Trials

The trials of life are sent to make us, not to break us.

~ Malthie D. Babcock

I came across this in my quiet time this morning and after it punched me in the stomach, it gave me cause to ponder… I don't know if I agree totally with the statement. Wait, yes I do.

What happens when you break? What comes to mind might be bones sticking out and blood going everywhere. But what happens when it's not physical? Or on the outside, so everyone can tell? So often we think that if your not bleeding, your not hurting. I mean, think about what we say to kids when they get hurt. Let me see, are you bleeding? No, your fine. Get back out there. Yet, maybe they are breaking inside. 

So how do we deal with this not breaking during the trials of life? Well, for me, I produce way too much acid for my stomach to handle, I don't sleep through the night (been up since 12:30 and it's 4 now), I loose weight then gain it right back and I seem to cry during the strangest programs on TV. But the question is, is this breaking me?

I believe that IF the evil one has his way, yes, it will break me. But when I think about God growing me, making me, so to speak, I see this as a test, aka trial. Maybe not just like Job, but so dang close it's scary at times. I haven't lost everything like he did and I'm not sitting in ashes with sores all over me, but let me tell you, it feels like it sometimes.

I have come to a point where I can't be like them anymore. 

Years ago (it just seems like a few days ago), I could let myself fall back into default mode. You know what I'm taking about? I'm going to get all up in your face and kick the living shit out of you! If I can't do that, then I'm going to secretly sabotage you. (I think I might have been a bully when I was in high school, at times anyway. This is not news that thrills me, but I am about being real, and I have warned you about that!)

So, what's different now? Well, I think it's about letting God make me into a new creation without letting myself break back into what I know, my default mode. Let me tell you, for an extraverted, strong willed, might have had tendencies to be a bully, this is hard stuff!

Just when I think I'm at the breaking point, I read something, or someone calls with a kind word. I want to kick and spit, but that's not who God wants me to be. It maybe where they are, but I don't have to wallow in their crap with them. 

Save me, O God,

for the waters have come up to my neck.

~ Psalm 69:1

  

Solitude

My dear sweet friend, Pat, who knows my love for Henri Nouwen, gave me a book 2 years ago to read before we left seminary. I just now found it again and have started reading it. It's called The Way of the Heart and I think I'm going to have to read it very slowly, cuz it packed with stuff.

I'm thinking a lot about solitude lately, how bout you? To start off with, my whole definition is changing daily about this word. I use to equal it to solitary confinement, and while the words are similar, I believe the way in which I'm looking at them is what is changing. 

Nouwen say's it this way: Solitude is the place of purification and transformation, the place of the great struggle and the great encounter...the place of our salvation. 

The Desert Father's and Mother's left what they knew and went out into the desert to live a life of solitude, yet in their aloneness, they were with Jesus. Jesus himself went out into the desert where he was tempted with the three compulsions of the world: to be relevant ("turn stones into loaves"), to be spectacular ("throw yourself down"), and to be powerful ("I will give you all these kingdoms").

Solitude is the place where great struggles and great encounters happen! We struggle with our false self and we encounter God who offers himself as a substance of the new self. 

I know all this, really I do. However, lately, I've been struggling with just about everything. Things used to work so well, pray life was good, heard from God, took time to knock and seek and I really thought I was in the desert. What I'm understanding now is, I was in a sort of solitude. That solitude is calling me back again, and I'm struggling with how to do that and ministry. Kinda like, the rubber hitting the road.

So, I'm on a journey that I feel like I've been on before, yet there are things that I left by the side of the road, so I could pick them up again, when the time was more right. I'm thinking the time is more right. 

It's kinda like what Augustine said:

Thou must be emptied of that wherewith thou art full,

that thou mayest be filled with that whereof thou art empty.

Wow! Won't you walk with me for awhile on this road?

Shock!

Buell

I think I'm still in a state of shock. I was able to ride a motorcycle! AND pass the driving test! Got to do the written one tonight, but the big shocker came when I put my feet on those pegs and it was me and that crazy, don't want to run right, Buell! Now, it's like I told my Momma, I ain't ready to get on I-540 for probably, like, ever! but I got on that thing and rode it! I now have a totally new respect for driving in general, and will be looking for motorcycles in a whole new way. 


I'm thinking that's how God deals with us sometimes too. He teaches us something new and then watches to see if we really get. That's what has been going on with me lately. I've learned so much these past two years, and now God is watching to see if I really learned the lesson. 


Do you ever have that happen to you? You learn something, understand the importance of it, only to be tempted to revert back to the good ole way of dealing with it. This has been my time to revert, but I've been so busy paying attention to how to ride a motorcycle, that I haven't had the time to respond in like manner. So just this morning I got it, so to speak.


See, I really can't help anybody. If you don't want to be helped, hear the truth or be changed, I just don't have much for you. Jesus is who changed my life. Not self-help books, even though I've read my share of them. Not friends or family, even though some have stood in the gap for me. When I did get help, I tried to tie it to a person, but the Godly ones knew and passed on the praise to the real healer. 


My thinking is we all need help, healing, and understanding. We need someone to show us the correct way to do something, and it always helps if they know more than we do. 


I have learned so much these past two years in Rogers that I would not, nor could not have learned anywhere else. I was brought into a unfamiliar place and it was nothing like I had expected. In thinking back, I was probably warned by spiritual mentors, but I was going to be different! I was different, so different that I really didn't required a second glance. This put me in a place spiritually where I needed to be to become a spiritual director, and grow into this person that I'm just now getting to see.


I'm more than I was two years ago, heck, I'm more than I was Saturday before I got on that Buell and rode! I know who has all the answers to the questions. It took me two years in exile to be able to hear the answers, but I'm hearing them now, and I can't wait to see what the next chapter brings in help, healing and understanding. The more I learn, the more He shows me. That's why this life is a marathon and not a sprint.          

Tempt!

Nikon Sniper

I'm in awe of how God works in our lives IF we will let him. Everyday this past week I have had one of those... DUDE! You are so on it! The funny thing is He has always been on it, I'm the one that's catching on!


Been spending time thinking about Jesus' baptism and temptations this week. Sister Rachel told us that temptations reveal our identity. They tell us who we are, who we can become and who we mistaking can be. I've had to think about that, walk away from it for a while, then come back to it later, cuz it's a lot to think about. I'm going to jot down some of the things that were covered, to give you something to think about.


Jesus does not run from temptation. In fact, it is the Holy Spirit that leads him into the desert to face these demons.


Jesus fasts first. He wants to be lean, prepared, alert, and hungry.


Jesus is facing his identity. The temptations are all about how he is who he is.


Jesus is confronting temptations to use his personal power for himself, rather than for others.


We are all tempted! It's almost like life is a testing ground for each of us. The crazy thing is when you get through one test and you learn the lesson, if you don't stay humble, you'll get to do it again. How many times have you had to go through the same test? Overindulgence is an easy example I can use here. Just think about it in your life for a minute. Are you captain of it yet? It doesn't just have to be food, it can be anything that you take in too much of, even dieting and exercise. So much so that it starts to become an idol. It takes the place of God. It's something that reels it's ugly head when we start to get proud of what we've done huh?


Jesus came down here to save us. Totally divine and totally human, something we have a hard time getting our heads around sometime. But he emptied himself of everything, to be one of us, to be tempted just like we are so he could know how it is for us. We can never say, But you don't know how it feels to be ________!! Just fill in the blank. Yes he does! He was tempted, just like us, to be disobedient, to do it his way... and he didn't do it. It blows my mind to think that even if I was the only one, he would have hung on that cross for me! Even me!!