A reflection with a piece of my heart

I haven't had much of an inspiration to write lately.  No pressing or new subjects on my mind.  There are plenty of crazy things going on in this world I COULD write about - but none that the Lord has led me to write about.  So today will be more of a personal post.  I was originally thinking about putting it on Facebook, but decided it might be a bit lengthy.

I've been thinking a lot today about my Momma.  My friend Maca and her little girl Ellie came up to visit us today and as we talked we talked quite a bit about my mom and some of the details of her life - specifically the end.  Anytime I do talk about her and especially her death I always find it refreshing and healing to read from her journal about her LIFE.  So I wanted to post another snippet from her journal.  This post has a section where she wrote specifically to me - I can almost hear her voice when I read it. Oh how I miss her.  My soul sometimes still aches with the empty spot that she left.  Only the Lord can soothe and fill that spot today, but I also rest in the faith and knowledge that I will see her again someday! How sweet a reunion it will be. It almost brings tears to my eyes to imagine that day. My heart can hardly bear it.  It makes me want to say - as so many times my Mom did - Jesus come and take me today!!  I hope and pray that I can be as heavenly minded as she was, forever waiting and watching for the day that my Savior will come and take me home.

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9/6/99

Today is Labor Day, a nice break after a couple of weeks of school.  Garr and Galen are on the sofa bed watching TV, and Cami spend the night at Jennifer's house.  I bought this journal several days ago, but I just have been unsure how to start.  I want you to have something of me (or mine) to help you understand a little more of how much I love you and how much the Lord Jesus means to me.  Sometimes I am so focused on the task of being a mom and wife that I don't take the extra effort to share my heart with you.  When I have quiet moments, I am reminded of how blessed I am to have all of you.

Cami, I really enjoyed laying on the bed and talking with you on Saturday night.  It was fun to share memories with you of when you and the boys were babies.  My, how the time has flown!  I had had a hard day, and you were concerned about me.  You wanted to know if I needed to talk about anything.  That meant so much to me.  May the Savior keep you tender and near to His own heart as you grow older.

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I think, over the years, as I have re-read this first post it is so interesting to me the timing of her writing.  As many of my readers know, my mom died after battling a malignant brain tumor for 4 years.  That's the short version at least.  The best part to me is that the date this journal was started precedes her diagnoses with brain cancer by a year and 5 months.  I just love that she didn't start to journal when she knew she was going to die, she was compelled to journal when she was ALIVE with no thought of an early death.  Her words would be sweet regardless of the reason, but they are potent with the knowledge that she wrote these things genuinely for the reasons she stated above.  I also feel confident that the Lord compelled her to write.  He knew the trials that were going to come our way and He knew how much this journal would mean to me and to the rest of my family.  Just another example for me of what my simple obedience can do for others.  The SMALL THINGS he asks me to do can become BIG THINGS to others - all I have to do is obey! 

There may not be Strawberry Pop-Tarts in Heaven - but a little more LOVE on Earth wouldn't hurt. =)

When I first decided to create myself a blog I knew that I had a post and an idea that I wanted to write about at that moment.  Then I wondered, will I keep having inspiration past my first post?  So far the answer has been - yes!  Each time I write, I soon become inspired or burdened by a new subject and it begins to build in my mind as something I should write about.  What I don't have a lot of is time to sit down and write my thoughts out.  This post in particular I have mulled over much longer than the first two.  Partially because I think my opinion on the matter isn't the most popular.  I also want to make sure if I make a claim on what Christians should or shouldn't do that I'm backing it up or have made sure that it is in line with what the Bible says.

JUDGING OTHERS

I personally believe that the judging of others - specifically the judging of other Christians is one of the biggest hindrances to the witness of the Christian faith in American culture today.   

That's a big, bold statement.  I believe it though.  I believe that more people would go to church and pursue a relationship with the Lord if they weren't too afraid or skeptical of what "other Christians" would think about their lifestyle.  I think that more unbelievers would potentially go to church just to see what it is all about if Christians didn't have such a bad reputation for judging others.

