With Every Start

So I'm reading this book called "The Joy of Being a Woman" by Ingrid Trobisch and I've been learning a lot about myself. The book is a bit dated, but I've read passages and proceeded to shout 'That's what that is?!" or "That's why I do that!" It's been really good for me. It makes my female-ness less of a mystery and helps me feel like I can be normal as a woman.

The best part is paying close attention to my behavior and thoughts when I'm going through a hard time and realizing "I'm premenstrual!" In previous posts I've mentioned how much I hate attributing my feeling bad to me being hormonal. It's taken some time but I've realized that if I turn down my drama-o-meter consistently and look at my calendar it's usually the case... and it's okay that it's the case.

I've given myself a really hard time whenever I trip up mentally or spiritually, but most of the time I just need to give myself a break, because I'm not being nearly as awful as I've made myself out to be. Whenever I'm hormonal I find myself truly believing that my faith is ripping to shreds and that I'm failing God with every step I take. Then in two or three days something amazing happens and I have spiritual break through with someone and I get to share Truth and the Word. It's a consistent pattern that I seem to forget about a lot.

So for the women out there who go through this strange spiritual depression where they feel as if they are going to screw up and fall away from God in a day or in the next hour- seriously consider your hormonal calendar. Men may call us unpredictable, but we can usually and correctly contribute mental mood shifts to our bodies doing what they do best (baby making prep!)

I've been trying to douse myself in the word of God whenever I start feeling this way. My fear of falling away makes me work twice as hard, which I think is kind of funny.

If you love the Lord with all your heart, you'll be hard pressed to stray.

I found myself admitting to Him this morning rather painfully that if I were tempted sexually and I had to choose between Him and the temptation I would not choose Him.

A few things I came to understand in that conversation with Him:
1) I am a sinner. There is a reason why the prophets and disciples and Jesus Himself tell us to stay in the light- don't get caught up with those who do not believe and love the King. No matter how righteous we think we are, given the circumstances we can be made weak and falter.

2) If you are in a deep relationship with God and He knows you, He WILL NOT let you fall. You had better believe if you fear the Lord He'll snatch you up and convict you. It's your choice whether you give an ear and heed your conscience. The Holy Spirit is your guide and God will be very clear in His will. God is God - if you are slipping up, He has the power and sovereignty to get you out whether you like it or not. Be faithful, He's forever faithful.

3) Healing is something that happens in time. Never will I condone sin or make excuses for it. The Lord does, however, know your heart and knows it that much more if you are communicating with Him. He knows where you're struggling, He knows where you are hurting and where you fall over and over. He hears you and wants to help you. He will pick you up and give you the strength to try again to be right in your repentance whether you only need to repent once or repent 1000 times. He sees your effort and where you are and if you are sincere honesty and loving Him, He will provide grace. Don't worry. There is no condemnation in the Holy Spirit. Only conviction. If you have a pit fall be strong, for He is with you always in everything.


Sometimes when I write I get healed and comforted. This has been one of those posts where I write about the truth even though right before writing it out I actually don't believe it. It's nice to know that God is speaking to me through so many things... including myself.

"Stars! Hide your fires! These here are my desires and I won't give them up to you this time around. So! I'll be found with this stake stuck in this ground- marking the territory of this newly impassioned soul!"

Letting Myself Be Sick

I think you know what I mean. When you felt sick days ago, but you just had to go to class, or had to go to work, or had to absolutely do something that day... then a week passes and you feel the same symptoms creeping up on you further. Yeah... it's like that. So today will be my sick day before my body shuts down on me at the most inopportune time.

I will admit I'm kind of excited to make some mac and cheese and play F.E.A.R, but I miss Sam and Christi already. I always see them on Wednesdays.

Alright so I'm here, what shall I talk about.

Let's talk about my anxiety. Since apparently that's what God is testing me in these days and will most likely to continue to test me in for years to come.

