Where am I?

More than a few years ago now, our younger son was a new driver and out on a date with his then girlfriend, now wife.  We were at home in bed, though of course not asleep.  It was nearing the time that he should have been home, and the phone rang.  My husband answered it, only to hear our son's near frantic voice:  "Where am I?"  As it turned out, he was on his way home and a fire truck was blocking his normal route and traffic was redirected, causing him to become disoriented in an unfamiliar neighborhood in downtown Akron.  His father talked him back onto the right roads that would get him safely home.  We've had  tons of laughs over the years at this memory and it's sure to be a funny story passed down through the generations.  

There have been several times in my own life when I've stopped to ask myself the question, "Where am I?"~not because of being lost while out driving late at night, but because circumstances beyond my control sometimes make me feel lost and disoriented.  Roadblocks I never planned on appear out of nowhere, and I'm forced to move in a different direction or to think in a new, better way. 

Most of us like to feel settled in to what becomes comfortable and familiar in our lives.  We like predictability, whether it is knowing a paycheck will be deposited into our account every couple of weeks, seeing our spouse go off to work and come home around the same time every day, or just doing the things we enjoy that become happy traditions for us.

Getting older and feeling it is an unexpected change that can be difficult to wrap our arms around.  The energy we had just a few years ago is gone and we find we don't have the stamina or strength to do many of the things we used to do at the pace we used to do them.  On days like that, I find myself wondering "Where am I?" along the continuum of life ~ will I live to be an old lady telling stories to my great grandchildren from a rocking chair, or am I already almost at the end of my journey here?

Then there are the times I try to take a personal spiritual assessment test.  "Where am I?" in terms of my eternal relationship with God and my relationships with people?  Am I resting in the knowledge that God is "for" me and that whatever might be a surprise to me in life was no surprise to Him and He is weaving this tapestry into something very beautiful? Am I always looking to make and keep peace with friends and family,  so that I can look forward with confidence and back without regrets? 

When my brother got his cancer diagnosis ten months ago, one of the first things he wanted people to understand was that eventually all of us will be thrown an unexpected curve ball in life, and when that day comes, we will need an internal compass to help and guide us through difficult times. 

Friend, don't wait till the turmoil comes.  Jesus said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  No one comes to the Father but by Me."   God has provided that Compass for us and we don't have to live our lives in fear, despair, or anxiety, no matter where we find ourselves or what our circumstances may be. Even when our world is turned upside down, our heavenly Father will show us the way to go and lead us safely home. 

spiritual battles and the beauty of holiness

I had a really "down" day yesterday. I spent it alone in my house and with barely the energy to do basic tasks I needed to get done. My enemy Satan was busy accusing me all day long, whispering his deceitful lies, reminding me how ungodly I really am, how often I fail in my commitment to live for Jesus. I really haven't had this fierce of a spiritual battle for a long time. It was one of those days you want to look to the sky and scream, "Where ARE you, God??"

I knew what the problem was. I was feeling quite alone in the stand I have taken regarding the moral issue going on in my family. Today is the day of the "celebration" that my husband and I declined to attend. I've posted about it twice already, and not without some consequences.

I remembered a Bible story from the Old Testament (II Chronicles 20) where King Jehoshaphat realized Judah was about to be beseiged by massive foreign armies that he felt powerless to face. Being a king who feared the Lord, he called for a day of national fasting and prayer. Jehoshaphat himself led the prayers in front of the Lord's temple. The Lord's Spirit then empowered a priest to speak forth this message of hope and encouragement:

"Listen, all Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem and King Jehoshaphat: Thus says the LORD to you, 'Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God’s. Tomorrow go down against them. Behold, they will come up by the ascent of Ziz. You will find them at the end of the valley, east of the wilderness of Jeruel. You will not need to fight in this battle. Stand firm, hold your position, and see the salvation of the LORD on your behalf, O Judah and Jerusalem. Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed. Tomorrow go out against them, and the LORD will be with you." (verses 15-17)

The people believed and were so encouraged that the next morning singers when out before the army, in the beauty of holiness we are told, boldly declaring,

"Give thanks to the LORD,
for his steadfast love endures forever." (verse 21)

As it ended up, when the men of Judah went out to meet the enemy, all they needed to do was to stand still and watch what God would do for them. The Lord caused so much confusion among the enemy troops that they turned and fought each other until they were all slaughtered. And there was so much plunder, the men of Judah couldn't even carry it all away. They returned home and continued to worship God, and Jehoshaphat continued to reign in peace.

Last night my husband and I had a chance to be with some godly friends who encouraged us to stand strong in what we already knew to be truth. We talked about the holiness of God and we wondered together how we could stake our lives on believing Him and His Word and not stand for what He stands for. Obviously, we can't.

