumstance may be, or how impossible things may seem because I CAN DO EVERYTHING through Him! Not with Him. Not in consulting Him. Not talking at Him. THROUGH HIM. This means getting myself off the Throne, letting Him lead me and truly submitting to His plans for my life. I realized today that His plan for my life is that I have no plans for my life...I let Him be the boss. Jesus Christ is the boss of me. When I forget that, I get lost.
When God revealed this little epiphany to me this morning, I was downright giddy. The weight is lifted! My life, my career, my everything is going to be handled by the creator of the universe and I don't have to worry any more! It may be a secret, but I am not going to keep it, I am going to tell everyone who would listen. Now, pass it on.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Withholding Good
I am going to tell you a story that makes me look bad. I just have to put that out there.
It's actually a story of me acting like this:
Instead of what I should have been, which is this:
The other day, I took the boys with me to Goodwill to help Rhianna look for some stuff she needed. Rhianna and I start looking at clothes, and Joe asks if he and Josh can go look at books. I tell that is fine, not to talk to strangers, don't eat things from the floor etc...and he and his brother happily go to look at books.
A little while later, Joe returns holding a book. He says, "Hey Jessica, I found this book and it looks interesting." I glance at him and say, without even thinking about it, "You're not getting that Joe." He hangs his head and says, "Okay." and walks back to the books. I watch him go to make sure he put it back and then continued on with the clothes hunt.
Right before we were all ready to leave, I with my goodies, Rhianna with hers and the boys with nothing, Joe comes up to me again holding the book and says, "Jessica, if you buy me this book, I will pay you back." I tell him (in an irritated tone), "Joe, I already said no. It's not okay for you to pester me. I told you no and I mean it." He again hangs his head and this time returns the book for reals.
(As if the above wasn't enough, here comes the part that really makes me look like a jerk. Be prepared.)
On the drive home, Rhianna tells me that she is short on cash and I offer to lend her $20.00 without even a thought. I go to the bank, get the money, hand it over to her and then we all go home. I am ashamed to admit this, but the enormity of what I had done didn't even dawn on me until this afternoon, in the quiet of the day, when I finally had time to think it through. I, without a thought, had refused to lend Joseph $1.49 but had no issues loaning Rhianna $20.00, and God, in His loving and gracious manner revealed to me why: Rhianna is my child, Joseph is not. I cry as I write this because as much as I care and love the boys, this incident exposed my heart and the feelings that I have that the boys just aren't "mine" and how desperately selfish these feelings had driven me to be. I have always, always worried about becoming a "wicked" stepmother and this day was the first time I truly believed that I was.
The truth is that being a stepmother is the hardest thing I have ever done. I wasn't there when these boys were developing their natures, their personalities, their childlike world views. I came into the picture three and a half years ago with my children almost completely raised and pretty much the way I had hoped. In envisioning what my life would be like at 40, it most certainly didn't include two chocolate-eyed ankle biters! Most of the time, I feel like the "one parent too many" in this equation, and kind of miffed that I have all the responsibilities of mothering these two boys with none of the decision making power.
But regardless of all that drama, malfunction and just plain sinfulness, none of this is the fault of those two little boys. God drove this point home with this verse from Proverbs 3:27:
"Do not withhold good from those who deserve it, when it is in your power to act."
This thing I do know: those two boys deserve good. They deserve love. They deserve fairness. They deserve books from Goodwill and the all the full attention and love I can offer them. I may not be their mother, but I can be their friend. I am so ashamed of the way I behaved, but I know that God revealed this cold, calloused part of my heart because He desires me to be more than I am. With His help, I can take this ugly, jerky part of myself and grow up a little. I am constantly amazed how often I still whine about the unfairness of life. You'd think I would have gotten the memo.
So, on Saturday, when Joe returns to our house, he is going to find a book waiting for him. With the help of my Heavenly Father, I am going to give Joseph not only the book that he asked for, but an open heart to give he and Joshua what God asked of me.
It's actually a story of me acting like this:
Instead of what I should have been, which is this:
The other day, I took the boys with me to Goodwill to help Rhianna look for some stuff she needed. Rhianna and I start looking at clothes, and Joe asks if he and Josh can go look at books. I tell that is fine, not to talk to strangers, don't eat things from the floor etc...and he and his brother happily go to look at books.
