Wise and Willing Hearts

Greetings, dear friends.

In my post A Life that was Changed, I mentioned how I was asked to teach a class at my church. That was about seven months ago, and it has been a little rough at times. I don’t have all the answers, and preparing biblical concepts and spiritual lessons for a class is no joke — it’s serious. I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but I chose to teach the 11-17 year olds. Most of my students are between 11 and 14, which is probably my favorite age group because I personally loved being 12 (after all, it was at this age that I crushed on the boy who is now my husband 😉 ).

Usually each lesson has a very impactful teaching, so I always make the lesson goal applicable to my own life so my students know we’re on this road together.

About three or more weeks ago, I was reflecting on all the things I purged myself of that were inhibiting my spiritual growth. I was amazed at how God had transformed my life with each and every part of my old self that I had given up.

Even though there are times of struggle, there is no denying the change that God has made in my life, my thoughts, and my actions.

Then, a thought crept into my head: There is one major thing in my life that so many of my family members in Christ have left behind as they trekked on their path to God. But surely God convicts us about things on a personal basis, so giving up that particular thing might not apply to me. Besides, I could never give it up.

And so I closed that thought and moved on.

About a week or so later, I was prepping my class’s lesson titled “Wise and Willing Hearts.” It was a lesson about true devotion to God and having a spirit of sacrifice. .

So there I went, preparing the lesson, ready to suggest and advise them on things they need to be willing to sacrifice that could be keeping them from whole heartedly committing to God, or things that might be distracting them from growing spiritually.

At the end of my class the day of this particular lesson, I asked them:

So what are you willing to give up?

What is distracting you from God? What could be blocking you from hearing His voice? I had them all write their answers down on a piece of paper, to be kept private between them and God.

But then I thought to myself, what am I willing to sacrifice that I know would be very difficult for me to give up?

And then that particular thought about that particular thing I love popped into my head. Whoa, I thought. Could God be asking me to give this up for Him, to replace it with something better? Is this thing blocking His communication with me? Am I willing to give it up?

Friends, I never thought I would even let this idea get this far. But one thing is for sure:

I love God, and whatever it is that is distracting me from Him must go.

Is it hard? Yes. Is it without struggle? No. Is God there to help? YES.

I know so many people who think I’m stupid and crazy for serving a God they think does not exist. I can’t change how they think by saying words they don’t agree with, but I can show them by my lifestyle, by my willing sacrifices, how much God has done for me. What better testimony is that?

So begins my prayerful journey in determining what I must do…

Until next time,

Through Being Cool (Pt.2)

Lately I’ve been getting caught up in moments where I’m taken back to my high school days and early college years, taken back to things I said, things I did, people I hung around with, the way I dressed.

It totally blows my mind how all of those memories were actually my memories, my stories.

And to be honest, I was a different girl. And what blows my mind even more is when I look a myself now…

I’m like, totally whoa.

Who is this girl?

Or rather, who was that other girl, that other me?

Was that who I really am, or is this who I really am?

I recently overheard a conversation between a couple of people I know about their ongoing activities together. I think I just happened to look over and make eye contact, so one of them asked, “Why don’t you ever come out with us?”

And I said:

“Why don’t you ever invite me?”

To which one responded: “We’ll invite you next time.”
To which I responded, rather playfully: “Is it because I don’t drink?”

“Nooo, we don’t drink when we *name activity here*.”

Mhmmm, I though to myself. Sure you don’t. And suuuure that wasn’t your reason for not inviting me.

I know how it is sometimes.

Oh that girl? She doesn’t drink anymore. Don’t invite her, she’s no fun.

They may not say it, but I know some people think it.

I’m not that “cool,” rebellious chick that everyone admires.

And really, I probably wouldn’t have gone out with these people. Not because I don’t want to hang out with them, but because I think I would have felt kind of awkward.

Why, you may wonder?

Well over the last two years or so, probably around the time I really stopped drinking, I noticed I started to shy away from making acquaintances at school, at work, anywhere I normally would, really, and I think it’s because I felt and still feel like I can never really bond with people, like I can’t really relate to them all that much anymore because a lot of my tastes have changed in many ways.

So I just stay away. This may or may not be the best thing to do, but it’s just what I’ve started doing after awhile.