I believe, very passionately, in the grace of Jesus Christ.  Meaning, that I believe that Jesus came to save us, not to condemn us.  As I have been thinking and praying about this post, the Lord has shown me some really great verses that directly apply to my topic.  The first one, I posted on my Facebook a few days ago.  In John 14:18, Jesus is quoted saying, "I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you."  I will come to you.  Just let that sink in for a minute.  Jesus didn't say, fix everything, make yourself perfect, and then come find me.  He didn't say, here's a list of things you have to do everyday plus some bonus stuff for Sunday and then come find me, I'll be over here somewhere.  Jesus says to us - sit still, right where you are and I will come to you.  We don't even have to meet him halfway!! We just have to take one single solitary step and that is to say Jesus I need you.  Now, if Jesus is willing to meet us where we are, then why should other Christians expect us to be something different?  Christianity is about a relationship with Jesus and in the same way that a relationship grows and changes in our human to human relationships so does our relationship with Jesus.

So here's another bold statement for the day -- I'm feeling a little feisty if you can't tell.  The status of our relationship with Jesus is between us and Him.  That's it.  It is completely a product of the condition of our heart.  If you personally believe that you are being honest with yourself and with the Lord and you are walking with him the very best you can in that moment of your life - NO ONE ELSE can tell you that you are wrong. Whoo, I'm going to fire some people up I can tell!!

Right about now a lot of people are going to want to jump up and down and start talking about accountability among Christians.  Which I agree with and believe in.  But for a moment - I would like to not jump in to accountability and continue down this path.

According to the Bible in 1 Corinthians 4:5 Paul writes to the church in Corinth and says, "Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God."  Which is a perfect verse for what I am talking about -- only the Lord has the capability and the authority to "disclose the purposes of our heart."  We are not to judge the other Christians around us because God is going to do it. Our time on earth is so short compared to eternity and we are called to love and reach others for Christ - not to judge.

So now to bring it down to a personal level...
I put my faith in Jesus as a little, small girl.  I was 4 years old.  My church had a Wednesday night program called AWANAs and I was a "Cubby".  I clearly remember putting my faith in Jesus.  I remember being in the driveway in the truck with my Dad.  I remember that I was the only kid (in my family) who had gone to church that night due to illness or something related and my mom had stayed home with my brothers.  I remember telling my dad that I wanted to invite Jesus into my heart.  I was 4, that was 21 years ago, and I still remember it like yesterday.  I remember knowing at 4 years old that my life would somehow be different because of the decision that I made.

As I got older and started to make more of my own decisions - into high school and beyond - I didn't always do what I should as a Christian.  I didn't always make the right choices. I rarely sought godly counsel about the choices I was making. I more often hid the things I was doing from every one around me - especially my parents.  At a fairly young age, I started making decisions that lead me to having pre-marital sex.  This started in high school, continued through college, and up to the point that I married my husband Matt.  So let's say about 8 years.  There were many times that I knew what I was doing was wrong and I knew that it didn't please God, but I didn't know how to stop.  There were also times that I didn't care what God thought about what I did or didn't do.  Pre-marital sex had become a lifestyle for me.  A way of life - specifically the only way I knew how to be in a relationship.  Pre-16 year old relationships were the only ones I had ever had that were sex free.  So let's pause for a moment -- what I was doing was wrong, really wrong.  Fornication is listed as a sin in the Bible.  Sexual sins are especially bad sins to the Lord because he created sex to be something more than a physical experience.  He created it for me to share with my future husband, not with any guy that I chose.  I was ruining that for myself and for the men that I allowed and many times pursued to have sex with me.  At any point during that part of my life I would have told you that I knew what I was doing was wrong in the eyes of the Lord and there was a small - sometimes even a big part of me - that wanted to quit.  I even tried to quit.  However, at no point during that part of my life did I EVER doubt my salvation.  I never doubted God loved me in spite of the bad things that I was doing and he still spoke to me.  We still had a relationship, but we didn't have the kind of relationship that we COULD have because my sin got in the way of our closeness.  However, I was doing the best that I could at that time in my life.

Now, did my accountability as a Christian ever go away?  No and I will have to stand before the Lord some day look into his face and be accountable for those decisions and actions.  Were my choices wrong? Yes. Last, is it okay to run around as a Christian and do whatever you feel like doing because you believe in "grace" and that you're going to be forgiven for it all? No, not at all. At the same time, would someone pointing their finger at me and telling me that I was a "bad" Christian or that I needed to get right with the Lord have helped me at that time? Probably not, I was in a pretty dark place. Even further, the Lord never abandoned me, he never left me, and I never did enough bad things to no longer be a Christian anymore - and I did some pretty bad things.