A little while later, Joe returns holding a book. He says, "Hey Jessica, I found this book and it looks interesting." I glance at him and say, without even thinking about it, "You're not getting that Joe." He hangs his head and says, "Okay." and walks back to the books. I watch him go to make sure he put it back and then continued on with the clothes hunt.
Right before we were all ready to leave, I with my goodies, Rhianna with hers and the boys with nothing, Joe comes up to me again holding the book and says, "Jessica, if you buy me this book, I will pay you back." I tell him (in an irritated tone), "Joe, I already said no. It's not okay for you to pester me. I told you no and I mean it." He again hangs his head and this time returns the book for reals.
(As if the above wasn't enough, here comes the part that really makes me look like a jerk. Be prepared.)
On the drive home, Rhianna tells me that she is short on cash and I offer to lend her $20.00 without even a thought. I go to the bank, get the money, hand it over to her and then we all go home. I am ashamed to admit this, but the enormity of what I had done didn't even dawn on me until this afternoon, in the quiet of the day, when I finally had time to think it through. I, without a thought, had refused to lend Joseph $1.49 but had no issues loaning Rhianna $20.00, and God, in His loving and gracious manner revealed to me why: Rhianna is my child, Joseph is not. I cry as I write this because as much as I care and love the boys, this incident exposed my heart and the feelings that I have that the boys just aren't "mine" and how desperately selfish these feelings had driven me to be. I have always, always worried about becoming a "wicked" stepmother and this day was the first time I truly believed that I was.
The truth is that being a stepmother is the hardest thing I have ever done. I wasn't there when these boys were developing their natures, their personalities, their childlike world views. I came into the picture three and a half years ago with my children almost completely raised and pretty much the way I had hoped. In envisioning what my life would be like at 40, it most certainly didn't include two chocolate-eyed ankle biters! Most of the time, I feel like the "one parent too many" in this equation, and kind of miffed that I have all the responsibilities of mothering these two boys with none of the decision making power.
But regardless of all that drama, malfunction and just plain sinfulness, none of this is the fault of those two little boys. God drove this point home with this verse from Proverbs 3:27:
"Do not withhold good from those who deserve it, when it is in your power to act."
This thing I do know: those two boys deserve good. They deserve love. They deserve fairness. They deserve books from Goodwill and the all the full attention and love I can offer them. I may not be their mother, but I can be their friend. I am so ashamed of the way I behaved, but I know that God revealed this cold, calloused part of my heart because He desires me to be more than I am. With His help, I can take this ugly, jerky part of myself and grow up a little. I am constantly amazed how often I still whine about the unfairness of life. You'd think I would have gotten the memo.
So, on Saturday, when Joe returns to our house, he is going to find a book waiting for him. With the help of my Heavenly Father, I am going to give Joseph not only the book that he asked for, but an open heart to give he and Joshua what God asked of me.
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Unemployed
I, like 12.7 million other Americans am unemployed. It's so surreal, finding yourself a part of a statistic that you are almost completely helpless to change. Think about it. Everyone knows how "tough" our economy is. For a single receptionist job paying minimum wage, an employer may receive over 200 applications! Day after day, I comb through the virtual world of want ads hoping to find something, anything to apply for that could result in a job for me that would pay me more than I am making on unemployment. Since losing my job 50 days ago, I have applied for over 25 positions. I have only heard back from one (didn't get it---ha ha). The rest of the jobs just hang out there in the realm of "maybe". Believe me when I say folks, living with "maybe" isn't easy.
Being unemployed is disorienting for someone like me. I like a certain orderliness to my days. Get up, get ready for the day, do my bible study, have breakfast, leave for work by 8am. Do my work, come home, make dinner for my family, visit with my hubby, bed by 10pm. Sounds so monotonous doesn't it? You know what's even worse than monotony? Boredom. Endless days of no where to go and nothing to do. I don't tell people that I am bored any more. I have learned the hard way that people reject the notion that I could be bored in a knee jerk fashion. Do you know how many people tell me they would love to be bored? I remember when I was working, I was always wishing for more time to_____________. Fill in the blank with any of the million little things that need to be done as a working mother. Think about having eight hours dropped into your day to get all of those million little things done. And done they are. Now what? No laundry to do, it's all caught up. Toilets are cleaned. Cat is brushed. Lint picked off the snuggle blankets. For a while, I tried watching television during the middle of the day. It just felt...unproductive. I feel guilty for sitting there knowing that Rene' is out in the heat working his tooshie off and I am sitting on a couch watching reruns of Mork and Mindy.