What makes His holiness something beautiful? God's holiness, for one thing, is light. It is good, sacred, timeless, worthy of praise. And it is love in it's purest form, love that endures forever. When His Word tells us to be holy, because He is holy, (I Peter 1:16) it is because He wants all those beautiful things for us as well. Throughout our lifelong sanctification process, God provides the power to carry out the command.

God reminded me yesterday of the story of King Jehoshaphat and how the battle was not his to fight, but the Lord's. He does not leave us fighting these spiritual battles all alone. I woke up this morning thinking about the beauty of holiness. God is for us, He really is. His laws are perfect and just and righteous altogether. And they are for our ultimate good. As believers, we have no reason to feel we are alone... there are times when we just have to stand still, and watch to see what God will do as He fights our battles for us.

Amazing Grace

This afternoon my (just turned) four year old granddaughter said to me, "Grandma, I'll play this horn while you sing "Amazing Grace". So she did. And I did. Priceless.

But God's amazing grace is exactly what has been on my mind for about the past 24 hours. In the midst of my own self-pity as I have been working through the family issue that has pained me so much, He has taken pity on me and picked me up and dusted me off, and set my feet back on the Solid Rock!

It never ceases to amaze me that when God takes over, things can happen really fast! In just a few short days I have gone from a lot of anger and a whole lot of other volatile emotions and sleepless nights, to a real sense of peace and trust in the One who knows me inside out.

When I started blogging about 11 months ago, I made a decision that I wanted to be "real" in what I wrote. There is a lot of power in the pen, so to speak, and I determined that I wanted the blog to be an accurate account of my "life between the buns". That doesn't mean that I feel the need to say things that would be unnecessarily hurtful to others. Sure there have probably been a few things I've said that would have been better left unsaid. But for the most part, I have tried not to just portray the mountaintop times of my life, but also record things that, if I had a choice, would not be part of my "history".

Still, the temptation is always present to put the best foot forward at all times and not to air the dirty laundry. I'm human just like everyone else, and I want people to think good things about me. I don't want them to see my struggles or my doubts.

I took a big risk when I posted about my inner turmoil over the upcoming "wedding" of my niece and her girlfriend. All kinds of questions went through my mind: How will my blogger friends react? What will they think of me now? What will my family and friends say when they read it? And perhaps the most pressing -- Why do I have to be so intense all the time???

I'm not digging for comments on this post or looking for a pat on the back. I just want a chance to say to each one of you who have commented and/or prayed for me that I felt it. I have felt it big time. And I want you to know that God has used YOU to transform me and help me regain some clear thinking. I mean it when I say I am now at peace over this whole thing. No, I still cannot support the decision of the people involved. But I am no longer thinking about me, and how this has affected me.

There is something so much bigger going on. For the first time in my life, I think I have a handle on what I've always thought to be a very difficult teaching of Jesus. It is found in Matthew 10:37-38. "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me."

Conflict is an inevitable result of following Jesus Christ. The battle is between light and darkness, between eternal things and things that are temporal. The Gospel continues, "Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." (verse 39) Jesus is simply stating that if we think that the life we live in the here and now is all there is, and we love it's (sinful) pleasures more than we love Him, all those things will eventually be lost. But if we let go of that kind of thinking and living for the sake of allegiance and obedience to Him, His perfect will, and His perfect law, we actually will discover what REAL life and living is.

In a few short days I have literally gone from praying, "Lord make this all go away--don't let it happen" to praying "Lord, change me! Work in me! Make me respond in a way that best represents YOU".

No, it's not about me at all. It's all about HIM and His amazing grace. All I have to remember is how I too once was lost, but now I'm found. I was blind, but now I see. Remembering helps me to pray for those who are still confused, hurting, lost, blind. Those who, because of continued rebellion, are still living outside of the amazing grace that is offered so freely. The grace that helps me be more concerned about their souls than about my righteous indignation.

I'm certain there will still be days ahead where the circumstances will be distressing. But I think I have more perspective now. My blogger friend, Shirley said this to me and I appreciated it so much:

"...we have to remember that all sin, including our own, is equal in the eyes of God--it is all about disobedience to Him and what He declares to be best for us. That puts all of us on a pretty level playing field..."

Amen!

Larry Reynolds murder case update...

This is a brief update to two previous posts, one August 18, 2009 "Capital Murder Case" and the other September 16, 2009 "More on the Murder Case".

The execution of Larry Reynolds that was scheduled for October 8, 2009 has been postponed until next spring by the State of Ohio due to a recent botched execution attempt by lethal injection in another death row case.