I am anxious about:

1. Being sick. Not my "aww I have a common cold" sick, but the "my body aches in the important lower regions of my body and I don't know why" sick. It's scary, but I'm trying every moment to not live in fear of what it may be.
2. Homework assignments. I'm doing them. They're getting done, I just don't know if I'm doing everything to my highest standard and ability. This performance pressure of mine won't let up it seems.
3. Graduate school. I finally made a break through and started my school's application. Such a huge step for me, because I have this tendency to let things pile up in my mind and freak out because the pile is so large... instead of actually doing something about the pile in real time.
4. Loving people. There are quite a few people that I want to (if I haven't already) pour my life out to in efforts to love them and be there for them. Maybe in my being a young Christian I'm expecting too much too soon. I feel like I'm not achieving anything, when in reality people's lives don't change over night, their mind sets don't change overnight, the insanity they view as normal or okay isn't merely going to leave upon me saying something to them or suggesting new ways to consider things. Loving people deeply is a walk. And walks like that take time and patience and love from God- not myself.

Lani told me something that I hadn't heard in a while in the context of me needing to give myself a break. He told me that I got dealt a mess from the very beginning of my life, that was just it and the way it was. I got older and realized it was a mess and have been busting my butt to climb my way out ever since. Working hard through school and working jobs, all things that call for performance in order for me to succeed.

Because that's how I operate, with this performance pressure mindset, it's like my default mode. I have to get it right or I run the risk of failing and being back where I started, where ever that might be. There is a healthy element to that I would assume, but it's so intensely manifest in me that it takes on a form of stress... and it turns physical.

Much of this comes down to me being able to trust God with my life... all of it. And somehow my brain wants to figure that pattern out too, what does it look like to trust God with my life? How do I know I'm doing it correctly? What if I'm doing it wrong? And all the aches I haven't felt since High School come back to haunt me. I had a really good streak of pain free months this past year, and I don't know where it all went. Probably disappeared around the time I realized God was angry at me about Truelove. Huh... I guess I didn't consider that until now, but that might be where all this stress started.

I just want to be able to trust God in everything I do. I just want to be able to live my life in such a way that I would not believe for a second that I have forgotten Him. But I also want to do it sanely, and not because I feel like I must impress Him (He is not impressed by the things I do). I want to obey Him and not have it appear to be me walking on eggshells. I want to love Him and not act like He'll leave me if I don't do it right. There is so much certainty and so much surety, so much security there. It always will be. I just want my mind, my body and my soul to act like it.

God is not my mother.

God is God. God is the Person that loves me so much He gave His only Son so that I may be able to have a life in Him... an everlasting life. I just need to remember that. It's okay if I don't know what that looks like right now, I will and Jesus will give me the grace to figure it out. I don't have to worry. Srsly. DON'T WORRY. I suppose that much of this comes from me not being able to bounce back when someone is frustrated or disappointed in me about something. I usually spend my time cowering in a corner and being afraid to do anything (walking on eggshells essentially), but with God I don't have to do that. I repent, I pray, I breathe and He hugs me and tells me to go on and behave. He does not want my dignity to be lessened and he does not want me to cower and be insignificant and useless in his sight. He wants me to be strong, humble, sweet, patient, and loving to live a life in Him that displays all of that naturally- not forced. So when I mess up I need to show remorse (upsetting God is NOT fun), but I can pick myself up and dust myself off and know that He has my back, He won't let me fall.

*phew* my anxiety talk in a nut shell. I really needed to share that and come to the conclusions I did.

Something else really random: So lately I have heard people make jokes about Jesus being zombie, and that the resurrection of souls is pretty much like a zombie apocalypse. Absurd, of course, but in my naive brain and in my naive thinking I became a little worried because I don't know what the Resurrection will look like, nor does anyone else. Again I know this is totally crazy, but bear with me there is a good ending to this thought avalanche. So this morning I read Mark 12 and I got to verses 24-27 and came to relief about such trite, silly thinking. haha Verse 27 Jesus ties this off with "He is not the God of the dead, but of the living; you are greatly mistaken." (NASB)

And underneath that it also helped me be confronted with another anxiety problem that I have that I chose not to mention earlier because it wasn't at the fore front. Marriage. Good heavens I'm ready to be. But obviously I'm not ready for it. The set of verses I point out paint a picture for me about where marriage should be in my hierarchy of concerns spiritually. Verse 25 Jesus says:"For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven." There is a life beyond this that Jesus explains so briefly, but so elaborately, that even marriage is obsolete within it. I hope to make it a task to place marriage in it's proper place- Below the desire to be in God's kingdom. That will probably rid me of a few problems along the way.