So it really all boils down to love...

As Christians we are called to LOVE - both other Christians and non-Christians.  Matthew 22:37-39 is quoted a lot in the church, but I really don't feel like we as Christians GET it.  I think that if we did, our world would be a much different place.  The verse says, "And he said to him, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'" 

The answer to everything is love.  How boring, huh? It's the simplest of answers with the hardest follow through.  If someone is doing wrong as a fellow Christian we are called to love them and in that love to show them that they are called to a higher purpose.  If they fail to change their heart, their attitude, or their actions what should we then do?  We should love them.  Ultimately - and I'm pretty passionate about this too - the only person who can be convicted about my sins and compelled to change is me.  My husband can't be convicted about my sins for me and I can't be convicted about his.  We've had several discussions about this and it leads into a longer discussion related to marriage, but I will try to keep it as brief and to the point as possible.  I am not perfect because the Lord has saved me as the broken, beat up, and guilty sinner that I am.  I strive everyday to follow His will, but I fail him everyday.  In some small way or another I sin every single day.  Now my husband, who is a fellow Christian, never comes home and draws attention to my sins for the day, nor does he get in my face and tell me that I need to change my ways or I am going to hell.  He loves me.  When I do great things, and when I mess up.  When I take care of all my responsibilities around the house and when I sit on the couch all day and eat junk food -- he loves me.  And on the days when I sit and eat junk food, I am usually more compelled by his unconditional love to get up and do something the next day than I would be if he came home and told me how lazy I was.  In that same way, we should love the others around us even when they mess up! No matter how big or bad it may be. When someone hurts us - we are called to love them.  When non-believers confront us, or slander us, or make fun of us - we are called to love them.  In no situation or circumstance is love ever the wrong answer.  However, anger and judgment and gossip are always the wrong answer. Ultimately, all of our sins are counted the same - none is bigger than the other - and how much more of an influence can we be on everyone around us if we concerned ourselves more with loving each other than with judging each other.


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For those of you wondering, the title to this article is dedicated to some of my friends who contributed their rousing non-Christian opinions on my Facebook post about this article and also added a little humor.  Thanks Blake and Aaron, your honesty is always welcome and I'd like to think that we've always managed to get along despite our differences because of our mutual respect and maybe a little bit of love mixed in too!

Anniversary

I started this blog entry on Sunday morning, May 13th.  However, life tends to get in the way of completing tasks in my house.  Namely a sweet 7 month old who demands a lot of my attention now that she is mobile and getting into EVERYTHING.  So pretend you're reading this on Sunday. =)


Today is mine and my husband's first anniversary!!  My parents came and picked up the baby at about 4pm yesterday and we were on our own for over 15 hours!  It has been so truly wonderful and refreshing.  We got to play married with no kids and I enjoyed every last second of it.  I love that we have such a great relationship and that we have so much fun together.  I have known since the first time I met him that he was a great man.  I also knew that he was someone I wanted to get to know, to be close to, to be friends with, and to love.  Lucky for me, he wanted to love me too.   The more I got to know him the more I knew that I would never want to know anyone else.

I have never had a solid opinion on the subject of soul mates.  I still have no idea whether or not I believe in them.  What I do know, is that my husband is perfect for me.  We had a long talk in the car on our way to our date night.  Well, I did most of the talking and he did most of the listening.  However, what I believe is that one of the main reasons we get along so well boils down to something so simple - the truth.  Never, even since day one of our relationship have we ever pretended to be who we are not.  He has been himself, and I have been myself.  We're not the couple that is supposed to survive.  We have the odds stacked against us.  My husband is divorced and has a 9-almost-10 year old daughter.  We started dating in September 2010 after we met where we worked together at a local sports bar.  6 months after we started dating, we found out that we were (2 months) pregnant.  3 months after that we got married.  In October 2011, our sweet baby girl was born.  This is not your typical set up for a happily ever after story.  Most of the other stories I know that start this way, don't end well.  Most don't even start well.  We are going to make it though.  Not because I think we will, because I know we will.  This was the main thought that resonated in me last night.  We are going to make it.  There is not a thing in this world that I wouldn't do for him.  There is nothing I wouldn't do to save this marriage.



