For the Rest of my Life...

I am on an adventure of journaling these days. Having done it in the past very diligently, I know the benefit of keeping a regular journal.  A friend has challenged me to enter into it again and try to write at least three pages of my "stream- of -consciousness" every morning.  I have turned that into a way to take every thought captive. 

"We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ."   

I have enjoyed it so much, that I have said that I hope that I can do it for the rest of my life (FRL).  For the rest of my life, that phrase keeps popping up over and over recently.  I will eat right, FRL.  I will exercise daily, FRL.  I will write in my journal, FRL.  Lots of things are being stated that way.  

Almost fifty, I am looking at life in different ways.  In my teens all I thought about was the here and now.  In my twenties, I thought in terms of the wonderful future.  In my thirties, all I was doing was raising kids;  I don't think I thought in any other terms.  In my forties, which isn't quite over, I sensed changes, changes that may be, finally, I was "growing up."  Now that I am approaching my fifties, oh man that feels weird to say, I am sensing another change.  When I use the phrase, FRL, I mean that I know life is short.  It could be shorter than I think. 

Last weekend we all went to the funeral of a good friend's father.  She is still in her thirties.  She, in a very graphic, tangible way, must be sensing her own mortality.  As her mind goes back and forth to the playground of "what used to be,"  she realizes that life can be all too short.  I lost loved ones in my thirties as well, and as I realized life was indeed short, though,  I still had time to make things right, to "get better", to run a marathon, to loose the dreaded extra weight of five babies (and lack of self-control), to become a better wife, a better mother, a better daughter, a better pastor's wife, a better teacher, lover, friend, etc....etc.....  But now, I still have vibrant hope, most days,  but that hope is not in myself, as much as it used to be.  Oh of course, back then, I thought that my hope was "completely" in Jesus, but so much was still in self.  I still am thinking that I am hoping "completely" in Jesus, but I know the wickedness of my own heart, the deceit that is always there being whispered in my ear with words saying, "yea, look at you, you really are trusting in Christ alone", or it could be the opposite words of self hatred, doubts of the Father's love for me, not thinking I am good enough.   Scripture tells us to think soberly of ourselves.  

"For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned."  Romans 12:3  

We are to think soberly, not too high/not too low.  Self-hatred is just as much a form of pride as thinking of ourselves as better than others, which is what we do when we are prideful about ourselves, or overly confident in self.

Philippians 2: 1-5

 "1 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, (italics mine, I have always wanted to say that) having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus."

When I say that I am going to do this FRL, I have a more realistic view of life than I once did. When I am 87, as my mother is, I will have a completely different view.  Looking back on my fifties, I wonder what my thoughts and even my aspirations will be then, in my sixties, seventies, or eighties, that is if I live that long.  What stage of life are you in?......

Praise be to the giver and the taker of life.  He never ever stops His sanctification process in our lives, ever.  

From the God of all Comfort

Just this morning, I had a sweet, dear friend write to me of comfort.  Telling me she wished she could hold me in her arms, rock me, kiss me on the head and tell me that it was going to be alright.  In writing to me, she was demonstrating how God works.  Yesterday, as I shared in my blog, I was fighting anticipated loneliness, despair, doubt, and despondency.  God has done a marvelous thing.  He has used her to demonstrate the love and comfort of God that only He could orchestrate.  If you are reading this and do not see Him, wait, He will show up.  Here is the story:  8 am

 Fresh tears are falling from my eyes.  I will tell you why.  I was journaling this morning, doing that again for therapeutic reasons, and during my journalling time,  outside my house is a man I really respect and love.  He is about 62 years old and the sweetest, teddy bear of a fellow you would ever meet.  He also loves the Lord.  We have gotten to know him through one of  our musicians at church.  He recently lost his wife of 30 plus years.  My husband has been able to minister to him through the course of many years through his son, and they continue to get together when they can.  Right now he is painting our house.  That has been his profession for probably 50 years.  He has raised six kids, buried at least one of them that I know, buried now two wives, and has had a tremendous impact on his nieces and nephews.  This morning when I was journaling, I thought of him  and wanted him to hug me as a father and tell me it was going to be alright.  Then I realized afresh that my own earthly father never did that, ever.  Through the years, I have come to realize this about my inner sanctum, but anew this morning.  I have attacked these circumstances like an orphan. Like God is not my father, but my instructor, my teacher, the one who makes all things good, but not the one who wraps me in His arms, holds me on His lap, and rocks me to tell me everything is going to be alright.  So, to say all that, it is definitely a God thing that this friend wrote me her email just when God wanted her to. She reminded me, from a person with skin on, that God is my Father, and comforter, the one that holds me and wants to make all things right.  I love her for hearing God's voice, for obeying, and for being my "God" with skin on.  Thank you friend.

