Few and Far Between

When I first started this blog I felt like I had SOOOOOO much to say. About Love and Christ and the Bible in general. Since my last post so much has changed and I've gotten very busy. My boyfriend of 10 months asked me to marry him and being that I'm head over heals in love with the boy I said yes. I've spent the last month and a half frantically trying to plan a wedding for October 25th of this year. It's fast, I know, but I have always wanted to get married in October, we're both settled and know who we are and love the Lord and there just didn't seem to be a lot of reason to wait around for a long time. I know I am supposed to spend the rest of my life with this man, I cry when I think about how tailor made to me God created him. So why wait?

I still feel like I have so much to say. I'm growing in ways I'm so excited about, but I'm also regressing in areas and that scares me.

I have had at least two meltdowns in the last week. Both have passed fairly quickly. In the middle of the last one I called my friend who was also mid panic attack. We laughed and talked about how silly we both are. We panic at the same thing over and over. Not that we panic at the same thought, but we both have something that makes us panic no matter where we are or how far we've come in our lives. I told her that it is simply the enemy hitting me at the exact right moment and then letting my mind get carried away which I do all on my own.

It started very simply. My fiance had just gotten back from a trip with the youth group and he had three days to move. I wanted to bring him the dinner of his choosing and help him pack when I got done with work. He wouldn't pick between the friggin Lou Malnatti's and chinese food! I had one of those Visa gift card things for like $25 and figured I'd treat us since we're trying to save for the wedding and that is basically like not spending money. It's extra! But he wouldn't pick. And when he called me to let me know he was on his way home I was asleep. He told me I didn't need to come and I said I wanted to and he said I was sleeping and I said it was fine and we got snippy and fought and I hung up on him. He text me and said something snarky about me being in a bad mood and I said that yeah I was because I hadn't seen him for five days (we had both been out of town) and didn't care that I was tired I wanted to see him. So he ended up coming to my house and bought ME chinese food and we watched Spanglish. It was nice. Right up until he left and took my converter box with him. It had stopped working and he was convinced it was the box but I fought him saying that though I believed it was most likely the box, I would like to test it before I just up and spend $40 on a new one. We squabbled and though we resolved it before he went home, it just ended the night on a sour note.

And as I sat on my porch the panic set in. This is why you're not supposed to get married. Remember? You are not cut out to be a wife. You are not capable of loving someone enough. You are not good enough. For most of my life I have struggled with this thought process. That I was not good enough to be a wife, to let someone love me, or to love someone, and that through my inadequacies and insecurities I would inevitably hurt the person. The Lord has done an amazing work in me and I don't feel that way anymore (most of the time). But when I panic and leave that foothold wide open, man.

It's a wonderful thing to have someone who is on a similar part of the walk as you. Edit. its a lovely thing to have a healthy someone who is on a similar part of the walk as you. My friend and I laughed because the basic problem of my fiance and I is that we both are so focused on making the other happy that we end up fighting. He actually probably worded it best. Mid fight he sighed and said "I think maybe we've both been grown ups on our own for too long. Neither of us knows how to let the other do things for them." And he's right. Which is a pretty stupid problem to have if I can say so. Since then we have agreed to work on it. He is going to not steal my joy by denying me opportunities to spoil him and treat him simply because he wants my life to be easy and complication free, and I am going to work on the same.

This most recent panic got me to thinking about how easily the devil seems to get to know us. And how quickly. And the most frightening part - how easy we seem to follow him down the rabbit hole. While I was on the phone with my friend I said to her "The rational, spiritual part of me knows what this is. I am in a good place right now. I am in the best place with the Lord of my entire life. I am happy. I am so happy. And I know what this is, an attack to try and get me to sabotage it. I know what it is but I still can't help but let it throw me." How sad that I knew the truth and essentially ignored it and just went for the panic. Sigh. I guess I'm not as far as I'd thought.

