I am failing in my attempted 40-day commitment. I feel pretty trashy about it. I am very busy and it irritates me that I am letting that get in the way since that's exactly why I decided to make this commitment, because I was letting myself "be too busy" to spend time with the Lord. I figured if I made this sort of commitment for 40 days it would at least form the daily habit of being with the Lord instead of my current when I can habit. I don't want to fit God in, I want Him to be the priority.
I also recently made the official call to stay living in the apartment complex I currently inhabit. My fiance and I decided we would just move into a bigger place within that complex (a loft to be exact). So, seeing as I will be there for at least another year, I caved and bought the key fob that lets me into the clubhouse anytime I want. Basically this means I have access to the gym now whenever I'd like. I've had the key for several days and have yet to use it early in the morning as I'd intended. Rats. I'm failing on all counts.
Not to mention a biological failure that I am pretty irritated about. Shortcomings annoy me.
The Smiths
Friday, August 21, 2009
Monday, August 17, 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
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.
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.
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