Self-Centered & God-Centered

The sun was out again today! It sure did wonders for my attitude. I won't even go into it now, but yesterday was a crappy day. Start to almost finish, poo. I got mad at my "every day is a good day" friend and let him know about it. (Don't worry...I'm not still mad!) Whine whine whine whine. Basically, that's what I did all day. (I can't believe I still have friends!) Anyway, I got a swift kick in the pants at bible study last night. "May the words of my mouth and the thoughts of my heart bless your name, bless your name, Jesus." That is the song we sang and let me tell you...that was NOT what was in my heart. So I sat and thought about my day and the words I knew I needed to say. I didn't completely understand everything until I hit my "Experiencing God" stuff this morning. I did work on the "wrong section," but it sure wasn't useless. I was looking at circumstances in the Bible where people were more self-centered than God-centered. When they were self-centered, things ended poorly for them. The people who were centered on God and his way knew enough to trust God's plan, even if they weren't 100% sure they believed it or understood it. What really got me though was what God said to the people he called. God was talking to Gideon, who was hiding from the Midianites. Gideon said, God if you are really with us, why is all this stuff happening? Where are the miracles, like the ones you did back in Egypt? "The LORD said to him, 'Go in this your strength...Have I not sent you? (Judges 6.14). Wow. Gideon knew the Lord's past, but was hesitant to trust His plan. God doesn't work on past or present, though. He doesn't talk about the great miracles He performed. No. He says, I sent you! This is what you are meant to do!

In the New Testament, people are still unsure of their call. In Acts 9, Saul/Paul is receiving his call on the road to Damascus. What I found most interesting in this passage is not the conversion, but the fact that God had a plan before Saul even planned his trip. The Lord is speaking to Ananias: Go, for he [Saul] is a chosen instrument of Mine. Chosen? He was just called! Yeah, but that means God had it in His plan always.

These people were experiencing their own self-centered moments. God came along and told them, Hey! This isn't about your safety or your plans, but about mine. To some, that is controlling and a loss of will. For me, I say Thank God! If my life is God-centered, that means I am not responsible for the events in my day, can't control them or change the outcome on my own. My day yesterday? In God's book, it went exactly the way it was meant to go. I didn't like it. So what? It isn't my job to control the day.

So I guess every day is still a good day. But you know, I've left out an important piece of the puzzle. Every day is a good day because God is in it, He has ordained it, I am alive to see it and to fulfill a purpose in it. Every day isn't a great day, but God is in every day and that is what makes them good.

Spring Break (aka Catch Up week)

This week is Spring Break. Sunday night I planned out what I would work on each day. Some days, I even planned things at a specific time! Not the Laura you all know, right? Yeah, well, I think God laughed a little at my plan too. It's okay, because everything worked out in the end. Like my pastor said this Sunday while talking about the supernatural peace that Jesus brings: everything works out in the end. If it hasn't worked out yet, it's not the end!

I've been working on Convention things (which reminds me, I need to finish reading/SparkNote-ing Billy Bud), though that hasn't been my main focus. I've been working on class stuff, and thesis/research paper stuff. I probably didn't get everything done that I wanted to, but I'm pretty happy with what I have achieved. School work stuff? A clue-no. I cleaned my room.

After you've all picked yourselves up off the floor...let me just say, I know. It's been a long time coming. I've been meaning to do it all week (for weeks) but I never made time for it. I think the motivation was simply a desire to NOT do homework. Whatever it was, it worked. I'm even impressed with me.

Actually, that might not have been the only motivation for it. I've had a pretty interesting week that's got me thinking about being a parent. (Don't worry--I'm not dropping hints or 'trying' to tell you anything.) I was 'super babysitter' (not 'super' coz I'm a great babysitter, but because I spent the night so it was a 'super' long job.) last weekend for some dear friends of mine. The whole family was home, I was just providing a break for the parents. So I put on my babysitting hat and read books until my throat was dry and I got tired of reading. I helped with meals and cleaning up the kitchen. We baked cookies and cup cakes, then decorated said cup cakes. (Overheard whilst getting ready to bake, one sister to the other: You look so pretty in your apron!) We watched "Little House on the Prairie" and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." It was the best weekend. Coming home, I couldn't help but imagine what a full time job of mothering would look like. Surely it wasn't as simple as a babysitting job, but how much harder was it? I got a bit more of an answer when I went back midweek for a little extra help around the house. I was greeted by the girls with the most excited "Miss Laura!" you ever will hear. That's when I got to thinking the parenting thing might not be so bad. As I helped clean the house, I saw that (obviously) mothering was more than a full time job. It's cleaning up the house, cleaning up toys, putting things back the way they are meant to be, doing laundry, etc. I started wondering where being a woman figured in to/ with being a mother and a wife. I'm sure I will find that later, but for now, Parenting (yes, it gets a capital--it's a big deal) is one of those "it takes two" jobs that I'm just not ready for.

