Cinderella

Remember Cinderella when she was all dirty and wearing ragged clothes?  Then her fairy godmother waved her wand and in an amazing, sparkling, transformation, Cinderella’s clothes turned into the most beautiful ball gown and she was completely clean with perfect hair, perfect face, even down to the tiniest detail!  Wow!  When you were a little girl, did you ever dream of being a princess?  Did you dance in front of your mirror or pose like a model?  Did you long for that handsome prince to notice you? 

Well, you’re all grown up now.  Childhood dreams and fantasies have melted away into colorless swirls of nothingness.  Mirrors are not for dancing or posing in front of anymore.  Mirrors are more a dreaded thing now.  It seems I can’t look in my mirror without sneering at myself.  No matter what I am wearing or how much makeup I have on, nothing covers the filth that clings to the very depths of my soul.  I’m not worth loving.  I’m not beautiful.  I’m not even likeable!  These phrases are replayed in my mind every single time I look at myself in the mirror!  And of course, to make it worse I think, “Is it any wonder I’m so screwed up?” 

The truth of the matter is this…I’m not so screwed up after all.  I’m not so filthy after all!  My reality is that I am a product of my upbringing, the words that were spoken over me, the subtle and the not so subtle abuses done to me.  Who I am now is a result of how I was treated as a child and who influenced my thinking.  It isn’t my fault that I can’t get clean from all the filth of my past!   No, it isn’t my fault that life happened to me the way it happened.  But it is my responsibility to recognize that life did happen to me, regardless of whose fault it was and to recognize that my negative behavior patterns can be turned into positive behavior patterns.  My past wasn’t meant to hold me captive but I was meant to hold my past captive!  Think about that!

Certain key words came up last night that I think will help me in holding my past captive.  They were recycling, reacting, and recovering. 

Recycling because I find that I constantly run back to the same old destructive cycle of longing for that relationship that could have worked if only I had been a better person.  (Never mind the fact that the person on the other side of that relationship was pretty messed up themselves!)

Reacting because I act the same way over and over again to the same triggers over and over again! 

Recovering because I am covering the issues up over and over again by learning from them and trying to move past them. 

But you see, it’s all “RE.”  It’s all over and over again!  It never ends.  I will recycle and react until the day I learn to take the prefix off those words and just cycle and act!  That day is coming! 

But how do I get to that point?  Number one, is the first three steps of the 12 steps.  Admit I’m powerless, believe that God can restore me to sanity, and make the decision to hand it all over to Him! 

Number two is to continue on with my steps because one day I will be just like Cinderella!  One day all the filth of my ragged life will be completely transformed into a bright and sparkling ball gown.  One day instead of sneering at myself in the mirror  I’ll dance in front of that mirror again and I’ll pose again and I’ll see the same beautiful princess that God sees when He looks at me.  Now…….think about that!

Lawn and Garden

God knows I want so much to be able to keep a pretty, nice, yard.  I want flowers, I want mulch, I want everything to be inviting and beautiful and what do I have?  One and a half acres of “do the best I can” yard! 

Yesterday was sunshiney and warm and the yard was in desperate need of mowing and trimming.  Spring is here after all.  I spent from 9 AM to 4 PM working on it all.  I must say I was quite impressed with myself.  Arimi was very good for me too.  She’s old enough that I can trust her to stay where I tell her while I mow.  She enjoyed chasing bugs and digging in the dirt with a stick. 

This morning it rained which was a welcome change around here.  We’ve had a very dry March.  I was especially glad that I got the yard done yesterday or else it would be another week before I would be able to get it done.  I took Arimi to the mailbox with me to mail a bill and grabbed 6 of the Iris plants that are planted under the mailbox to transplant in my two big blue buckets that we had tomatoes in last year.  I am really hoping they live and thrive. 

I do wish I could hire someone else to do the yard work though. 