I guess I just want to go on record here to say that I have found the peace about this sentence that I needed. If you have never served on a jury in a case like this, you really have no idea of the stress and all the mental and emotional sorting out that you have to do, all the soul-searching and praying and all the sleepless nights. To say nothing of the long days of sitting in a jury box listening to gory testimony and seeing photographs that should never have to be seen of someone's mother, grandmother, daughter, doing your civic duty while your heart just aches to be home with your own young children.

Both 15 years ago when I served on the jury, and more recently as the execution date neared, I sought spiritual counsel from a trusted pastor. My conflict, of course, was that I am a pro-life person. I totally believe in the sanctity of human life. And I had to reconcile that belief with how I feel about the death penalty in a murder case.

What I have come to understand is this: The death penalty really upholds the idea of how sacred human life is to God. When one intentionally takes the life of another, the only just penalty is for him to forfeit his own. I hope that one sentence might help someone else who struggles with how they feel about the death penalty. I know that others do not agree with my conclusion. Like I said, I have found peace in it. And I believe it is God's peace. I can rest in it.

That said, I also want to say that I find no pleasure in the circus-like atmosphere that often attends high-profile executions. That is a sad commentary on our society and only serves to undermine what is being done.

While I personally feel that 15 years or more is way too long for a sentence to be imposed, I am glad our judicial system allows time for appeals and hearings so that there hopefully will be no mistake made. Unfortunately we all know this has happened.

As far as the Reynolds case goes, God has His own timing in mind. He is working all things out for good, even in this situation. In the past few months, I have been put in touch with a relative of the victim. For 15 years she has been angry and consumed in her grief and loss. I was able to tell her that she will continue to be a victim of Larry Reynolds long after he is executed if she kept herself on this path of anger and bitterness. I'm not free to go into the details, but something happened recently and this relative of the victim has now softened her heart toward the murderer's family and sees their own torment and loss...and she is also praying that Reynolds himself might come to repentance before his next execution date. Did you catch that? The victim's relative is praying for the person who murdered her loved one. God is at work.

"And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:7

"...think about such things..."

"...whatever is true,

whatever is noble,

whatever is right,

whatever is pure,

whatever is lovely,

whatever is admirable--

if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--

think about such things...

and the God of peace will be with you."

Philippians 4:8 NIV

This verse has been on my mind all week long, and for good reason. Sometimes life just gets a bit heavy and we just need to stop; we just need to get back to our center--and think about all that is good. Sometimes we just need the peace of God to be with us.

This past week in particular I have learned of so many very serious needs just within my own close circle of friendships--needs that I have been praying about daily. And not even counting the many needs I've read about on the blogs I've visited. While I do believe we are called to help bear one another's burdens, we also need to guard our hearts at the same time so that we don't get bogged down into a mire of negative thinking which can lead to unproductive living. For my part, I'm trying to do a little tweaking here and there in my life so as not to be tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind.

One thing that really helps me is being careful of what I fill my mind with. What wonderful instructions St. Paul left us with, as quoted above. By following this directive alone, we would be well on our way to renewing our minds which in turn makes us more able to discern what we really are supposed to be doing with our lives.

Here are a few of the areas I have identified that tend to "pull me down" instead of "build me up" in my spirit and attitude:

*watching too much of the evening news*

It was getting to the point where my husband and I were sitting in our chairs, night after night in front of the TV, and getting more and more upset at things we really have no, or little, control over. When you hear false or negative things being repeated over and over again, one of two things tends to happen. Either you start believing them, or you are in a constant state of being upset over something you can't do much about. So we have chosen to pretty much leave the TV turned off. We only have a few precious hours together in the evenings, and this just wasn't a good way to be spending them. It makes no sense to fill our minds with all the negative things going on in the world, and then try to go to bed and have peaceful, renewing sleep. duh.

*reading too much of the newspaper*

This was an area where I was more of a die-hard. My dad always read the local newspaper from cover to cover each day, and wouldn't put it down until he had completed the cross word puzzle. My mother-in-law is the same way...she even reads the stock pages. So we always subscribed to the paper and we were interested in keeping up with the local news. But here again, the papers today do much more than report the news. They have gotten to be political and social battering rams, and tend to be extremely biased in reporting or even "creating" news. We were finding that more and more, we were taking a paid-for-but-unread newspaper out to the recycling bin. Not too smart, is it?

One day last January I read a national award-winning local community commentator's column because it had been brought to my attention at a ladies bible study. The title of the column was "In defense of internet pornography". Say what? I read the column twice because I couldn't believe it. On the community page of our local newspaper, this guy was actually giving "facts" to argue that sex crimes have gone down due to the proliferation of internet pornography and the like. Without going too far down a rabbit trail here, we personally know several families whose lives and careers have been decimated because of internet pornography. There is nothing good that comes of it. I had an email exchange with this journalist that went back and forth but got nowhere. We ended up canceling our 30+ year subscription to that paper. More space in my brain was freed up to be filled with things that are lovely instead. We decided to send the amount of money we were paying for the paper to a local Christian counseling center.

