My Love....

My Love…

Happy Birthday.

It’s tempting to start off with something like “I knew from the moment I saw you…” or “I remember the moment that I realized you were the one for me and I’d love you forever…”.  But, that is not how our story goes from my perspective.

My love for you is much deeper, much richer than anything that can be traced back to a moment in time. It is a million moments piled up and overflowing in a heap of goodness.

In all honesty, I never stop and think about what my life would be like if I hadn’t built my life together with you.  It simply isn’t something I can conjure up in my imagination.  Where would I be?  Who would I be?  It’s simply impossible for me to imagine because I am one with you.

Every single day, I give God praise for who He is and for giving me the gift of marriage to you.  When God’s word describes marriage in ways like “the two become one”, I get it.  Because I have been blessed with a real covenant relationship.  When I learn in Ephesians that God has a plan for how a marriage best functions, I don’t bristle at the idea of submission because, I get it.   It is an absolute joy to honor God’s design.  I’m not saying that either of us do it perfectly! But, it is such a gift to have a blueprint from our creator to help us and guide us in this crazy world we live in.

Every day I thank God.

Today I thank you.  Thank you for seeking God with all of your heart and being willing to humble yourself to His authority.  Thank you for considering His command to “love your wife” and living out each day in an effort to understand how to do that in practical ways.  Thank you for the grace you give me every day when I am selfish and sarcastic and skeptical and sinful.  Thank you for building me up with your words and actions.  Thank you for being a dreamer and showing me a world beyond the mundane day-to-day.  Thank you for your sense of humor.  Thank you for being present and in the moment with our girls and for the example you set for how they should expect to be treated.  Thank you for being ambitious and working hard to provide for us, while working hard to balance your time between family, work, yourself, and friends.  Thank you for taking care of your physical body and realizing how that is an act of love.  Thank you for being authentic, genuine, fun, honest, trustworthy, caring, compassionate, and selfless.  Thank you for making me a better me than I could ever be on my own. 

I love you and I look forward to our future together….following Jesus…one step at a time.

bringing out the ugly

Where to begin.
Spent much of the day at a voting sight.  Not because I give a crap about the election, but because we happen to find it to be a lucrative time for the PTA to have a bake sale at Liv's school.
To echo many posts on facebook....I will be happy when this election is over.
ugh.
It sure brings out the ugly in people.
Most of it doesn't bother me at all because I don't identify myself with any political party, group, or cause.  So, when people rant and rave about how much better (or worse) the world will be when their party or proposal or person wins (or loses) I find it easy to ignore.
But, it brings out everyone's sin nature.
Yep, I said it.
It brings out our sin nature.
We love to judge.  We love to create an "us" and a "them" and decide who is right, wrong, good, evil, better, worse, smart, dumb, etc.
Yesterday I read some dig against conservatives and how "they" are.  Soon after, I read something sarcastic and demeaning about democrats and how "they" are.  Then I read the horrors about republicans and how "they" are.
These are comments from friends.
I began to wonder...where do I fit into all of this?
It's easy and convenient to say I don't fit neatly into any category, therefore, none of their digs and demeaning comments are directed at me.  La, la la, I can go about my merry way.
But then I realized how horrible it all is.
Because, just when I am starting to feel all self righteous about not judging people and categorizing them and putting them down...I realize I am doing just that.  In my mind, I am thinking "THOSE political people.  THEY are so close minded and misled and annoying and ridiculous."  You get the point.  Any time I start a thought with "Those people..." I know it isn't gonna be good.
Here's the thing.  We all do it.  We all judge.  We step back and point the finger and think, or say, "Those people..."  And we feel so incredibly satisfied that we are "not like those people".
We're not?
Hmmmm.
When God put Adam and Eve in the garden and asked them to refrain from eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, why would he do that?  Because he's on a power trip and wants to make sure they obey, right?  Was he just trying to prove He is God and they are not and they better obey?
I don't think so.
He wanted to save us from the horrible sin of judgement.  It's disgusting and awful.
We were not created to judge.  We were not created to claim that we have the knowledge of good and evil.  When we do that, we are living in a way that is not how God created us.  We are living in sin.  Doing things our way.
I do it all the time.  And I pray constantly for God to take over my spirit completely and remove all of my tendencies to judge and finger point and make decisions about people and how much value they have.  Because, in God's sight, everyone has infinite, immeasurable value.  Nothing I decide about a person can change that.  So, I pray that God helps me to see people as He does.
It makes me sad that so many of the people who consider themselves to be followers of Jesus think it is OK to delight in the activity of judging, criticising, finger pointing, accusing, and devaluing others.  I don't care if it happens to be a political candidate who they disagree with.  There is never a reason to delight in eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.   There is never a reason to think it is OK and even claim it is "for His Kingdom".  Yuck.
Go ahead, vote.  By all means!  If you have the freedom to do so, and you feel a particular person is worthy of your vote, cast your vote! But can we ALL try to refrain from being judges and from stepping back and classifying others as "us" or "them"?
I will try to do that the next time a person who has infinite value to God starts ranting about politics.