So then I wonder, where does everyone else go wrong?  I can't be the only newlywed that feels this way.  I know that I'm not.  Do half of the people who get married NOT feel this way (since the divorce rate is 50%)?  Or does something change? What changes?  I have already watched my fair share of people get divorced.  It's tragic.  Other than infidelity, the most common thing I hear is that the people in the marriage just aren't happy anymore.  So how do you go from happy to unhappy?  Do a lot of people lie to themselves and pretend that they're happier than they really are?  Do one day they wake up and decide they're tired of pretending? Is unhappiness a good enough reason for divorce? Or does the pretending go even further?  These days, dating is such a game.  While some of the masks that we may put on are innocent enough, I think that in some ways we damage our marriages before they even start.  While, as a girl pretending that you love watching ESPN every single day and watching a sporting event on TV 3 out of the 5 weeknights is totally normal for you, probably won't someday wreck your marriage - what other masks are we putting on to make ourselves more appealing to the guys we date?  When the relationship starts to get more serious, do we start to be honest about what's really behind the mask?  Or do we hang on to our mask in fear and then take it off after we're married and now our spouses are stuck with us?  How much are we pretending to be someone who we aren't -- both guys and girls and when the masks (and gloves) come off a few months or even a year after the engagement, wedding, and newlywed high wears off do we like who we see next to us in bed?  Or even worse, do we like who we see in the mirror?



I don't have any of the answers.  Do I think that people deserve to be happy?  Yes.  I have said it many times to people close to me.  "You deserve to be happy."  All the time though? Is that a reasonable expectation?  Here's what I do know.  I have been married for a year.  So I guess really I have no right or enough marriage experience to speculate about marriage yet.  I'll let you know how I feel again after 7 years.  Anyways, as I said, married for a year. It has been one of the happiest years of my life.  However, it's been exciting.  We had a small wedding, I got to plan it (with tons of help from my best friend), I picked out dresses, picked out a registry, bought tons of stuff, and spent lots of money.  There was a total "high" involved in the experience.  After the wedding was over, it was time to start planning for the baby.  A week after we got married, we got to find out what we were having and we started painting the room, getting the house ready, reading books, and picking out a registry (again).  Then in October our sweet girl arrived and it was one of the most amazing and fulfilling experiences of my life.  Being a mother is something I have always wanted.  It was exciting and overwhelming.  The point is, most of the first year of our marriage was exciting.  There were new experiences and new emotions that kept us on a "high".  By comparison, the past 6 years before I got married were not so happy.  My single and dating life had highs and lows.  Overall, I can say that I was happy about 40 - 50% of the time.  About half.  Now, I've had a lot of tragedy and bad experiences in my life to help the happiness be that low.  A lot of people would say they were happy about 60-75% of the time - maybe more.  However, if you are really honest with yourself, were you that happy?  Or were you just pretending?  I'm a realist.  Happiness has never been a big part of my adult life.  Would I like to believe that I deserve to be happy? Absolutely.  Do I think I've done anything to deserve all the heartache I've had? Nope.


So realistically speaking, if I have only been happy 40-50% of my unmarried life, why would I expect to be 100% or even 80 or 90% happy in my married life?  Why do I expect marriage to change how happy I am or am not?  I remember after my husband and I found out that we were pregnant, we were both afraid.  We knew that this wasn't exactly the way we planned to start things out.  We honestly shared with each other how we felt, what our fears were, and overall that ultimately we really loved each other and were committed to making a marriage and family work.  I remember that my husband asked me, I'm just worried because I don't know what your expectations of marriage are.  Here's what I told him.  I don't have any expectations about marriage, per se.  I expect that we will have really great and wonderful times together.  I also expect that we will have tragic, hard, and horribly sad times.  Most of all, I expect that this life and a marriage will be nothing like what we expected.  Now as vague and convoluted as that sounds, I think it has some truth to it.  How can we have crazy expectations about our marriages when we aren't even guaranteed to have our expectations about life met?  To me, marriage has never been about finding happiness. 