In other news I have made a commitment to spend an hour a day with the Lord for 40 consecutive days. This means that if I am at day 23 and I skip a day and fail, the I don't just tack a day on at the end. I start over. I hadn't thought that was extreme until someone said that it seemed so a little. But I told them that what was the point of committing to 40 consecutive days if I just give myself an out if I don't follow through? I want to take this commitment seriously. And I've already started a small list of things I'd like to work on during this time. One of which is discipline (part of why I'm being so strict about the 40 days being consecutive). I started Saturday but literally fell asleep in my recliner Sunday morning mid Proverb, thus I am starting again today.

That's all. I'll be back more frequently. There are some thoughts I need to organize regarding hellfire and brimstone and the concept ransom.

Proverbs 2

I'm reading in Proverbs. I'm aiming for one a day. I made it all the way through 8 in a row before I missed one. Then I missed several. Then I decided to go back and start over and really actually dig into the Proverb I was reading. At first it had mostly been to fill a "read your Bible daily" requirement, but the it became enrapturing, the idea of wisdom, calling out to wisdom, seeking instruction. My heart filled with a desire to not just for instruction, but to seek instruction. Proverbs 2 tells us to be attentive to wisdom, and incline our hearts toward understanding.

I want to do that. I want to be attentive to wisdom. So often the issue is NOT that we don't have wisdom, or that we are incapable of making the wise choice, we just ignore it. We are inattentive. I don't want to be inattentive any more. I want to incline my heart toward understanding, to know the Lord, and the Lord's wisdom, to be a bearer of light and truth and be so under God's instruction.

I think that I always thought Proverbs was sort of the fortune cookie book of the Bible. "A wise man hears the sheep, but a foolish man smells them" and things like that. Quirky sayings meant to make you think but not too hard. Catch phrase hermeneutics. But Proverbs is inspiring me to examine my life and my day to day choices and look for wisdom and insert that wisdom into my day to day choices. I'm excited to continue on in Proverbs.

Hopefully I will have more to say.

run forest, run

at the mall last night with ashley, i watched while two guido looking assholes literally followed a young handicapped guy around to taunt him. both his legs were in braces so he walked with a slight outkick. he was also wearing a plaid shirt and a cowboy hat. he looked comical and he was retarded. i get it. but they were following him around with the sole intent of being assholes. cruelty for cruelty's sake. their friends watched and laughed from one of the higher level walkways. random strangers watched and laughed.

i watched it happen and they walked out of my line of sight and i worked hard to suppress my urge to be the solution through violence. they swung back around and followed him through another a wing of the mall and i lost my cool a little. i ran down some stairs and ended up face to face with these two kids who couldn't have been older than 17 or 18. i told them to leave him alone and stop following him around. they swore at me and told me to "go home" (wtf?) and continued to walk past me. i stood still for several seconds.

genuinely, in my heart, all i wanted to do was walk up behind these two morons and smack their heads together. then when they turn around angry i would have punched just one of them in the junk as hard as i could. that would have probably shocked the other one enough for me to tell them both that i could honestly care less if i got arrested for beating the shit out of their underage asses, but that if they didn't leave that guy alone, so help me god, i would be sure to break one of each of their legs in enough of a way that they would forever walk with a limp and receive the exact same ridicule they were currently dishing out. (note: i dont think i am actually capable of this and even if i was i wouldn't actually do it, but in my head the threat alone would be enough for them to consider me absolutely crazy and walk away and leave this poor dude alone which was really all i was after anyway)

i didn't move for several seconds because if i had i would have done these things, or gotten in serious trouble trying. i also had a pretty intense internal struggle going on because clearly this is not the godly way to handle the situation. an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind and i'm not the one supposed to be exacting justice. but man did i want to. i have never had such a strong desire to hit someone in my entire life.

ive gone over this scenario and over it several times since last night, trying to find a peacable way to get these two dudes off this guys back, while still conveying to them in some way that they are douchetools and should maybe not be.

i told ashley on the way home that if i could have any super power at all, ever, it would be the ability to make people see clearly, to make people just friggin understand.

i have been out of high school for too long, i think. id forgotten that there were people like that in the world. i really, genuinely had.