Assassination 101

Once again I feel as if I am living a nightmare.  Oh, yea, I had a nightmare last night.  When I woke up, I realized it was all real.  It was about how people can lie and get away with it.  Assassinate some one's character by innuendo and get away with it, and of course do it all the while the person is not there to tell the truth, or to show documentation to the otherwise.  These are all the elements of how to assassinate someone, and yet still allow them to live and breathe. How can people do this, not just to a godly man, but can do this while God looks on, is beyond me.  In my nightmare, I lived out all we have gone through since February 24Th, at the end of my dream I was dragging a chair down the road in one hand with a pillow in my other hand, crying out to God, saying "how can I serve You after this?"  I do not want to stay here, Oh God, save me from my own self.  How can it possibly be true that, "no good deed goes unpunished?"  God save me, and I will be saved.  Where is God's justice?  If you are a friend of mine, which now I have no idea who is or who is not, please pray for me and my family.  The man I love, live with, cry with, and laugh with, who loves God and His people, is once again lying on the floor in a pool of blood.  God help us.  

Commonplace Books

Today I came across an article in the periodical First Things.  I found it very interesting.  Alan Jacobs, an English Professor at  Wheaton College, is author to a wide range of topics, from theology to the history of reading.  While perusing the magazine his article, under the Opinion section,  caught my eye.  It is titled:  A Commonplace Book.  Historically our time period can be compared to the sixteenth century when a crisis of information occurred.  With the invention of the printing press reading became readily available not only to the wealthy but to the commoner as well.  There was some thought, by the later part of the seventeenth century, that the onslaught of words threatened to undermine the culture.  People, for the first time in history, had more books than they could possibly read!  Imagine that, the theme of my life is, "so many books, so little time."  

In answer to this something called the "Commonplace Book" emerged.  Before this time people read, re-read, and read over the books that they owned so much that they often committed them to memory!  This was one reason for the fright of the time.  People would read without care.  The commonplace book was a way of recording the best of what people read. This gave way to the journal.  This is very interesting because Jacobs makes the case for the blog.  When information comes at you at lightening speed, the need to record the thoughts, the wisdom, and the gleanings of larger portions of writ become imperative.   

The temptation is that the commonplace book, the blog, or journal can become a substitute for "reading, learning, and digesting what is already there."  We, in other words, can just add to our knowledge base, pontificate that knowledge, or regurgitate the knowledge without truly living it out.  Personally, I do not ever want my blog or commonplace book to ever get to the point where I am not willing to share with you my friends what God is doing in and through me, and not hiding when God often allows me to fall flat on my face, to show me that I am just one beggar helping other beggars where to find the bread of life.   

CIA, E=mc2, 1775-1817

 My side table is overflowing, not with knick-knacks or what have yous, but books that I am reading right now.   They have a vast range of interests and subjects.  Relativity by Albert Einstein, Jane Austen and Her Times by G. E. Mitton, and The Third Option by Vince Flynn.  Each book in it's own right, represents a different part of my soul at this particular time. Vince Flynn has been my novel of choice recently.  Reading three of his spy novels in two weeks!  This definitely is the part of my soul that wants to escape, pretend I am apart of the CIA world of intrigue and espionage.  I can curl up with Mitch Rapp and his special op buddies and save the world in just a few short hours.  He always wins, the bad guys are defeated, and justice is accomplished, managed, and sought after for another day.  Sometimes our lives are not so easy.  

Relativity is the part of me that wants a challenge.  Stretching me to where I can learn something new, and the pride part of me that says learn something that other women, other people do not know anything about.  There I go confessing my sin again.  Relativity is not as hard as I thought it would be, but I am not to the end of the book yet.  I guess you could say I am in the now and the not yet, ha, ha.....

