Spiritual Amnesia

There's a feeling of not-quite-connectedness.  Like, I'm not sure of what to do with myself or what it is I should be doing.  Housework, household planning, yard work, vehicle maintenance, my nails, etc.  Everything is noticeably un-done, yet the call to do anything of consequence remains a whisper somewhere in the back of my mind, like an irritating fly.

Perhaps this is typical of stay at home moms, but I wouldn't know what's typical.  I've failed to construct a support system of other moms, because they all seem so busy.  Doing stuff like accomplishing goals, running marathons, creating masterpieces to sell on etsy.com to supplement the family income, furthering their education, decorating their homes according to the season in ways that would make Martha Stuart want to embezzle from them.  I don't know how they do it.

I have a daily and weekly schedule which I followed faithfully for about 2 weeks.  This schedule would have me on track to greater biblical wisdom, a perpetually clean home, laundry done and put away, fabulous healthy home-cooked meals, a 7 minute mile, and meticulously shiny children.

I love the book of Romans, especially 7:15 "I do not understand what I do.  For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do." and 18b "For I have the desire to do what is good, but cannot carry it out."  But thank you God, for 7:24 "What a wretched (wo)man I am!  Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

I have to say, I've had some amazing conversations with my youngest child lately.  It's like I see him clearly now, in ways I never experienced with the other two.  While they're at school, Aiden and I hang out in the mornings before afternoon kindergarten.  And then we take a leisurely walk to school, taking notice of bugs and leaves and clouds and burps.

We're in a blessed place right now.  I see that God has given me the gift of a simple life; but it just has to be appreciated.  If I can give up my personal plans, interest and ambitions, and allow God to take me into His purpose, then I can have absolute faith in Him and His goodness. (paraphrased from today's devotional, My Utmost for His Highest).

I forget, sometimes, the highs and lows of this life.  They always follow after one another.

The blessing of being broke

Everyday, I am more and more amazed by God.  His creativity is astounding; where the enemy lacks creativity, God is the Author of it.  I have struggled with a wine/cigarette addiction for three and half years.  This is where the enemy lacks creativity: the bible says "Do not become drunk on much wine".   Well, that I had been doing.  I can now say it in the past tense because on August 29th, I woke up and the head knowledge of the fact that God Loves Me thunked down into my heart.  And just like that, the stronghold chains were broken.  That's not to say that I haven't found my way back to it on occasion.  I think maybe 5 times since then, I have been "drunk on much wine".

But recently, just when I thought I would be re-consumed by this addiction, God has creatively intervened:  He's removed the means to obtain said objects of my affection addiction.  We've been broke! Hallelujah!!   He knows that for now, I need this way out.  Because it's still so easy to convince myself that it's not that much money, it's just once in awhile, everybody does it, 1 out of 8 women will get cancer anyway, as long as my husband doesn't find out, my kids don't even know, I deserve it. . .

We just recently had a meeting at our church and I didn't get home until about 10:30pm.  And I was actually strongly contemplating a) taking my kids into a store at 10:30pm, purchasing only wine and cigarettes, or b) leaving them home, awake, at 10:30pm, to go purchase wine and cigarettes.  The imagined results of either of these actions, and the nudging of the Holy Spirit, were almost not enough to quench the desire.  The fact was we only had $2.95 in one account, and the mortgage account was suddenly $50.00 short was what actually put a stop to this nefarious idea.  

The next morning, I received an email from Rachael from church, reminding me that there were only a few days left in October in which to bless our pastors for Pastor Appreciation Month.  In my mind I admonished her, "sure, I would love to, but take a look at these bank accounts! I couldn't rob Peter to pay Paul if I had a ski mask".  And this is the crazy way God works; I checked the $2.95 account and you know, there just happened to be a deposit of the sort that I had not seen in about two months.  So, not only was I able to catch the mortgage account back up, put a little bit into the $2.95 account, but I was actually able to bless our pastor's with $50.00.  Not much, considering everything what they do for us, but I believe that it was the amount that God blessed me to give.

And do you know, I still had thoughts about getting those cigarettes and wine?  But I didn't.

Jer 29:13-14a

"You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.  I will be found by you," declares the Lord, "and will bring you back from captivity."

But on the Upside : )

1Peter 1:18-19 says "For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect."   God gave me this verse, immediately after writing an earlier post.  Immediate, like, I opened my bible and looked.  And thus the answer to my earlier quandary.

The enemy has control in this world; but we have authority to take captive for Jesus those that were lost to the enemy.

Whew, I feel better now.

The love of money IS the root of all evil.

Something is churning in a circular path in my brain.   Abortion.  I know; a time-bomb of a topic.  But, I've been thinking about it from a new perspective, at least to me.

What I'm curious about is, since abortion has been legalized since 1973, the total number of abortions performed varies wildly but it's safe to say it's around 50 million.  I was only able to take a topical view of the numbers cases of child abuse and neglect, childhood accidental and intentional deaths, and crimes against children.  They are heart-wrenchingly high.

Then, there's the issue of safe sex education.  School children across the nation, across the world, are being taught how to "safely" engage in sex.  Yet the number of teen pregnancies reaches around 750,000 per year.  Oh, and 48 percent of new cases of STD's each year occur in those aged 15-24.  Statistics from pregnantteenhelp.org 

So, here's where I lose understanding:
Federal funding for safe-sex programs, yet the government spends 8 billion dollars treating STD's, not counting HIV.
Federal funding for Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers, yet the government spends billions of dollars taking care of teen mothers and their children.
The media is targeting our children to purchase, watch, listen to, and participate in sexually (if not explicit, than certainly provocative) charged merchandising.

Teaching safe sex does not eliminate teen-age or even adult pregnancy and/or STDs.  The government funds the program, and when that fails, it funds abortions and STD healthcare.

Everyone knows that sex is money.  What I want to know is, who said it was okay to use our children to make money?  In this way?   The blue part of our democracy rails against teaching abstinence, because they say it fails.  How is failure measured against the failure of teaching safe sex and federally funded legalized abortions? They say that if abortion were not legal, millions of unwanted babies would be born, putting a burden on our already over-populated earth.  Yet millions of children are still being born to unloving and abusive parents every year, even though federally funded abortion is legal.  And then their parents receive: federal funding.

Abortion is not about choice.  If anyone thinks it is, they've been duped.  It's about MONEY.  Stinking, bloody, dirty money.   And someone sure loves money. . .

How He Loves Us - Kim Walker / Jesus Culture

Pondering Romans Chapter 9

The fact that God loves us is a constant.  It is we as His children fall into two spiritual camps: those that acknowledge and accept this love grudgingly, with suspicion and narrow-eyed hard heartedness.  They question God's love for others especially, placing special judgments on others' specific category of sin.  These people can range from the hateful extremists of the Westboro Baptist Church, to the lady who greets everyone at church with a hard, forced smile and loud proclamations that Jesus loves you!! and then bitterly berates the store clerk for some short-coming, causing personal trauma to her in the check line.  Other members may simply struggle with understanding how God could ever forgive them and continue to love them, much less anyone else.  This sounds a lot like me.

The other camp, the one I long to be a part of, is those who are so wrapped up in Jesus' love that it's seen by everyone else as though a garment.  They make others long to be enveloped in that garment of love, drawing all types of people near mostly without their knowing what the attraction is.  These lovers of God have no forced smiles or sense of entitlement.  Joy radiates from their person and their countenance, totally messing up their hair.  They know and understand that God said "'I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.' It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy." (Romans 9:15-16).  Like children, they know what they know.  But being adults, they already understand that the world is fallen and while sin seems to run rampant, God' love never fails.