When the going gets tough...

I'm sad.
I don't usually feel this way.  But, I really feel discouraged right now.
This week has been insane.  Glorious retreat weekend upstate, followed by Superstorm Sandy and days off hunkering down with the family.  Since we didn't lose power, it has been a very nice time off for us.  We even went ahead with Halloween plans and the streets were filled with adorable kids and smiling parents.  The last two nights, we have had people here at the apartment to share a meal and a drink and celebrate the fact that we made it through the storm so well.
But, I realized last night that I couldnt' stand it anymore.  I was watching all the suffering and devastation on the news, and I was living in vacation mode.
So, today I went to the local evacuation shelter that was set up at the nearby YMCA and volunteered.  I felt like it was a good fit for me, since I heard that they had evacuated people from nursing homes and assisted living facilities. I used to work at nursing homes and have always missed it a little bit.
After spending the entire day there, I will say that I am impressed with the many groups of people working together to create a safe place for all of these people to sleep, eat, get medical attention, and hopefully feel some shred of dignity throughout it all.  There are so many medical professionals, volunteers, and relief workers who are working to serve these people in need.
Normally my mind would find a way to remain focused on that positive aspect.
But, I can't do it.
I don't know what it is.  But, all I can do is think about how horribly sad I am for all of the people who are still laying there under the florescent lighting on portable cots.  Laying there in a huge room with bustling with hundreds of people, yet all alone.  I walked home in the fresh air and ate some food in my quiet apartment.  I have a loving family to go home to.  One woman told me today that she hopes "they" find a place for her to live because the place she left was already unlivable before the hurricane hit, so there is no way it will be fit for living now.  She snickered a bit and said "I hope they find me a place to live before I die."   She laughed, but she wasn't kidding.
It wasn't just the conversations I had with people who were afraid or uncertain of their future.  It was the number of people who were obviously too sick or too affected by dementia or mental illness to even have a conversation.
I worked with people for years who were in a similar condition.  How was it that I could go home, go along with my life, and leave it behind me?  What happened to me?  Is it my age now?
I don't know.
But, I look around a room like that and I get so discouraged. I just think of a saying that was popular in the 80's when I was a teenager.   "Life's a bitch.  And then you die."  Instead of feeling like the saying "when the going gets tough, the tough get going!"  Nope.  Couldn't muster that up.  Sure, I was able to get going enough to hang out there for the day and help.  But, all I could think of was how hopeless I felt for each person!
When I couple this experience with the images and stories I have been seeing on the news this week, I just can't feel hopeful.  I guess my true inner pessimist is lurking and revealing itself.  I hear what the leaders are saying.  "We WILL rebuild" and stuff like that.
Maybe I have been living in a bit of denial all week and today was a reality check.
This whole thing really sucks.
Part of me wants to wake up each day and roll up my sleeves and help any person who is suffering.  And, the rest of me feels paralyzed by the fact that what I saw today, and what I am seeing on the news this week....that's just life.  All over the planet people are suffering like that every single day.  I just don't dwell on it.  I can't.  And that realization makes me want to belittle any possible way I can help and focus on the fact that I will never fix any of it.
I need to shake this off.
I'm in a serious funk.  Yuck.
This past weekend at our retreat, we discussed the topic of trust.  We talked about trusting God, no matter what.  We talked about what He promises and what He does not promise.  We had some really honest dialog about how difficult it can be to trust God and how it can seem like maybe He is not good.
In the end, we encouraged one another to remember who God is.  He is love.  And He is good.  And, he promises hope, peace, and grace.
Today, I don't feel that.  I will continue to believe it in the midst of not feeling it.
But, today I feel like the only promise is this:
Life sucks, and then you die.