This life we live has burdens.  We all have them.  Physical burdens, financial burdens, and emotional burdens to name a few. I believe God created marriage so that we don't have to bear those burdens alone.  We don't have to shoulder the load all by ourselves.  We have a helper, a partner, and a friend to help us carry it.  And we have love to help make it a bit sweeter.  So that even in the midst of our sadness, anger, financial hardship, loss, or any other tragedy that could come our way we have someone who is right next to us, walking beside us, experiencing it with us.  Why would we ever turn to anyone or anything else for comfort?  My husband and I often say that no matter what, we always want to "turn towards each other."  If I'm going through a rough time emotionally.  If the finances are scary and all he can think about is how we're going to pay the bills.  If death, or sickness plagues our lives or our family.  We are committed and always want to turn towards each other and turn towards the Lord.  We believe that is the only way to keep our marriage strong.  The minute we seek someone, anyone outside our marriage for comfort and for help when we're struggling is when we start to slowly walk away from each other. I never want to take one single step away from the wonderful man that God has given me.

To Blog or Not to Blog, plus my RE-Baptism Story

I have been consciously toying with the idea of starting a blog for the past month.  It seems like the thing to do.  I constantly read blogs.  I find blogs I love about a lot of things, even things I don't particularly love.  Like this one blog I'm subscribed to "Home Sanctuary."  She gives great tips and ideas for keeping your house clean and well like a sanctuary, as the title implies.  I'm a terrible house keeper and I definitely don't love it. I try and try, but I rarely have a sparkling clean sanctuary-esque house.  Currently there are baby toys all over the floor of my living room while my 7 month old is exploring her new found freedom of sitting up and pulling herself up in her crib instead of taking a nap.  I don't even want to talk about the dishes in and around my sink. Lord help.  Anyways, I'm also subscribed to a marriage and sex blog, To Love, Honor, and Vacuum.  This one I enjoy much more with less accompanying guilt about the state of my unkempt house, and while I'm not going to comment on the state of my private life on my blog as much as the state of my cleaning habits, who doesn't like to read about sex?  To tone it down a bit, Sheila talks in her blog about the value of sex and intimacy within marriage.  She gives both wives and husbands tips on how to engage their spouses and if there are difficulties in your marriage, how to work on them or overcome them. It's great stuff and I'm always filing it away in my head to pull out someday when we may hit a bump in that part of the road.  I also find cooking blogs constantly while looking for recipes on Pinterest.  If you ever thought that the world needed another cooking blog, just get on Pinterest to prove yourself wrong. Then I found a website and blog about Early Childhood Language Development called Little Stories.  I'm hooked on that one now too.  The author, Kim Rowe, is a Speech Language Pathologist and writes about language development in a very easy to understand way.  She also actually returns emails, wow!  I emailed her a few days ago with a question and heard back from her the same day with a brief promise that she would get back to me and then a few days later with a detailed response to my email.  Last, but not least, my first blog type website love was The Pioneer Woman where Ree has a cooking section, a Home and Garden section, a photography section, and a day to day life/blog section.  It's the mother load of blogs.  

Needless to say, I didn't want to start a blog because I thought the world needed another.  While I very much enjoy cooking and my sweet husband swears I'm the best cook on the planet, I'm not going to blog every recipe that I make with step by step photos or video or whatever.  Heaven knows I don't have the answers to everything - or hardly anything for that matter.  That's when I realized why I wanted to start a blog.  Not because I have answers, but because I have questions.  Oh, and I have a really honest and straight forward opinion about almost everything. How exactly I'm going to figure out how to blog questions -- I'm not sure yet.  I also couldn't think of a creative blog title either (so input there would be great as well).  I just knew I wanted and needed to write.  I also very specifically knew that my first story on my blog would be about this past Sunday, May 6, 2012.  It goes something like this...

Sunday morning May 6, 2012 was a lot like most other Sunday mornings, well that's not exactly true, but I'll spare you the details.  After a late night on Saturday and an interrupted night of not much sleep due to nursing my baby, we made it to church almost on time and were sitting in the service. 