Jane Austen epitomizes for me a woman, in a much different era, that gave her all to create something of beauty that has lasted for almost two hundred years.  Out of her imagination, her experience and her heart she wrote just for the pleasure of it.  Somewhere along the way, she realized that she was writing for others too, but she wrote because it bubbled up inside of her soul.  Real life situations were the fodder for most of the stories that she crafted.  When others were romanticizing the world giving way to fantasies of utopias, she developed characters that we could all identify with, laugh at or laugh with; past the age of believing in utopias on earth, past the time of romanticizing life, love, or longings, past the place of my life that dreams (shattered or realized) come only from the Father of Lights, I can identify with this woman that continued on even when life for her was not pleasant, but lonely.  

I so wish that I could read just one book at a time; but alas, life and the soul is multifaceted.  What are you reading right now?  Perhaps it typifies the various angles, curves, and plains of your life.  Take those aspects and they may add up to the physics of your soul; whether that be saving the world, academic pursuits, or becoming a woman after God's own heart, willing to pursue Him whether anyone "reads" it or not.   

Shattered Dreams.....

What do you do when you go through something and realize life will never be the same again?  I usually want my blogs to be positive and uplifting.  Today, as many days lately, I just do not feel very positive.  Life has taken me to a place where I know it will never be the same as it was before, and I am grieving.  The friends are still there, but they will never be as accessible as they once were. Every time I go to a church I am reminded that my church family has been torn from me never to be the same again.  I know that God is sovereign.....but this hurt seems to keep on going on.  

We went to a little ARP church last week.  It was sweet.  There were about 25 people there, including four of my children, my husband and me.  We had communion together.  We stood around in a circle at the front of the church and took it together.  It was really sweet.  Of all the churches we have been to since February 24th, this little part of the body of Christ was the most friendly one of all.  All of the other churches we have been to, no one spoke to us.  At this church everyone spoke to us!  They may have been amazed that there were visitors there, I don't know.   It didn't matter to me, I was thrilled that someone wanted me to be in their midst. It feels so awful to know that there is a group of people that I am barred from seeing, speaking to, holding, and loving anymore.  People that I loved for so very long have been ripped out of my reach.  Oh, I still have memories.  I remember when The Robbins coming to see us in Albany. Suzanne was only in the second grade!  Now she is married, and in grad school.  They were on their way to Disney World.  I remember Joel Clary telling me that his wife years ago had to have thyroid surgery and he told his kids that the doctors almost cut her head off!  I remember all the kids, at the store front, playing in the bamboo.  I remember when Ellen got stung by a billion wasps in that same bamboo.  Every year, in the early years, we would gather up all the kids and put them on the back of a pickup and they would be in the Christmas parade downtown, donning their angel and shepherd costumes.  I remember the kids plays, and productions put on by Susan Boulton.  When we built the building before the carpet went down, we wrote the names of the people we were witnessing to on the floor, to always remind us why we were there, and to pray for them to know Jesus.  How many get togethers have we had at the lake?  A million kids running around, lots of food, lots of laughter, and lots of love.  Joe B. always fell asleep on the couch, we just let him sleep.  The times on the boat going to look at the fireworks, getting caught in the rain, retreats, all my women friends, etc, etc,....  I could go on and on and on.  These people that I loved for so very long.......

I know I am being melodramatic, but I have no where where a group of people want to see me.  CS Lewis would say that the longing of these things just proves there is a heaven, where there will be a group of people that love me, accept me, and will never kick me out.  I am longing for that place.  

Can't Wait for the Bridegroom....Lynn

Dying to Self

Just ordered a book by E. Elliot, and ran across this devotion.  

Elisabeth Elliot's Daily Devotional

To hold onto something with a desperate grip is not the way to die. Death is a painful process, and restoratives offered to the dying wretch bound to his wheel only prolong his agony. There are times when the thing to do is simply to die. I am thinking, of course, of dying to the self. We clutch so tenaciously to our rights, hopes, ambitions, something to which God has perhaps said a plain no. If would-be comforters offer us consolation and sympathy, if they assist us to strengthen our grasp when it should be loosened, they do not love us as God loves us. The way into life is death, and if we refuse it we are refusing Him who showed us that way and no other. The love which is strong as death is not only willing to save the beloved, it is willing to seem, if necessary, pitiless, insensitive, unloving, if that is what will help the beloved to die--that is, to be released from the bondage of self, which is death, and thus enter the gateway of life.

Archbishop Fenelon wrote to the countess of Montberon, "You want to die, but to die without any pain.... You must give all or nothing when God asks it. If you have not the courage to give at least let Him take."