Hard to say exactly what I've been feeling lately....
Been doing a lot of re-evaluating and contemplating. Classic me. I wish sometimes I wasn't such a thinker, but I know that the problem is not so much the thinking as it is the letting it control me. I am very logical, analytical, introverted. Hard for me to get out of my head sometimes and just be.
But I'm trying.
Brian and I were talking and I said something that I am still thinking about a few days later. We were discussing my newest treatment session, (called NAET, an allergy elimination technique), and sometimes my husband gets a bit overwhelmed (understandably) with everything I've got going on, and I said:
"I feel like God's not letting me settle. Like some people would just go on and live their lives and accept it and expect to feel bad all the time, but I can't. And I feel like it's because I/we haven't learned what we are supposed to learn yet. And so things are good for a little while and then we have to try something else, and I feel like God's not letting me just settle and I'm supposed to keep looking."
And as frustrating as it is, I really do feel that way. I know, 100%, that the last three years of confusion and difficulties and heartache and pain and emotions and everything else has grown me in so many ways.
And now, again, I feel like I'm on the edge of another...change. Every time I am forced to pursue answers I am also forced to re-evaluate things; relationships, habits, my heart.
Our pastor has been preaching on 1 Corinthians 13; you know, the "love chapter"? Good stuff...convicting and eye-opening. Love is an action. Love is a Person.
Hearing about how you're supposed to be loving people and applying that to the relationships in my life has been...hard.
I am struggling to find a balance between loving as Jesus loved, unselfishly and self sacrificially, and knowing what is my problem and what is something I cannot change in someone else and letting that go. Because while the Bible tells us to love one another, it also tells us not to "cast our pearls before swine".... and Jesus loved people sometimes by pointing out sin in their lives. Love doesn't just embrace sin and take a beating without also pointing hearts in the right direction.
I know I should do a much better job at unselfishly loving and serving others. But I also know I do try, very often, to put myself in another persons shoes; trying to see things from another perspective is very useful in resolving conflict. Giving people the freedom to be an individual, and taking into account their own personality and raising and feelings really does go a long way in promoting compassion. Also, prayer. Praying for someone in a loving way is a good way to start turning around feelings of resentment and selfishness in your own heart, while trusting God to work on them.
The last few weeks have been a crazy blur of family reunions, appointments and driving.
Yesterday, I just broke down and cried.
I dropped my sister and her baby off at the airport + My kids were tag-teaming screaming about everything and being disrespectful+ Too many late nights + extra party/Sunday treats + feeling overwhelmed about the NAET stuff I'm starting + knowing my husband is on the fence about me starting to pursue another new treatment (mostly because it raises the stress level around here) + relationship issues with others + lots of other things = Break down.
Like, go into the bedroom and cry your eyes out for five minutes. I read a devotional about prayer. Cried and prayed some more. Just asked God to help me let it all go. There's a line in a song that I like that says "You were never meant to carry this beyond the cross.." I think that I do that a lot. I carry burdens that I should not be carrying. The Bible talks about "waiting on the Lord". Someone asked me recently what I thought that meant, "just trusting?" I said that I had read an excellent devotional from Spurgeon on that, and I love how he says that it means literally waiting on God and just being still. We are so eager to do something for God, but it is harder to just wait.
So often I think I forget that Jesus paid the price and I am free! I don't have to carry all the troubles of this life. I can just bring them to Him and leave them there. And yesterday I did. And I felt so much better! My gratitude for a place to lay down my burden cannot be expressed.
"Oh, what peace we often forfeit, Oh what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer." True; sad, but oh so true!
Don't get me wrong, I pray ALOT. Every day, all the time. But how often am I leaving these things with God? He can and will carry burdens that are too great for me. I just have to let them go.
And then I am free to go forward, lightened and renewed, to keep trying.
"But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint." Isaiah 40:31
Been doing a lot of re-evaluating and contemplating. Classic me. I wish sometimes I wasn't such a thinker, but I know that the problem is not so much the thinking as it is the letting it control me. I am very logical, analytical, introverted. Hard for me to get out of my head sometimes and just be.
But I'm trying.
Brian and I were talking and I said something that I am still thinking about a few days later. We were discussing my newest treatment session, (called NAET, an allergy elimination technique), and sometimes my husband gets a bit overwhelmed (understandably) with everything I've got going on, and I said:
"I feel like God's not letting me settle. Like some people would just go on and live their lives and accept it and expect to feel bad all the time, but I can't. And I feel like it's because I/we haven't learned what we are supposed to learn yet. And so things are good for a little while and then we have to try something else, and I feel like God's not letting me just settle and I'm supposed to keep looking."
And as frustrating as it is, I really do feel that way. I know, 100%, that the last three years of confusion and difficulties and heartache and pain and emotions and everything else has grown me in so many ways.
And now, again, I feel like I'm on the edge of another...change. Every time I am forced to pursue answers I am also forced to re-evaluate things; relationships, habits, my heart.
Our pastor has been preaching on 1 Corinthians 13; you know, the "love chapter"? Good stuff...convicting and eye-opening. Love is an action. Love is a Person.
Hearing about how you're supposed to be loving people and applying that to the relationships in my life has been...hard.
I am struggling to find a balance between loving as Jesus loved, unselfishly and self sacrificially, and knowing what is my problem and what is something I cannot change in someone else and letting that go. Because while the Bible tells us to love one another, it also tells us not to "cast our pearls before swine".... and Jesus loved people sometimes by pointing out sin in their lives. Love doesn't just embrace sin and take a beating without also pointing hearts in the right direction.
I know I should do a much better job at unselfishly loving and serving others. But I also know I do try, very often, to put myself in another persons shoes; trying to see things from another perspective is very useful in resolving conflict. Giving people the freedom to be an individual, and taking into account their own personality and raising and feelings really does go a long way in promoting compassion. Also, prayer. Praying for someone in a loving way is a good way to start turning around feelings of resentment and selfishness in your own heart, while trusting God to work on them.
The last few weeks have been a crazy blur of family reunions, appointments and driving.
Yesterday, I just broke down and cried.
I dropped my sister and her baby off at the airport + My kids were tag-teaming screaming about everything and being disrespectful+ Too many late nights + extra party/Sunday treats + feeling overwhelmed about the NAET stuff I'm starting + knowing my husband is on the fence about me starting to pursue another new treatment (mostly because it raises the stress level around here) + relationship issues with others + lots of other things = Break down.
Like, go into the bedroom and cry your eyes out for five minutes. I read a devotional about prayer. Cried and prayed some more. Just asked God to help me let it all go. There's a line in a song that I like that says "You were never meant to carry this beyond the cross.." I think that I do that a lot. I carry burdens that I should not be carrying. The Bible talks about "waiting on the Lord". Someone asked me recently what I thought that meant, "just trusting?" I said that I had read an excellent devotional from Spurgeon on that, and I love how he says that it means literally waiting on God and just being still. We are so eager to do something for God, but it is harder to just wait.
So often I think I forget that Jesus paid the price and I am free! I don't have to carry all the troubles of this life. I can just bring them to Him and leave them there. And yesterday I did. And I felt so much better! My gratitude for a place to lay down my burden cannot be expressed.
"Oh, what peace we often forfeit, Oh what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer." True; sad, but oh so true!
Don't get me wrong, I pray ALOT. Every day, all the time. But how often am I leaving these things with God? He can and will carry burdens that are too great for me. I just have to let them go.
And then I am free to go forward, lightened and renewed, to keep trying.
"But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint." Isaiah 40:31
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