Beat the human out....

As usual, I have been struggling a LOT. When the Bible describes us travailing in birth pains until our son ship is manifest (Romans 8:22). I know EXACTLY what that means. It seems the fruit of the spirit does not come easily to me at all. I am rebellious, sadly. I buck everything and when I KNOW I should think, feel, act differently than I do, the wrestling match begins. I have to beat the, well, human, out of myself. It doesn't go peaceably.

Raising children is an insurmountable task for me.  I need to be more than I am so that I can teach them the proper things. I don't want them to struggle with the same issues spiritually. Believing, as I do, that God is true and He deserves praise, worship, loyalty, and love from every living thing, it is then my duty to help them along this path so they achieve more in it than I ever could. It is my goal to be their ladder, or really to let Christ work through me so that He is their ladder. This means that I cannot do what I want. I am in doubt. I do not know how to be more than I am. I do not have a childhood bank of object lessons from which to pull. So I pray because God must show me how to be the right parent, how to attain and exude His glory, not my own.

I struggle with contentment, envy, and, as I mentioned, authority. Knowing God and that His will is the same as my own in conquering these foes for Him I trust my prayers will be answered and my enemies put under my feet, not without diligence and sacrifice on my part. I have been asking how to be content for quite a while. I want to be a Godly wife, not just a good one. That's hard. It's self-sacrificing. It means I come last.

So while the kids were down for a nap and I wanted to watch tv, I found myself griping about wasting those precious and limited minutes loading the washer and the wood stove and putting on dinner instead. And suddenly as well as finally, He spoke to me. I was carrying a armload of wood to the fire stoking my own flames of neglected desire in the process and suddenly the thought was whispered, "Be thankful for this wood." 

That rough, heavy, daily chore became a blessing. I am warm. I am able bodied. The loading and starting of the washer, no longer a chore. I am not huddled in a doorway with too few clothes shivering my life away with no hope of help or love or kindness. But some are.

I know we know this. At odd times in driving or praying or eating or teaching our kids we say, "Kids in Africa would be glad for this." Truth be told there are people in your very town that would, too. But then we forget. We get mad about lines at school, about policies at work, about the dishes, the laundry, the never-ending honey-do list. These chores MUST be accomplished, most daily. God, help me, help us all, always see them as the blessing they are and forget instead to be frustrated.

As I was heading up from the basement where the wood stove and washer are to put on supper, Mathew 13:12 came to me: "Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him." I don't think I really ever understood this verse before now. In a spiritual light my peace and joy stand to be taken and my gifts in life will become a burden. If I can be thankful for my duties and in them find blessing, I will have joy added to my action but if I hold on to the frustration, the task becomes arduous and all goodness is then taken from it.

one poorly handled tantrum at a time

Today as I was losing my cool with the kids I started all that poisonous mental talk. You know the kind: Why am I always stuck here with all these responsibilities?  Why can’t they just do what I say? Why so many messes. Oh poor pitiful me.

I realized suddenly that I have been calling my blessings a curse and utterly shirking my responsibilities.  I fancy myself a warrior, built for battle, standing up for the side of right.  But honestly when it comes to the actual battles in life I cowardly run away, refuse to deal with the issue, or throw a tantrum in my mind that would rival the ones for which my children are sent to their rooms.

Instead of dealing with the dishes, I check Facebook. Instead of folding the laundry, I clean the relatively clean bathroom. All the while this bickering is running tickertape fashion through my mind.  It’s no wonder there is so much harshness escaping my mouth, so much yelling.  It’s no wonder I feel so angry.

I have been called to fill the most beautiful heads with Truth, with example, with love and in explicit selfishness I choose my coffee, my television shows, my time.  My time I deem better spent entertained and self served rather than an example of patience, honesty, diligence, sacrifice and forethought.  It is often discussed in circles of wizened empty nest mothers how they long for the youth of their children whose hands are no longer the size we inexplicably feel the need to replicate in every medium possible.  Here I am wishing my babies’ childhood away one poorly handled tantrum at a time.  And really many of their tantrums are my fault.  It’s their last resort after my attention and negative is better than none.

I am a fixer. Every scraped knee, lost job, or passing sorrow sparks an immediate flood of solutions on righting the tilted ship. I do not wallow in seeking out the how-did-this-happen except to remember what future pothole to avoid.  I want to know how to make it right.  In my most vulnerable of moments, after the screaming stops and everyone settles back into themselves, like birds suddenly startled ruffle each feather back in place on the safest branch they can find, I am shamed and I ask my husband to fix me.  Give me that one piece of advice that will change how I think, change who I am, because in my head I know I don’t want to be this furious and malcontent person.  I don’t want to be the tyrannical dictator ruthlessly exacting my demands on all my lowly subjects – or family, rather.

As ineffectual and perhaps insane as it may sound I need to learn to be my own contender.  I have to stand up to me.  For every negative viewpoint I must counter myself with the positive until good thoughts beat the poor ones out of my head enough times they just stop coming around.  For every self debasing lie I must remind myself who I am, who God says I am. I must meet the challenges He sets before me and fill the role for which I’ve been created with warrior-like stoicism.  