Why go to bed at 10pm when you don't have to get up and go to work? Why get up at 5am when you can sleep until 9 and no one cares? It feels so wrong to me. I sometimes feel embarrassed for sleeping in. As though staying up late and sleeping in makes me a "slacker". The interesting thing is that when I was a "stay at home" mom and not "unemployed", I never had such guilt. I would sleep in with my kiddos, watch "Toy Story" in the middle of the afternoon, stay up super late catching up on my reading and all with no guilt. In the past few years I have shed that freedom and become weighted down with the guilt of the working woman.
I have read a lot of books. I cannot afford to buy them any more so I make a bi-weekly journey to the library, load myself up with 12-14 books and go home. I get excited when I have new books. Something new to look forward to. I read and read and read and read. I read until until my eyes hurt. I find a lot of solace in those pages. I have time to read long, sweeping novels again; Beach Music, The Tea Rose, Sepulchre, Water for Elephants have all captured my imagination for a time. I have no desire to live in the worlds I read about, but it is nice to be an unseen observer hovering above someone else's tragedy for a while.
Unlike most of my other blogs, I have no overarching "lesson" I have learned to offer. I am writing this because I want to share what being unemployed is really like...I always have had a desire to people to learn from my experiences. I don't want to end this blog without saying I have hope. I do. Why I do is plain; I am a child of God.
Being unemployed is disorienting for someone like me. I like a certain orderliness to my days. Get up, get ready for the day, do my bible study, have breakfast, leave for work by 8am. Do my work, come home, make dinner for my family, visit with my hubby, bed by 10pm. Sounds so monotonous doesn't it? You know what's even worse than monotony? Boredom. Endless days of no where to go and nothing to do. I don't tell people that I am bored any more. I have learned the hard way that people reject the notion that I could be bored in a knee jerk fashion. Do you know how many people tell me they would love to be bored? I remember when I was working, I was always wishing for more time to_____________. Fill in the blank with any of the million little things that need to be done as a working mother. Think about having eight hours dropped into your day to get all of those million little things done. And done they are. Now what? No laundry to do, it's all caught up. Toilets are cleaned. Cat is brushed. Lint picked off the snuggle blankets. For a while, I tried watching television during the middle of the day. It just felt...unproductive. I feel guilty for sitting there knowing that Rene' is out in the heat working his tooshie off and I am sitting on a couch watching reruns of Mork and Mindy.
Why go to bed at 10pm when you don't have to get up and go to work? Why get up at 5am when you can sleep until 9 and no one cares? It feels so wrong to me. I sometimes feel embarrassed for sleeping in. As though staying up late and sleeping in makes me a "slacker". The interesting thing is that when I was a "stay at home" mom and not "unemployed", I never had such guilt. I would sleep in with my kiddos, watch "Toy Story" in the middle of the afternoon, stay up super late catching up on my reading and all with no guilt. In the past few years I have shed that freedom and become weighted down with the guilt of the working woman.
I have read a lot of books. I cannot afford to buy them any more so I make a bi-weekly journey to the library, load myself up with 12-14 books and go home. I get excited when I have new books. Something new to look forward to. I read and read and read and read. I read until until my eyes hurt. I find a lot of solace in those pages. I have time to read long, sweeping novels again; Beach Music, The Tea Rose, Sepulchre, Water for Elephants have all captured my imagination for a time. I have no desire to live in the worlds I read about, but it is nice to be an unseen observer hovering above someone else's tragedy for a while.
Unlike most of my other blogs, I have no overarching "lesson" I have learned to offer. I am writing this because I want to share what being unemployed is really like...I always have had a desire to people to learn from my experiences. I don't want to end this blog without saying I have hope. I do. Why I do is plain; I am a child of God.
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