*not paying close attention to what I'm reading on the internet*

It goes without saying (hopefully!) that you can't believe everything you read on the internet. Or that just because it is accessible, it is helpful or good for you to read. This includes blogs! Being a fairly new blogger, I am learning, as my husband likes to say, "by the braille method". I'm fumbling around, trying to learn a new computer at the same time I'm trying to learn about the blogosphere. I'm discovering that people blog for all kinds of reasons, and personally it has opened up a whole new world for me. For the most part, I have "met" some amazing people (mostly women) through this incredible technology...women who through sharing their stories and gifts have blessed me daily and have encouraged me and built me up in my spirit. I hope my posts do the same for others. It truly is a social network, especially for someone like me who has been out of the work force for 16 years, and many of my days now are devoted to babysitting a couple of my grands as well as helping my mom since she is still newly widowed and no longer can drive.

I've also run into some blogspots that I've noticed have the opposite effect on me. Reading some blogs is like associating with people whose personalities or attitudes just seem to leave you feeling heavy and weighed down, instead of encouraged and built up. Sometimes I come away feeling like that blogger wants to make me their personal project and try to fix me. Don't get me wrong, I'm totally open to learning and interested in other people's perspectives and interests. But if it's not a two-way street, and if you can't make a comment without feeling personally judged by someone who really doesn't even know you, then it's not a good place to hang out. Life is too short. There are hundreds of blogs out there written by kind and gentle souls who understand it's often not what you say, but how you say it that might just make or break a reader's day. I'm learning that I can control what feeds my spirit by controlling what I read both in the blogosphere as well as other places on the internet. Just because something is purported to be "truth" doesn't always mean it is.

*not being careful of what I read in books and magazines*

We have very few magazines that come into our home. Just a few that we enjoy and have the time to read. We both do love to read books. Reading books and magazines can take your mind to all kinds of places. They can be a great escape from reality. This can be a good thing. Books can allow us to travel to places we never otherwise might be able to visit, and meet people we otherwise would never have a chance to know up close and personally. We can learn about people and cultures we would otherwise be unfamiliar with. We can delve into history or even peak into future possibilities if we are so inclined. We can be encouraged by the stories of others. What we need to be mindful of is how powerful a book or magazine can be in terms of what gets imprinted onto our brains...or suggestions that are transplanted into our hearts. I didn't understand this so much when I was a young teenager, but looking back now, I can only be thankful for a pastor's wife who saw me reading a less-than-desirable popular novel, and called me on it. She took the time to explain how filling my mind with "trash" would influence my thought processes, and my thoughts would eventually influence my actions. I've never forgotten that. Sometimes when I'm in a doctor's waiting room or at the beauty shop or checking out at the grocery store, and glance at the magazines, I'm appalled at the kinds of stories that sell. Do I really need to know all these personal details about the lives of people I would never have as my role models? Do I really need to see all that skin? The "beautiful" people of the magazines don't live in the world I live in so why should I be tempted to compare my looks, or money, or whatever with theirs?

*not taking care in choosing who I spend my time with*

We all have people in our lives who we don't necessarily click with and are not like-minded. They can be relatives, work associates, or other women in organizations we belong to. A good friend of mine--a soul sister who is much wiser and a whole lot more spiritual than me--helped me understand how I can co-exist in a Godly way with people who I wouldn't choose to be my best friends. She said that "love" is really an action verb, not a feeling. "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." (I Cor. 13:4-7). If I have true love in my heart, specifically the love of the Jesus Christ who I claim to serve, then I have the ability to love even the "undesirables" in my life the way this verse tells me to. It does not mean that I need to associate with them on a regular basis or in the same intimate way that I would my close friends who have my best interests at heart. But I can be kind and helpful and Christ-like toward them.

But if I want to fill my mind with whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, or praiseworthy, then I need to be spending a great amount of time around people who ARE true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, or praiseworthy. These are the people who really care about me, who know me because I feel free to be myself when I'm around them, and who I know they will love me in spite of any shortcomings I may have. These are the people who I know will pray for me if I need them to. They give me the benefit of the doubt. They want me to succeed in my dreams. These are also people in my sphere who I look up to because they have some wisdom that I need. They model things in their own lives that I need to learn. They challenge me to become all that I was created to be in a way that spurs me on--or like one excellent blogger said this past week, helps me "turn the page".

I need to guard my self from people who would suck up my time, energy and resources, yet with no intention of making needed changes in their own lives. I will be, and always want to be, the first person in line to lend a helping hand to anyone who needs it. But I need to maintain a proper balance; otherwise I will become a dystunctional and useless person.

"And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:7