Drawing closer

Life is not always peachy.  Pain and suffering are all around all the time and all too often they enter our own little circles.  All too often they come from no where and completely devastate our lives.  Suddenly everything is upside down.  Our prayers for help seem to hit the ceiling and rain back down to the floor.  We’ve heard, “draw near to God and He will draw near to you,” but God coudn’t seem farther away if He tried.  What then?  How do we make a hole in the ceiling so our prayers can get through?  How can we get out of this never ending cycle of pain and suffering? 

Something that I have been learning is that drawing closer to God is not necessarily what the world or even Christians, tell us it is.  Some say pray more.  Some say to take walks in the park and enjoy Gods creation.  We all tend to believe that being near to God is based on a feeling sort of like the warm fuzzy you get from seeing a brand new baby or a cute little puppy.  I’m sure it is some times but more often than not, it’s a “knowing,” not a “feeling.” 

As I’ve gone through this time of life crashing around me like broken glass I’ve found that feelings are deceptive.  I have been feeling useless, unloved, unappreciated, no good, sad, angry, and, well, you get the picture.  I new that I needed to draw closer to God because if anyone was capable of healing my damaged emotions it was Him.  But I lack discipline so setting aside a particular time for prayer in my day is about as futile as trying to hold on to a June-bug.  I do pray daily but my best prayer time is in the car while I’m driving and I certainly don’t have to drive every single day so prayer time at home can be quite sporadic.  But I digress.  I decided to do some ‘determined’ reading in my Bible as opposed to the haphazard reading to which I’ve become accustomed.  Determined meant that I would read with a purpose and actually learn from it rather that just know what the words said. 

Jeremiah has been my determined book of choice.  I’m in Chapter 13 and I’ve really been amazed.  I have read it before but honestly, because I had no real determination to learn from it, I was completely bored with it.  I also had a distorted view of God because of my lack of understanding.  If you’ve read Jeremiah, especially the first few chapters, you might have noticed that God was quite angry.  And if you read them like I did, He was not a nice person to be around back in the Old Testament.  He’d just as soon kill you as look at you.  Or so I thought. 

Actually, the Old Testament God I’m seeing now is not the mean and hateful God I saw before.  By no means!  I’m seeing Him now, for the first time, as the loving and merciful God He’s always been.  He literally pleaded with the House of Israel and the House of Judah to return to Him before unleashing His wrath on them.  They refused to listen.  He even said He would not send His wrath if they would just repent and serve Him and they would have the land of milk and honey that He promised their forefathers.  Still they wouldn’t listen.  Even though they forced His hand, He still made a way for them to come back home and follow Him when their consequences were over. 

I’ve learned that drawing closer to God, for me lately, is not so much feeling closer to Him through prayer, it is opening my Bible and reading about Him and understanding Him through it.  Just like reading any book you can get swept away into the story and forget about your own troubles as you read the adventures and misadventures of others.  And if you read with the purpose of getting to know this God even better, you can rest assured that you will draw nearer to Him and as He reveals Himself to you through the scriptures, He will draw nearer to you. 

Adventures in babysitting

My friend called last night and asked if I could babysit her two little boys today.  Of course I would not refuse a chance for Arimi to have friends over.  So, here I am with a house-full of children.  It’s pretty awesome!  Not so nice when they aren’t getting along but for the most part they do.  And it’s such beautiful day we will spend some time outside in the sunshine!    :yippee:  I can’t wait! 

Wonder if I’ll get Arimi to clean her room today? 

Pondering

Having been really contemplating the book of Jeremiah, understanding that the reason for Jeremiah’s prophecy’s were to warn Israel and Judah of the coming judgment at the hands of the Persian empire, I’ve come upon some interesting thoughts. 

1. It seems the God I understood to be an angry and mean God from the old Testament was not mean at all.  Like a mother does to her child, God gave ample warning to His children.  Where we say, “if you don’t clean your room and refuse to obey me you will be spanked and sent to your room,”  God was saying, “if you don’t clean up your act and obey me you will be ’spanked’ and taken from your warm homes!”  God gave them a chance.  He offered them a way out.  He practically begged them to listen.  But they wouldn’t. 