"You've been looking for a sign all this time, If you seek you'll find me every time."

Teeth

Yes I still miss Marshall. No he hasn't called nor will he ever call.

New topic.

So my wisdom tooth has been kicking my butt since Monday! I've been attacking it with Hydrogen Peroxide, IB Profen, Garlic (crazy I know) and in the late night when it wakes me out of a dead sleep, prayer. Truth be told none of those have been helping all that much -1 . And this morning had me revisiting my O-so-wonderful childhood and made me further reconsider the whole "handing the reigns over to God" concept I've been battling over for a bit.

So I've been waking up a bit later these past few days (Later being 8:30am - 9:ooam as opposed to 7:15am- 7:45am) I blame the acetaminophen which has been my friend since the tooth pain started. Today I was up around 8:30 and I went up stairs to begin the battle that is brushing my teeth while having an abscessed tooth. I used mouthwash, brushed, rinsed, used hydrogen peroxide, rinsed, done. But some expression on my face when I walked into the kitchen prompted Lani (my roommate/head of the household) to have my attention and ask "What's up with that tooth?" And in a swift two minutes of concerned chatter and me explaining how I can't do anything due to my lack of knowledge of my insurance/funding, he dictated his next actions which included getting phone numbers and making calls to see a dentist. I just stood there in the middle of the kitchen feeling so weird. Then Lani called me over to sit next to him and held me as I began to cry.

I cried because for ONCE I felt like someone cared more about me than money. Someone didn't scold me for wanting some form of medical attention or tell me that the physical problems I had weren't a big deal. My mom, though she may never admit it, made me feel awful whenever I made hint at wanting to go see a doctor. Though she went to the doctor for nearly every problem she's had (and she's had many a surgery and doctor visits in her time.) I mean not to speak poorly of my mother, but she basically came off to me as selfish in that realm. And due to this and many other issues I've had with her in my life I've grown to try to do everything on my own. Living in the Peck House has been having me consider otherwise.

"Giving is easy, but Receiving is the hard part."

The paraphrased lesson that Lani mentioned in his wonderful Pastoral way. After spending another Sunday evening with my good friend (almost sister figure) Traci, our deep discussions made me try to figure out further how I should view the God that had shown himself to me back in May. Right now, he has been a very close, understanding friend with an INCREDIBLE sense of humor. Master? Not so much. Father? I've never had one to know, but I have such a low view of fathers that I wouldn't bother insulting any being with that view. I speak so causally about God because I still don't know how to understand him (and if you're a good friend of mine you're probably throwing in that he/she/it factor whenever you read "he" in this... for now give it a rest) But in talking to Traci about how I view him, I recalled saying how I just find it so peculiar that people just give their problems to him... I've been holding the reigns on my life for a long time. I don't give myself a lot of credit because I have had help, but overall I've dictated a lot of things in my life. The very idea of me giving the reigns to God is so... daunting to me... And I can see myself constantly asking for them back haha. But Lani telling me that he was going to get me to a doctor because I had an EMERGENCY and him calling and setting the appointment when I hadn't asked him to and me having my insurance cards ready (apparently they took it! Who knew?) Made me realize that I really had been doing things by myself and made me realize that I did like help and appreicated someone else caring so deeply about me beyond giving me rides to school and useless pep talks. Maybe the God I'm speaking to is listening to me... Maybe the God I'm getting to know is loving and wants what's best for me... I'm sure there are many ways to learn and experience his true identity, but honestly I'm still fearful of tacking on a religion to such a vast being in my life.

Talking to John (my other roommate) brought up a very interesting concept that's been doting at me for a day or so now. I told him that I found it hard to be a part of a religion because there are so many people out there that are so strong and devout to their religion and their God as much as I simply believe in God alone. And he explained, not in great detail, that God created ways of communicating with different people and that for the most part religions generally run along the same format, a monotheistic God and a disciple of sorts who is the key to communicating with God and helping those who sin find peace. Not his exact words, but that was the gist. He also suggested I read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, so I might be looking through my old book collection when I return to SoFl.

Whether I take the Christian route is tough to say. I wouldn't say that I'm being defiant as much as I am being cautious. But I will say that I'm beginning to find out a lot about myself by living in this little house.

Hopefully by next Monday I'll have date for my tooth to get extracted.

1. I take it back... prayer did help...