Everything takes practice and this mind renewal is no exception.  My kids deserve better. My husband deserves better. I deserve better but what’s more God deserves everything I have to give.  This race, like any other, must be run for the right reason and the finish line should be reached panting and spent with every selfish desire pushed aside and pain ignored until my goal has been achieved.  First though, my goal must change.  Instead of coffee or rest or computer time, instead of friendships or crafting or gardening, instead of ME, my goal must be HIM and showing them who He is and how to house Him because that’s what we were made to be: temples, brides, and friends – of God.

Beyond this mortality

I've lately been struggling with a loneliness that steeps everyone in my life in poor taste.  Somehow my friends aren't really friends. My family doesn't really care.  No one sees me for who I am but only for what I can give or do for them. Suddenly, I found myself going down the list of people in my life and checking off the ways in which they've failed me.  I was making my emotional weakness their fault instead of taking responsibility for my own selfish cravings.


Obviously none of these perceptions about others are true but the emptiness and longing they create feels real. Now, before any of you truly awesome and supportive friends read this and start offering up your lovely words of encouragement and ego-stroking kindness, I want you to know that I don't want any of that. My purpose in writing this isn't for my own encouragement but for that of others out there that I know need to see that they are not alone.


Then suddenly (as He often does) God shook my conscience a bit and said, "Now you know how I feel." What?! How could the King of Kings, Creator of the universe relate to my petty misgivings? And it dawned on me that the whole point in the creation of man was for a companion.  Evidently there was a loneliness that existed before we were made.

God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong ( 1 Cor 1:27). We feel stupid talking out loud to the air or believing that a love from someone who has no arms to hug you or lips to kiss you can be more satisfying than the faulty and often selfish love from another person. But we aren't talking to the air, not if we truly believe in God and His methods are higher than ours. I asked God to increase our relationship more by being more physically tangible and He refuted that I need to make our relationship stronger by learning to be more spiritual because He is spirit. We want God to operate more in the manner of touch and sound because with that we are more familiar but He is ever calling us for higher purposes, for a life in, but much further beyond this mortality.  He offers a real healing, a true cure, while we often seek only an aspirin to mask the symptoms.

I truly believe that in ALL things (even the most horrid) God works for the good of those who love him and seek His purpose (Romans 8:28). So I found that He was using one of my most despondent moments to teach me to lean on Him.  You see He knows you the way you want some human in life to know you. He loves you more than your spouse, your friends, your parents love you. He will not fail you like people can. God uses all of our pains to beckon us toward His outstretched arms. Our longing for earthly recognition, for human acclaim, comes from a dark place but our deep and tender desire for companionship is not only mirrored by but also only truly fulfilled by the Almighty.

My happy is ecstatic

I am full of passion. My happy is ecstatic. My sad is heartbroken. My anger is flammable. I am painted brilliant colors with the sun reflecting blindingly off of them.

I often feel like a bull in a china shop, as if everything I say and do runs someone over. I feel forceful. I feel strong. I feel like a gust of wind when most everyone else is a dandelion seed.  I get the impression people as a whole would rather we all be subdued, tranquilized, if you will. They seem to say quite often, "Calm down." So I hear, "Lie down, wild horse. Lie down among the teacups and Fabergé eggs.  This is OUR home now and you must be - complacent. Have a pill. It'll help you..... conform."

I feel that in their wide stares and silence at my exclamations of elation or outrage or fervent disappointment.  I feel it most when I am dead wrong and no one will stand  up and point out that my whirlwind is headed in the wrong direction. I know it in the fact that I have often been diagnosed as bipolar, ADHD, and depressed by sidewalk psychiatrists. Any child who jumps and runs and climbs and sings while some adult is explaining for the fifty thousandth time the importance of constant sssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh and sit still is force fed sedation.

I want to run headlong into the outdoors and yell with my head turned back to where everyone is mindlessly milling, "Look, look! Do you see this green grass? Do you feel this wind and the sun on your skin? Do you feel ALIVE?!!? I want to smash their stupid smartphones down and say, "Hey! Did you notice the trash in the gutter, the old lady struggling with her grocery bags, the people with their bruises? Don't you want to DO something?!"  How can we spend hours fighting gameboy zombies and screaming encouragement at teams that can't hear us while all the while deeming it too tedious to fight life's REAL atrocities like champions? I am AGHAST. I am shaking with incredulity.  Aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhhh. (I seriously did say that Argh just now but quietly because the kids are sleeping.)

I feel like life MATTERS. People MATTER. Ideas and behaviors and how we treat each other makes astounding difference. We paint our world and the lives of others with the words that come out of our mouths and the motions we make with these God-given, flappable, flailable, wrappable, squeezable, jumpable, flingable, loveable limbs. I feel like I DO have something to prove and I get the overwhelming urge to run up and shake people and yell, "LIVE! There is only one of these lives and it MATTERS what you do with it! Don't you know that?" Don't you?