Funk!

Do you ever get into a funk? Is that a crazy question or what? I'd like to put on my holy pants and say Why, no, I never get in a funk! That would be unchristlike, or something! Here's my question: Those 30 years that Jesus was growing up and learning, do you think he got in a funk? Do you think he ever wondered What the sam hill is going on and why do I have to make tables?

It's not that I've figured it all out, but I did come across something this morning that has cleared my way a little, and maybe it will shed some light on your place in the world.

Sorrow, under the power of divine grace, makes us move more slowly and considerately and examine our motives and attitudes. 

God never uses anyone to a great degree until He breaks the person completely. ~ Streams in the Desert

Now I find the first one pretty true. The second one, well, it wears me out! I think, no, God would never break me completely! Then I remember Joseph and how he suffered for years before God used him to save a nation. I think about Moses in the desert for 40 years, hanging out with sheep before he got to lead his people out of slavery. The Bible is full of the example, and if you look long enough, those people are in your life too.

So why would I think that sorrow would skip by me? Why do I feel as though I need to be doing something and checking it off the big list in the sky? Then I saw the word wrestle… to contend, as in a struggle for mastery; grapple: to wrestle with one's conscience. Great!

So I'm in a time of sorrow, and I'm wrestling, that's a sad fighter huh? But where I am is right where God needs me to be in order to hear what he has for me. I'm struggling with waiting, no job that gives a paycheck (cuz you know that's where worth comes from), cleaning the house, taking care of Preacher man, feeding the dog, and why we can't get this well water figured out! Everything, flat out everything is a struggle!

The cool thing, is now I knowing that. Now I can breath, cuz it's all gift from God! Now, I can stop and ask questions like Why do I always have to start over? I don't truly expect an answer, I expect an understanding. A knowing if you will. I understand who is after my light and my joy. I understand that God is teaching me a new thing even if it's not that new! Wrestling takes on a new look to me now and I'm not as sad about it. Now, I'm still in sorrow, but it's sorrow with a purpose. A God purpose, for me. The question then becomes, will I learn it?

This Little Light of mine!

Silence

Silence. What does that look like in your life? Is it something that you create each day, or run from each night, or don't even know about cuz life is in control of you? It might be something that you had before the kids came along, and something that you have too much of now that they are gone. 

Silence to me, has changed as I have and I'm not sure if I'm always ok with it. I mean, I'm an extrovert and we get our energy from being with other people, not from being alone and in silence! That's crazy talk! What I have been finding though, is that as God grows me deeper into who He wants me to be, I'm changing and seeing that silence really is a gift!

Our spiritual goal is to be able to come before God as we are, with no titles, merit, shame, or guilt, just as we are! Naked, so to speak, of our walls that we have erected to protect ourselves from life. All we can offer God, and all that He wants, is who we really are. Which by the way, we never feel is good enough. So we make noise and build those walls and become the person we have always thought we were. 

The truth of the matter is we have created our false self. I know this because I was queen of falseselfness for a very long time, and I might add I was very good at it! As I started finding out about Jesus and what he did for me, how he would go off and be alone with God, I got to thinking, there must be something good about all that.

Silence is the language of God, it's all around if you listen for it! It is what we crave if we take the time to follow it's lead. Silence is the only language that is deep enough to absorb our false self. God loves us silently and He waits in the silence for us.

Stretching

Life has a way of stretching us, have you noticed it? When we're being stretched, we think it's only us that is being pulled on in that way. I have found that when we share life with others, we find that we have either been pulled that way just days or weeks before, or look out, it's just down the road! 

Sometimes we are pulled to a breaking point and I have been thinking about that lately...why do we resist? What is so ingrained in us that we have to hold on with both hands as we are being ripped from end to end? It's crazy! It's painful and you know what else? It's usually where the growth comes from.

We all have anxiety in our life and we all deal with it in different ways. There is a large amount of our lives that are all about the uncertainty and what the future holds, and it can cause us to freeze, or break.