I’ll be real, here: My social life resulted in a few relationships being messed up, and many relationships were formed that should have never been formed. It’s because of those situations that I think I’m way better off not being as social as I was, at least not in those kind of environments Boy, I feel like just this paragraph can be a blog post on it’s own…

And naturally after two years of “social abstinence,” I’m pretty awkward.

*Refer to previous TBC post to read my definition of “social abstinence”.

“Come out with us this weekend!”

“Sweet, I’m in. What’re we doing??”

“Bar hopping!”

Well shoot…I’m out.

Womp womp womp.

But that is how it has to be, my friends. What am I going to do bar hopping? Spend money on expensive soda while trying to yell over loud bar music? No thanks. I need to be different from the world, I need to be set apart, trying my best to avoid the things that can bring me down.

That is what He calls us to do, not to blend in with the crowd.

Look, I know what you may be thinking…

“You’re being way too judgmental and legalistic, Em. We’re all sinners. Nobody’s perfect. We are in the world, after all.”

Yes, some of that may be true, but I strongly believe and have reason to believe there are things in this world people as followers of Christ really should not be doing…at all…not even a little bit.

Think about who it is we are supposed to be representing…

I read the other day that

“We(I) have spent enough time involved with worldly people, when we (I) took part in lewdness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties…”

And it’s so true. I spent a lot of my time doing those things Peter says they (we) wasted time doing and need to stop doing.

So I woke up from the daze and confusion of the life I was living. I’m fighting against my fleshly desires to do what is right in His eyes, to be set apart, to be a special people…

To suffer for what is good.

( “Wait, fighting? suffering? Why would a God of love want us to fight and suffer?” I’ll try to address this in another post… Part 3 maybe?)

And really, why would I go around saying I’m “Christian” when I act like everyone else? How can I be God’s special possession when I’m still flirting around in darkness?

Until Part 3,

From the End of the Earth Will I Cry

Sometimes there are things I think I’ll never write about, and other times it feels right to write about them, so I think one of those times to write about one of those things is right now.

(Ha ha, hope that wasn’t confusing to read)

I know part of the reason why I don’t write or talk about these things is because it will make me entirely vulnerable.

And also entirely open to criticism because people could think a number of things, like:

“Why is she publicly writing about something so private?”

Some of it should stay private, and some of it should be shared, and it should be shared because it might help others, it might help you, and it will most likely help me.

I am all about making connections, and if any of these posts help make a connection, I’m all about that.

So here we go.

I recently came back from my honeymoon, and while it was great and beautiful, I battled with something inside me for what felt like the entire time of the trip.

Actually, I feel like I’ve been battling it for awhile. Something like 9 years, awhile.

Now, I get that this time in my life calls for such “normal” feelings. Feelings like nostalgia, sadness, homesickness, growing pains, etc, which basically means I’m having a little difficulty transitioning into an entirely different life. I mean, a couple months ago I was still living at home with my dad and brother, curled up next to my cat every night, and now I’m sharing an entire living space with one other person in an entirely new area ( and sans cat 😥 )

But these feelings go beyond that.

Way beyond that.

I can’t remember exactly when, but I recall maybe about a year ago or so I was feeling depressed a lot. I don’t mean just sadness, I mean I would be sitting at dinner with my husband, my then-boyfriend, totally spacing out, not eating, start crying for who knows what reason, and blurt out that if I had an off switch for life, I’d switch it off.

Yeah, it was that kind of sadness.

It felt like a dark pit. And the worst part was that NOTHING was going wrong in my life.

And after all the nights I’d cry myself to sleep, I finally stopped trying to fix myself and started praying, hard. Thank God I was relieved for awhile, a long while.

But those feelings came back a few weeks ago. I would feel this overwhelming sadness, and the tiniest thing would start this avalanche of emotions. In the happiest and most romantic moments, I’d end up crying.

And then I would get even more sad because I felt like I was ruining the trip for my husband. But I thank my God that He blessed me with an amazing, caring, selfless, patient, and generous being who doesn’t have a selfish bone in his body and tried to help me as best he could.

On one of the worst nights, we were sitting in a nice restaurant when I felt myself start going down…I started to space out and the people around me, the smiling, the laughter, all became a bunch of noise, noise I couldn’t handle, so I ended up walking out, leaving my husband and more than half my dinner at the table, tears spilling out uncontrollably.

