So long, 2013, Bring it On, 2014

2013 was a decent year, but the last couple of months have left me a bit excited to see it go.

It is quite silly, really, how a different number on the calendar can have such an impact on a fresh start.  I'm ok with silly, because I need a fresh start.

Looking back and remembering the good is so hard when your vision is clouded with the things you wish went differently.  So today, I'm forcing myself to remember the good.

2013 Favorites

1) Completed two half-marathons

 

2) Ran 575.1 miles, a 92% increase from the previous year 

3) Lost 30 pounds, not as much as I wanted, but still progress

4) You guys helped me raise $1,310 to provide clean water for 26 kiddos!

 

5) Invited to attend an IT Leadership Training program that starts in February

6) Survived one entire year with a dog and three kids

7) Read great books that challenged my thinking on God, discipleship and the church

8) James and I had many great date nights and continue to work on improving our life together

9) Made a couple of new friends and am starting to learn how to do this whole "community" thing

10) Understanding who I am, why God made me that way and what HE wants to do with my life

"Opportunities" for 2014

Perfect Peace

The end of 2013 was marked by an extremely unhealthy amount of stress, a slide back into depression and overwhelming anxiety.  My main priority for 2014, for my health and the health of my family, is to get this under control.  When I feel the way I have been feeling lately, it is hard to focus on anything other than how I've been wronged and what I need to feel better.  That isn't a great place to be when you are trying to raise three kiddos and love a husband.  I've been stuck in a dark tunnel in my head for the past couple of months and I see the light at the end, I just need to keep focusing on it and get there.

 

And he said to his disciples,  “Therefore I tell you,  do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on.    For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.    Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them.  Of how much more value are you than the birds!    And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his  span of life?    If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?    Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you,  even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.    But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you,  O you of little faith!    And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor  be worried.    For  all the nations of the world seek after these things, and  your Father knows that you need them.    Instead,  seek  his kingdom,  and these things will be added to you. Luke 12: 22-31, ESV

 

Write

I have slowly started to accept that God has given me the gift of writing and I need to start using it more.  It has always been there, I've just never been confident enough in it to do anything with it until I started this blog.  I used to write short stories when I was an adolescent and poems and songs during my teenage/young adult years.  Writing has always been therapy for me, but I had never viewed it as anything more than that until others started telling me that I had a gift.  I have A LOT of words and thoughts that still don't make it out of my head and I feel like he wants them to.  I'm hoping to start a second blog that will be focused more on my thoughts, questions and interpretations of the Bible on things like the church and discipleship.  I wanted to call it "By Faith" after reading Hebrews 11 last week, but someone already has that, so I'm back to the drawing board. Like I mentioned earlier, writing is therapeutic for me and I haven't taken much time to do it lately and God has been telling me that I need to make it a priority.

 

Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity,  and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us. Titus 2:7-8, ESV

Food

I could really just leave it at that, but I'll expound.  When I get depressed and stressed, really bad things happen to my appetite and body.  I gained a significant amount of weight last time I was going through a particularly stressful time in life and I can see those habits coming back.  I do not want a repeat of that and I am going to be doing my best to work this out with God and get some control here.  I've been focusing so much on exercise and being active, now I need to really start to get control on how I'm fueling my body.

 

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.  Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,  I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.  Philippians 3:12-14, ESV

Obedience

I'm excited to see what God has planned for 2014.  He is continually taking me out of my comfort zone and into new territory and although it scares the crap out of me, by faith, I will be following him.  I'm starting to understand what it means to die to myself and for this control freak, it is going to be a constant struggle, but one that I'm looking forward to.

For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.  For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Galatians 5:13-14, ESV

There are so many opportunities for improvement in my life, but I'm narrowing the focus to these four so that I can actually make some progress.  If I try to accomplish too many things, transformation won't happen, especially in the stress area.  

I'm looking forward to 2014.  I'll be kicking it off the same way I did last year.  In bed early this evening for an early rise tomorrow to do the Polar Dash 10K.  I have no expectations or goals.  Sure, I'd love to beat my previous 10K race time of 1:24:20, (a goal I thought was very attainable back in October before having to take a few weeks off to get my heart situation figured out), but that isn't looking very realistic based on my training runs, so rather than be disappointed, I'm going in with no expectations at all.  Hopefully, despite the cold, it will be fun and I'll have a great race, but if I don't, I'm still starting 2014 off on the right foot.  

So have a safe New Year's Eve!  I wish you many blessings in 2014. 

I was going through all of the songs on our computer the other day and came across this one, it is from 2009, and I forgot how much I loved it.  Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

The Space in Between

I keep putting off writing. 

Not because I don't have anything to say.  Not because I haven't had the time.  Not because I haven't had the urge. 

Quite frankly, it is because I have been too stressed and exhausted.  Doing anything outside of eating and sleeping seems to be on par with running a marathon....I simply haven't had the energy. (By the way, to catch you up, after a Echo, Stress Test and Coronary CT, I got the clear to run again, my heart is fine....well, physically at least.)

Life has been going along swimmingly the past few years.  Yes, I've had crappy weeks here and there when things were a bit more gloomy than usual, but I always seemed to get through them pretty quickly.

But this time, this time has been different.  I can pinpoint the day that it all kind of came crumbling down, (Saturday, November 2nd) the day I realized that I couldn't ignore a prompting that God had been whispering to me for the past couple of years.  My heart finally caught up to the place that He has been preparing it for....my head, that seems to be taking a little bit longer.  