2. Had Israel heeded the warnings of Jeremiah, repented and turned back to God,  they would have lived prosperously, comfortably, and very, very, happily.  All through the first 10 chapters of Jeremiah, God tells His people over and over again that complete and utter pain and destruction would come to them if they did not repent but He also spoke of the sweetness of how life would be if they did repent. 

So, this left me really thinking.  How then, if I’ve repented, done all I’m supposed to do, (that I know of anyway,) why is it that bad things still happen to me?  God loves me.  Jesus is my Lord and Savior.  I try to be a good Christian.  Hmmmmmmmmm.

The answer seems to be this.  When God warned Israel, He was warning an entire nation of people.  If they had repented they would have been serving no other God besides the One True God.  As a people, they would not have allowed sin to enter the walls of Jerusalem.  I am but one person in a world that is fallen.  The outside influences of the world come into my home on a daily basis.  I have contact with people who are not Christians.  I am a Christian living in the world. 

Is that a bad thing?  Oh, by no means!  It is not a bad thing!  What it means is that I am subject to the same things every person in the world is subject to.  The difference is, I have hope.  When things get bad, I always have hope because I can trust that God, who is bigger than me and all my “issues” can take care of me through it and bring me to the other side of my troubles, better, and stronger, than I was before. 

These are the ponderings of my heart today.

Judging?

If there is anything I’ve learned about Christians is that we are subject to the same things everyone else is.  I have a pet peeve.  I absolutely can’t stand it when I hear the words, “so and so says they’re a Christian but…………”  Talk about wrong judgments!  Just because a person is a Christian does not mean they won’t still act un-Christian-like from time to time.  And who’s perfect enough to place themselves as judge of what a Christian should act like anyway? 

That bumper sticker that says “God aint through with me yet,” is certainly something to think about.  It takes time to go from being a sinner to being a saint.  Old habits die hard.  It is not the norm for a person to recieve Christ and suddenly change their old ways.  Those that do tend to swing wide in the opposite direction and then feel like a failure when they can’t stop the swing back to where they were before salvation.  It’s a harsh roller coaster ride. 

Be patient when you see people who claim to be Christian act un-Christian.  God aint through with them yet either. 

300

I thouoghly enjoyed this movie!  No, it wasn’t the scantilly clad men that I loved.  I love a story of victory against all odds and it gave me something to want to go back and research…it is based on true events ya know.  I like that kind of stuff.  It is a “man” movie to be sure.  Certainly worth taking a look. 

Learning

Ever wonder, the more you read the Bible and understand it, the smaller it seems?  When I was little my father promised me that if I read the Bible from cover to cover he’d give me $10.  (Maybe I should change this topic to ,”Ever wonder how the older you get the smaller $10 seems?”  heheheheheh) 

Anyway, the Bible has always been this huge, daunting, book that it seemed impossible to get through!  It just doesn’t seem like that anymore.

I did Beth Moores, Daniel study and it blew me away!  Not only did I learn and understand the book of Daniel but I learned history too!  I was amazed to learn about the Persian Empire and all that stuff!  So now, when I read, I see so much of that same story unfolding.  This morning I was reading in Jeremiah and what do you think it was talking about?  Jeremiah’s prophecy of the Babylonians conquering Israel and Israels return!  Maybe this stuff is boring to some but to me it’s exciting!  This didn’t just happen in the Bible.  This happened in real life!  This is what you find in regular old history books! 

Aint that cool? 

So, this guy…….

So, this guy walks into a bar………………………………….

OUCH! 

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah!

Going cross-eyed

I’ve spent a good portion of this day sitting here at the computer learning how to do things.  I completely organized all my computer documents into neat little files so I can easily find things instead of searching from here to eternity.  I also organized all my internet favorites into folders of their own.  And of course, I’ve played around here a whole lot, creating my slide show of my “little lion” and trying to figure out this meebo thing.  It looks like it could be fun but who knows?  My eyes are crossed now but I can’t seem to stop myself!  Help!  Somebody, stop me!