It was awful.

As I sat in the car by myself, head against the steering wheel, I prayed for God to take the pain away, to take away all the heaviness I had in my head and my heart.

After all, He said His grace is sufficient for me, for His strength is made perfect in weakness…

In MY weaknesses. All of them. And little by little, every moment I remembered to lay it all at His feet, I instantly felt better.

And the same can be said now. It’s remembering not to take on the burden myself that is the hardest thing to do, because the last thing I feel like doing in times of hurt is praying.

But when I feel myself having a bad day, or a bad week, I sing:

“From the end of the earth will I cry unto Thee. When my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the Rock that is higher than I.”

Blessed assurance.

I ran into a woman today who shared with me her experience with sleeplessness and depression, and it reassured me that this post was appropriate to write after all.

And on top of that, I have a heavy burden tonight for a particular family of young men who have been going through rough times at home. I hope this post finds you, and reassures you that you are loved and you are not alone.

Until next time,

It’s Too Late to Apologize

Well, as I’m thinking about writing this post I’m almost sure a ton of emotions will instantly flood my mind and body. Even though I’m afraid of revisiting those times and emotions, I think it’s good to release some of those feelings and figure out ways to gain control of them, and better yet, to fix the problem.

So what sparked this blog post was something I read the other night:

“Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” And that passage lead me to read this:

“Healing includes the healing of relationships , which is why we are exhorted: ‘confess your sins to one another,’ meaning those we have wronged. That is, if you have wronged or offended others, confess to them.”

Hmmm…the healing of relationships…

Hmmm…confess your sins to one another…

After reading that, I naturally thought and asked the question to my husband, “ Is there anyone you have wronged?”

While he thought about it, I thought about the people I have wronged and the relationships I hurt. I hurt them so much, that I begged and begged for their forgiveness, and even after they forgave me, it took me years to forgive myself.

It’s not a pleasant feeling, thinking about the pain I caused. The heart-wrenching betrayal and hurt I caused by selfish decisions I made. I’d like to blame it entirely on maturity, but I think my actions in the past resulted in the absence of God.

There is a parable in the Bible where Peter asks Jesus how many times he should forgive his brother who had sinned against him, and Jesus responds with what basically means, there is no set amount of times, you keep forgiving.

Whaaattt?? You’re saying I have to KEEP FORGIVING?? UGHHHH.

What gets me the most about this parable is that we must forgive a person who has wronged us in order to be truly changed at heart: it is commanded.

Love one another.

A few months ago, I think I was reading the same passage about forgiveness (James 5) and I instantly thought about a person I never, ever thought I could forgive. And even though years had passed since the wrong-doing (yes, I wronged her, too), I would continue to say such vile things about this person.

And then I thought, hmm, should I really go and find this person and make things right? I had already tried it once before, and the relationship ended up turning sour again, but is that enough reason not to try again, this time more sincere?

And THEN, a good friend whom I would always talk trash to about this girl said she had been seeing the girl around town a lot lately.

Coincidence?? I think not…

And THEN my husband saw her at a local grocery store within the same week my friend saw her…

Coincidence?? I think not…

So I asked my bff, hey, should we like, make things straight with this girl?

And to my surprise, she actually considered it, too.

But then I forgot about it, and forgot about fixing things with the girl.

Until now.

Can I forgive her? Should I forgive her? Should I ask her to forgive me? The answers to those questions should be a resounding ‘yes,’ but holy guacamole, how do I even BEGIN to do that, especially since I don’t trust her anymore?

“Fervent prayer avails much…”

So pray I shall.

And if you’re reading this right now, can you think of someone you have wronged?

Be honest, of course you can 😉

So why not think about mending bridges, or at least saying your sorry? It doesn’t mean you have to rebuild that relationship, but at least you know you made your peace.

Until next time,

p.s ( can you even p.s. yourself? and in a blog post to boot? lol)

In previous blogs I managed to be a little ambiguous about the mentioning of God, purely because I only have a few blogs up and I didn’t want readers to instantly turn their eyes away at the mere mentioning of a deity.

But, it is what it is, and I’ll gladly go with it.

And, dear reader, I hope that you keep reading. Atheist, agnostic, or whatever you may be, I think we can all learn from each other.