I am really wrestling in my mind about so much lately.
I have felt so aimless for such a long time.
I've always questioned what my passion is in life. What is it that drives me?
I mean, I have passions such as music/singing or cooking...yet I feel like I'm not driven enough by anything that gives me a goal and direction with life.
Is it because I'm not seeking God about it enough? Is it because of fear? Is it because of laziness?
In all honesty it's probably a combination of all three.
I feel like my walk with God has been so complacent and plateaued for a long time now. I know that I need to talk with him and listen to him in a daily purposeful time of prayer...but why don't I do it like I know I should and really want to? Do I really not care enough to speak with the God of the universe who made me, saved me, and takes interest in my life? I battle with that...and in all reality it's in my complete control...yet I don't do anything about it.
About a year before Kyle and I got married, we actually broke up. I didn't understand it, I hated it, and was so afraid that we really weren't going to be together. God worked a lot in both of our lives during that time we were apart, and by his grace he brought us back together. I am so thankful to be married to the man of my dreams. I am thankful for all that God taught me in that difficult time of trusting in him...but it's almost as if now that we are married and the story had its happy ending...I'm not so desperate to hear His voice anymore. I'm not so eager to spend time with him. It's like when everything is going just as planned, then I don't really seek Him like I did when I was desperate for answers from Him. I HATE IT. I don't want to be in this place anymore.
It's almost like the longer our relationship is stagnant, the more insecure I become in my faith. I have come up with so many questions and speculations about what I believe and why I believe it. It's really scary...the things I've believed all my life were things that I was either taught in school, sunday school, or through my parents...there are very few truths that I have purposed to understand and know for myself beyond what was told to me. I feel so uneducated about God's Word and what it says. Whenever I am faced with a challenge to God's Word, I want to defend it and then realize that I don't know enough to make an educated statement. When I realize things like this, it makes me want to read all of Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Bible, or learn the original Hebrew/Greek. But I never do. I just kinda forget about it, until I'm faced with it again.
I don't know. I'm so frustrated. I don't even know if anyone reads this blog...but I had to empty my thoughts somewhere.
I've been sitting at Starbucks for over 5 hours now. It's hard sharing one car...I mean I love Starbucks...but it's times like this when I start thinking too much.
Maybe I just need to go back to my original high school dream of becoming a famous singer/band with my husband...you never know, I guess.
Lord, help me.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Clarity
When the brilliant ethicist John Kavanaugh went to work for three months at "the house of the dying: in Calcutta, he was seeking a clear answer as to how best to spend the rest of his life. On the first morning there he met Mother Teresa. She asked, "And what can I do for you?" Kavanaugh asked her to pray for him.
"What do you want me to pray for?" she asked. He voiced the request that he had borne thousands of miles from the United States: "Pray that I have clarity."
She said firmly, "No, I will not do that." When he asked her why, she said, "Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of..."
When Kavanaugh commented that she always seemed to have clarity he longed for, she laughed and said, "I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God."
Craving clarity, we attempt to eliminate the risk of trusting God. Fear of the unknown path stretching ahead of us destroys childlike trust in the Father's active goodness and unrestricted love.
We often presume that trust will dispel the confusion, illuminate the darkness, vanquish the uncertainty, and redeem the times. But the crowd of witnesses in Hebrews 11 testifies that this is not the case. Our trust does not bring final clarity on this earth. It does not still the chaos or dull the pain or provide a crutch. When all else is unclear, the heart of trust says, as Jesus did on the cross, "Into your hands I commit my spirit." (Luke 23.46)
-Angela Thomas from When Wallflowers Dance study
"What do you want me to pray for?" she asked. He voiced the request that he had borne thousands of miles from the United States: "Pray that I have clarity."
She said firmly, "No, I will not do that." When he asked her why, she said, "Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of..."
When Kavanaugh commented that she always seemed to have clarity he longed for, she laughed and said, "I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God."
Craving clarity, we attempt to eliminate the risk of trusting God. Fear of the unknown path stretching ahead of us destroys childlike trust in the Father's active goodness and unrestricted love.
We often presume that trust will dispel the confusion, illuminate the darkness, vanquish the uncertainty, and redeem the times. But the crowd of witnesses in Hebrews 11 testifies that this is not the case. Our trust does not bring final clarity on this earth. It does not still the chaos or dull the pain or provide a crutch. When all else is unclear, the heart of trust says, as Jesus did on the cross, "Into your hands I commit my spirit." (Luke 23.46)
-Angela Thomas from When Wallflowers Dance study
Friday, October 09, 2009
An Elephant's Faithful 100%
By NANCY GIBBS Nancy Gibbs – 1 hr 17 mins ago
The last thing Barack Obama needed at this moment in his presidency and our politics is a prize for a promise.
Inspirational words have brought him a long way - including to the night in Grant Park less than a year ago when he asked that we "join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it's been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years - block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand." (See pictures of Obama in Grant Park.)