I have been waiting for years for someone important enough to notice me and my giftings. I have taken enough classes and spent enough time at the feet of great teachers to be one myself, however no one has seen that light that has been shining on me...not even me. Now Preacher man has and that's one of the reasons he sees me as a partner in ministry with him and not just the Preacher's wife. I do like hiding under that title though, it offers a great surprise factor!

I Skype Sister Rachel about starting on my Practicum. I had filled out all the forms and wrote down everything I've done and learned. She looked at me and asked the greatest question ever... What are you waiting on?

So I encourage you to stretch with life, there is probably a really good lesson behind it. Don't let it freeze you up or put you in a corner. Try bending a little, like the old trees in a wind storm. When they bend, they don't break so easily.   

Do you Linger?

What does it mean to linger? Looked it up and found: To remain or stay on in a place longer than is usual or expected, as if from reluctance to leave. Do you find that you ever do this lingering thing? Just staying a little longer after the show is over. You know when the credits roll after a movie? Sometimes those are the best missed shots of the whole thing! I have sat through shows before that moved me so much that I found I could not leave.


Do we ever do that after a church service? I mean really? Has it ever so moved you that you just sat there, not listening to your stomach, but just trying to take more of it in? We are so busy with our own lives and filling them, that we don't take the time to linger, maybe ever.


I find that I'm lingering lately. We will roll out of the driveway at 3903 W. Olive in 25 days. Something that I have waited a long time for! Yet I find that I'm lingering in the time left. I'm saying yes to lunches, even on short notice because I want to sit with these people. I'm looking at the yards when I run pass them in the mornings and if someone is out there, I say Good morning! I'm looking people in the eye and smiling at them, in order to remember them maybe.


These two years have been my deepest growing to date. I have learned about abiding, lingering, waiting, being, staying, and surrendering. I have immersed myself in the stillness of God and what he has in mind when he says Be still and know and it has been amazing. 


It could have only happened here, in this place that didn't see me, didn't really care what I had to offer. I was seen by a few, don't get me wrong, but it wasn't what I thought it was going to be and now, I'm glad. I have grown so much because of it. My root have gone so deep, but you can't tell from what stands above the ground. 


So I linger. I remember and hold close to my heart who was here for me, how I was treated, what true hospitality looked like, and I smile. Not because God is good, because he is, but because this was His plan all along! So I will linger for a few more days in the glow of what He showed me, that could have only happened here.  

Silence?

Why do we find it so hard to be in silence? I think we just might be afraid of it. Have you ever been around someone in the hospital and tried not to talk so much? Or had a friend that was going through a really hard time and been able to just sit with them in silence. Sometimes nothing is the very best thing you can say, as opposed to It's going to be ok. or God is teaching you a lesson. While these thing maybe true, I don't think they need to be said or heard for that matter.


I can't tell you how many people think I'm plumb crazy to spend an hour in pray. I've heard everything from I talk to God for 10 minutes than I'm done. to I fall asleep after 3 minutes. Now let me just state, an hour is something you need to work up to. Try starting with 15 minutes! Try starting for that matter. 


I think that words that don't come from silence are probably not worth saying. They are more like words that need to be unloaded than they are communication. I can talk about this cuz I used to be the champ at this, and sometimes...I still am.


Take a Psalm, any one of them, and read it out loud, then just sit with it. Don't start talking to God, just sit there and reread it slowly. Ask God what he has to say to you, then just sit there and keep your corn-hole shut! After 15 minutes, get up and go on with your day. The next day do the same thing. See if you don't start hearing that still small voice inside of you.


Blaise Pascal said all human evil comes into the world because people can't sit still in a chair for thirty minutes! I don't know if that's true, but it could be. Maybe what he's saying is when we run from silence we run from our souls, ourselves, and therefore, from God. Richard Rohr says if he was to advise one thing for spiritual growth, it would be silence. I agree with that more now than I ever have before. 