That day we were scheduled to have a baptism.  My church is a bit nontraditional in some ways and we don't have a baptismal in our building.  Instead we have a pool party in the parking lot.  Okay not literally, but kind of!  The church sets up a pool in the parking lot for baptism purposes.  We have lunch - hamburgers, hot dogs, and chicken sandwiches and then watch the others be baptized.  

So on Sunday, the pastor decided to teach about baptism.  I grew up in church, accepted Christ as my Savior at 4 years old and was baptized at 5.  The concept wasn't new to me.  I believed what the pastor taught us and showed us it says in the Bible about baptism so you wouldn't think this would be a particularly life changing sermon for me. One thing that Pastor Mark asked us to do before he started teaching was to suspend all of our current beliefs about baptism, listen to the service, and let God speak to us about what we were supposed to do with the information.  So I did.  Everything was rocking along great, and honestly a bit boring, until Mark told a story out of Acts 19.  

In Acts 19, Paul comes across several men who had been baptized by John (the Baptist).  John had been preaching that the Messiah (Jesus) was coming and that you should repent of your sins and wait for him.  When Paul met these guys, they still hadn't heard that Jesus had come, died, was buried, rose again, and left the Holy Spirit for us.  Apparently, they had missed out on a lot!  Anyways, when these men heard the Good News, they accepted Christ and were baptized again as a symbol that there had been a change and they were re-aligning themselves with the Lord and his will for them.  Pastor Mark then made the point that these men didn't have to be re-baptized.  They chose to.  

It was then that the Lord convicted me to be re-baptized.  As I sat in my chair, I started to think maybe I should be baptized again.  I had been baptized at 5, a lot of things have changed in the past 20 years of my life. Specifically, the death of my mom when I was 18.  The past 7 years since her death, the Lord has walked with me, challenged me, and ultimately healed me.  Especially in the past year I have experienced a great amount of healing and a calling by the Lord to become a great woman of God like my mother was.  My mom left a legacy of love and faith in Jesus for my family.  We know, without a doubt, what she believed and who she was in Christ.  I want to live the same way for my family.  To have a relationship with my Lord that inspires my children, my husband, and others in my life. It was an emotional conviction.  As I sat in my chair, I teared up a little. (With all these references to crying, you would think that I cry all the time but I really don't. It was an a-typical day for me to say the least.)

So I thought, the next time we have a baptism at the church, I'll sign up.  It will give me plenty of time to think about it and prepare.  Then the pastor turned it up and notch.  He made an open invitation to the baptism that afternoon and challenged that if there was anyone there who wanted to be baptized today, even in their t-shirt and jeans, to come on.  In my case, I was wearing baby pink short and a white shirt - how un-water friendly could I get?  So there I was, already being convicted and the Lord was saying no, not later - do it now, right now.  I thought of at least 20 reasons why I shouldn't while I sat in my chair and the worship band closed the service.  I even resisted, I wanted to push the small voice inside me away.  I was emotional and crying as I tried to sing the songs at the end of the service. (I started to wonder what was wrong with me? All the crying and such. Geez. Could I possibly be pregnant again?)  Then I stopped resisting and listened to my Jesus calling me.  I can count on one hand the number of times the Lord has called me so clearly.  How dare I even think of ignoring him now?  When the service was over, I told my wonderful husband that I had decided that I wanted to get baptized and could he please rush home and get me some different clothes. 


After briefly speaking to the pastor and filling out a card with some basic information and the story behind my baptism that day, my step daughter, baby, and I headed outside to grab a quick bite to eat while dear husband ran home to get us both clothes.  The pastor, who also married us and has been friends with my husband for several years, suggested that my husband should help baptize me.  Which, I think, was one of the sweetest parts of the whole thing.  I was emotional (again!?!) as they read out the short story behind my decision.  I could tell, without looking, that my husband was tearing up beside me.  When I came out of the water, he was there.  What an awesome thing.  I won't go into all the amazing reason why I love him, but I know there is no one else I wanted to come out of that water and see. What an incredible experience.  I literally feel like I have been cleansed.  I know though, that it was very little to do with being dunked in a pool on Sunday and a whole lot to do with my Savior, Jesus, who can wash all my sins away.

 Here I am almost crying.

And these are my favorite pictures after the "dunk."

Goodness, I love that handsome man. =)