By now there are surely more callouses on his lips than his hands. He, like every new president, has reckoned with both the power and the danger of words, dangers that are especially great for one who wields them as skillfully as he. A promise beautifully made raises hopes especially high: we will revive the economy while we rein in our spending; we will make health care simpler, safer, cheaper, fairer. We will rid the earth of its most lethal weapons. We will turn green and clean. We will all just get along. (See pictures of eight months of Obama's diplomacy.)
So when reality bites, it chomps down hard. The Nobel committee cited "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." His critics fault some of those efforts: those who favor a missile shield for Poland or a troop surge in Afghanistan or a harder line on Iran. But even his fans know that none of the dreams have yet come true, and a prize for even dreaming them can feed the illusion that they have. (See the Top 10 Obama Backlash Moments)
Maybe the prize will give him more power, new muscles to haul unruly nations in line. But peacemaking is more about ingenuity than inspiration, about reading other nations' selfish interests and cynically, strategically exploiting them for the common good. Will it help if fewer countries come to the table hating us? To a point. But it's a starting point, not an end in itself.
At this moment many Americans are longing for a president who is more bully, less pulpit. The president who leased his immense inaugural good will to the hungry appropriators writing the stimulus bill, who has not stopped negotiating health care reform except to say what is non-negotiable, whose solicitude for the wheelers and dealers who drove the financial system into a ditch leaves the rest of us wondering who has our back, has always shown great promise, said the right things, affirmed every time he opens his mouth that he understands the fears we face and the hopes we hold. But he presides over a capital whose day-to-day functioning has become part-travesty, part-tragedy, wasteful, blind, vain, petty, where even the best intentioned reformers measure their progress with teaspoons. There comes a time when a President needs to take a real risk - and putting his prestige on the line to win the Olympics for his home town does not remotely count.
Compare this to Greg Mortenson, nominated for the prize by some members of Congress, who the bookies gave 20-to-1 odds of winning. Son of a missionary, a former army Medic and mountaineer, he has made it his mission to build schools for girls in places where opium dealers and tribal warlords kill people for trying. His Central Asia Institute has built more than 130 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan - a mission which has, along the way, inspired millions of people to view the protection and education of girls as a key to peace and prosperity and progress.(See an interactive guide to Obama's first 100 days.)
Sometimes the words come first. Sometimes, it's better to let actions speak for themselves.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20091009/us_time/08599192939500
The last thing Barack Obama needed at this moment in his presidency and our politics is a prize for a promise.
Inspirational words have brought him a long way - including to the night in Grant Park less than a year ago when he asked that we "join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it's been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years - block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand." (See pictures of Obama in Grant Park.)
By now there are surely more callouses on his lips than his hands. He, like every new president, has reckoned with both the power and the danger of words, dangers that are especially great for one who wields them as skillfully as he. A promise beautifully made raises hopes especially high: we will revive the economy while we rein in our spending; we will make health care simpler, safer, cheaper, fairer. We will rid the earth of its most lethal weapons. We will turn green and clean. We will all just get along. (See pictures of eight months of Obama's diplomacy.)
So when reality bites, it chomps down hard. The Nobel committee cited "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." His critics fault some of those efforts: those who favor a missile shield for Poland or a troop surge in Afghanistan or a harder line on Iran. But even his fans know that none of the dreams have yet come true, and a prize for even dreaming them can feed the illusion that they have. (See the Top 10 Obama Backlash Moments)
Maybe the prize will give him more power, new muscles to haul unruly nations in line. But peacemaking is more about ingenuity than inspiration, about reading other nations' selfish interests and cynically, strategically exploiting them for the common good. Will it help if fewer countries come to the table hating us? To a point. But it's a starting point, not an end in itself.
At this moment many Americans are longing for a president who is more bully, less pulpit. The president who leased his immense inaugural good will to the hungry appropriators writing the stimulus bill, who has not stopped negotiating health care reform except to say what is non-negotiable, whose solicitude for the wheelers and dealers who drove the financial system into a ditch leaves the rest of us wondering who has our back, has always shown great promise, said the right things, affirmed every time he opens his mouth that he understands the fears we face and the hopes we hold. But he presides over a capital whose day-to-day functioning has become part-travesty, part-tragedy, wasteful, blind, vain, petty, where even the best intentioned reformers measure their progress with teaspoons. There comes a time when a President needs to take a real risk - and putting his prestige on the line to win the Olympics for his home town does not remotely count.
Compare this to Greg Mortenson, nominated for the prize by some members of Congress, who the bookies gave 20-to-1 odds of winning. Son of a missionary, a former army Medic and mountaineer, he has made it his mission to build schools for girls in places where opium dealers and tribal warlords kill people for trying. His Central Asia Institute has built more than 130 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan - a mission which has, along the way, inspired millions of people to view the protection and education of girls as a key to peace and prosperity and progress.(See an interactive guide to Obama's first 100 days.)
Sometimes the words come first. Sometimes, it's better to let actions speak for themselves.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20091009/us_time/08599192939500
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