The difficult thing is that the place he has been asking me to go isn't just about going.  It is never that simple.  To go someplace new requires that you leave where you are, and, for a time, requires you to be someplace in between.  It is this space in between where things get uncomfortable, where we are pushed beyond our strengths and forced to lean on His.  It is the space in between where we grow. 

The truth is, sometimes when we follow God's plan, sometimes when we do exactly what he asks us to do, it can be lonely, it can be hard and it can be painful.  The space in between where we are and where God calls us to be is filled with tears, pain, prayer and a whole lot of faith.

The most confusing thing about feeling this way is that I have never in my life felt so connected with God.  I have no doubts, whatsoever, in my heart, that I'm doing exactly what he wants me to be doing, but yet, I am struggling.   

I think, sometimes, as Christians, there is this assumption that if you have enough faith, that if you do all the "right" things, you won't have any struggles.  I think, sometimes, this belief is enforced by teachings in the church.  We frequently get formulas for success.  We get directions for the steps you need to take to have a "good" life.  Sure, they always include saying "Yes" to Jesus, but that part always seems so small.  Sometimes I wonder if we're actually trying to get after Jesus' heart, or if we're just looking for all the good things that come with it.  

I spent so much of my life stuck in that place.  Get rid of all your debt, and then you will be able to live the life that God wants you to live.  Don't live together or sleep together before you are married and you will have a great marriage.  Do X, so that Y.  Sounds great, right?  Except that it isn't that easy and it doesn't always work that way.  When it doesn't, it can create a whole lot of bondage and guilt if it is too late for X.  It can also create a lot of pride when we take credit for our greatness instead of giving the credit to God. 

The truth is, none of us can ever do anything good enough to make up for the sinful things that we do.  The minute we start to take credit for the good in our lives is the minute we loose sight of the grace that has been poured out for us, grace that was given to us, that we did and can do NOTHING to earn.  

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,  not a result of works, so that no one may boast.  For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Ephesians 2:8-10

God has been pounding this into my head lately, trying to get me to understand it.  He has been urging me to let go of the guilt and shame.  To get rid of the expectations that the world has set for a "good" life.  Managing behavior doesn't bring freedom, God desires so much more for us than to simply make wise choices.  God desires for us to be fully known, he knows and wants us to share the good, bad and ugly.  When we are fully known and yet delighted in by the one who created us, we can come to a very beautiful place.  (If this is at all a struggle for you, I so strongly recommend checking out the Recovering Redemption series by The Village Church.  It is a long series, but so well done, I found a lot of healing and freedom in it.)     

As I've been studying the book of Nehemiah with my small group, I have been praying for God to help show me what he has made me for, what specifically He has broken my heart for.  I have a very tender heart and my heart breaks for a lot of different people for a lot of different reasons, so it is easy for me to loose focus.  However, God has been so clearly refining this for me.  He has made it so clear to me lately that my heart breaks the most for people who struggle with mental health issues and/or addiction.  I think the church is easy to dismiss so many of these people as too broken, too unhealthy and too imperfect to be part of the body of Christ.  There is some belief that a person couldn't possibly struggle with these kinds of things if they loved Jesus enough.  So instead of walking beside them, loving them in spite of and because of their struggles, we shove them out the door and wait for them to figure it out on their own.

I believe so much that God uses our struggles to help heal someone else going through the same things, and this area has always been a struggle for me and for many people I love.  I visited my dad in the behavioral health unit of the hospital when I was 8.  I watched my mom go through many dark times when she couldn't even get out of bed.  I lived with crippling anxiety and depression in my teenage years through mid 20's which lead to some horrible choices regarding the "men" I dated the complete lack of self worth that I had.  When I look back, it is so completely obvious that God had his hand of protection on my life.  I never gave up my search for him and he never gave up calling for me, it just took me a little bit longer to find my way into HIS arms than it takes some other people and I stumbled a lot along the way.  Now I want to show others the grace that He showed me, I want to be there to build others up as they struggle.

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,  from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Ephesians 4:15-16

There is a church, just a few blocks from our house, that we have passed by every time we have gone to the church we have called home for the last 8 years.  A church that is in our physical community, but, where we know no one.  A church who's goal is "to tear down walls between social classes, genders, races, and most of all, between people and their Creator and Savior, Jesus Christ."  A church that James and I have both felt God calling us to for quite some time, but have chosen to ignore because it would mean leaving a church filled with people that we love.

So we find ourselves in that space in between.  Where we have decided to leave so many people that we love, and a mission that is VERY important, to go someplace that God has asked us to go, to be a little bit more of who he made us to be and for that to be ok.

As we watch and see what he is doing here, I would appreciate all of your prayers.  As settled as I feel in our decision, it has been a very lonely place to be.  I pray so much that we would be able to keep relationships that we have formed over the years and that we would be able to cheer each other on, knowing, understanding and celebrating that we are all ONE body.

As I think about being in this place, I can't help but think about this season of Advent, where we do find ourselves in between the birth of Christ and His second coming.  As we wait expectantly, we wait with hope for the day where we can be reunited with Him.  I was remind of the word, Sehnsucht, this weekend.  This is a word that C.S. Lewis used frequently and describes it as the "inconsolable longing" in the human heart for "we know not what."  So during this season, I will wait in this space in between and find my hope in the promise of the future.

But, as it is written,  “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”— (1 Corinthians 2:9)