Maybe that's why as we get older, we listen more and speak less. It's not that we have less to say, in fact, I would bet we have more to say. It's that the others need to unload their words on us. I'd like to think that as you unload your words, you would be making space to receive in silence. If we don't take time to be in silence, how do we ever expect to receive?     

No Time!

Let nothing upset you,

Let nothing startle you.

All things pass;

God does not change.

Patience wins all it seeks.

Whoever has God lacks nothing:

God alone is enough

~Teresa of Avila

How come we can't go through our day's living this out? Or can we? What does it take to live out this short passage from Saint Teresa? After hearing some of the things going on at General Conference, I believe that the only thing for certain is God!

Most of us live in a state of upheaval that goes from one crisis to the next without taking time to rest! We don't take time to sit down and look over what has been happening in our life, cuz there isn't time for some reason and we don't understand why. I hear it often...I would love to change but I don't have the time...There aren't enough hours in the day for... To this I say Horse poop!

God has given us enough hours in the day, we are the ones who cram too much into them. I'm just as guilty as you, or I should say I use to be. OK, I am, but I'm working on it. Why do we think we have to do all that stuff? Who said we did? And where are those people that invented the list?

We are scared to death to slow down aren't we? We're afraid that someone will get ahead of us or have more cute clothes or a better hair style, or their children will be smarter. Have you heard that parents are holding their kids back from starting kindergarden so they will be older in their class and smarter? These are the same vein of parents that don't make their kids work in the summer and then can't figure out why they have no work ethic. We want ever advantage we can get in order to compete with the world.

I'm done with it! I really am! My life is so much better now that I'm out of the rat race! I got to thinking what God had in mind when he made me, and while I can do whatever I set my mind to, my mind was not thinking on what it should have been thinking on. I want beauty and the sound of water in my life. I want to dry people tears and show them the real hope in their life. I have walked their path and I'm so glad I jumped off and decided to play in the flowers!

We don't have to live like this, really we don't! All things pass! I promise! Take that cup of coffee, or glass of wine out on the porch and just listen. The baby birds are learning to fly right now! Can you hear them? God does not change! Slow down, hear what the creator of the world has to say to you! Your the one that's too busy to hear, He's speaking!  

Stillness

Something I think we all find hard to do, or at least challenging, is being still. It's so hard to just be still, isn't it? We have a ton of things that need to be done, and people we need to see, food to pick up and cleaning that should be done. I have found a few things challenging this week and one of them was being ok with being still.


I find it easy to keep the boob tube off until about 6:00 in the evening. The quite from just me and the herd is pretty quite. I wouldn't say that it's driving me crazy, but it is different. I find that I'm seeing more and hearing deeper. I get the sense that God wants us to hear him more often but we just don't give him the chance. We don't turn things off! Some will say they need the noise to keep them from going crazy. I would suggest that is just an excuse. The noise keeps us from hearing and thinking deeply. I would go so far as to say we fear the silence. 


I remember when we lived in Hawaii and I was about 7 or 8, I got to have a room of my very own for my birthday. Now the crazy part about this, so did my sister and she got her own room at a younger age than I did! ANYWAY, I had shared a room with my sister for my whole life, all 7 or 8 years and there are certain things that you just get use to when you share a room with someone. The sounds for one thing become something you almost rely on. There was safety there and comfort from that safety. When I got my own room, it was strange and had weird sounds and I wasn't all that comfortable nor did I feel safe! So what did I do? I got a radio and I turned it on so I would have some noise to feel comfortable by. It gave me something to listen to so I wouldn't have to listen to the silence.  


So silence is something that I am learning to enjoy. By nature or birth, I'm a loud person, however, I'm getting a little quieter lately and I'm finding that I'm ok with it. I am finding that God fills all the area's that we will allow him to fill, even the silence. He is closer than your very breath, if you will but listen for him.