This view was further confirmed when I started my new babysitting job yesterday. I will be watching a 4 month old one night a week. Everything went really well! I'll be the first to admit I was a little surprised. It's been a while since I've been around a baby like that, let alone since I've been in charge of someone that small. There was one small crying fit, but I remedied it by a clean diaper. (I knew it had to be food or diaper. I used my deductive reasoning skills that since she had just been fed, it was probably the latter. Go me.) Relieved is the wrong word to use to describe how I felt when her daddy came home, but it might not be too far off. It was a good first day...but today, I miss holding her in my arms. It feels odd not to have her there, since I held her most of the time I was with her.

Maybe this is all crazy talk. All you Parents reading this are probably laughing. But I can't quite figure it out: what makes a parent? What makes a good parent? There doesn't seem to be a test to take (or pass) or a book to use to study. How do you know if you are doing it right? Mostly, I'm a romantic, but here I am a realist. Tell me how it works. Show me what to do.

I have the sinking feeling that Parenting doesn't work like that.

Well, anyway, back to researching. I left the two longest articles for last. That was smart. Maybe I can figure out what makes portals to magical worlds important. Or maybe I'll figure out that I need to do more research...

Experience...

Experience: the most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn ~ C. S. Lewis

I am attempting to write a speech for my graduation in May. Well, it's really a trial speech to see if the powers that be like my style and what I have to say. Before everyone gets excited, this quote is all I have so far. My rough draft? Due tomorrow. "But," you say, eyes going wild, "Laura, you don't write rough drafts." I know. "You spend weeks planning and thinking and mulling thoughts over and regurgitate a perfect piece into a Word.doc the night before." I know, I know! The thing about rough drafts is that people usually want to see 80-90% of the actual completed piece in whatever "draft" you give them. The changes to be made are THEIR suggestions, not your own tweaks to perfect things. This idea of a rough draft has me scared. Frightened. Terrified. I feel like I'm under this huge pressure to summarize my "education and experience" at Alvernia in a page, to condense my 4 very long years of undergrad into 4 paragraphs of a quippy intelligent commentary on higher education. Without being cheesy or lame.
But more than the fear of being cheesy and lame, I'm scared about what that might mean about the past 4 years. Can I really sum up all those experiences? Can I sum up my job at the library that spans 2 solid years and a smattering of summers and breaks? Can I sum up my job at the learning center and all the crazy, I mean, interesting people I've met there? Can I sum up my semester abroad in such a short space? The classes, the professors? It's not the capstone of my education (that honor is reserved for my ginormous thesis due at end of term and yes, I've changed topics. Again.), but I feel it must somehow represent EVERYTHING. That fact that I might be able to do this scares me and makes me feel like the months, weeks, days and hours that made up my undergrad can be grouped and packaged together in the box labeled "Experience" that sits on the shelf next to the box labeled "Memories."

On a less depressing note, I figured that dividing my thesis into three parts (three different books that I'm going to look at) means 3, 7 page papers in the course of the semester. Now that is do-able.

Double snow day

These last few days have been CRAZY! Who knew that the sky and the heavens could hold so much snow?! I don't have a final report for you, but it was at least up to my knees. And then, it snowed some more! And guess who got to shovel out the household? Yup. Me. I rock.
Things were going well, except for the snow and the cold. Wednesday afternoon came and took the electricity with it. In a flurry of excitement and consternation (pun, however unfortunate, was intended), mother and I hauled out the generator. On a normal day this is a chore. On a day that I had to shovel the path to the barn to get the generator out and pull it up the hill, well, I felt like SuperWoman when it all was said and done (and like I should have tied a rope from the house to the barn like in Little House on the Prairie). We ran the generator for about 4 hours. As the night wore down, and Mercy ended, we took care of our nightly routine (blanket? check, lantern and flashlight? check) in preparation for shutting down the generator. (Heffner girls: do ya'll remember those blue flashlights from Weaver's that we got at the Oley Fair ages ago? Yeah, mine still worked! Go me!) Mom unplugged the plug and unswitched the switches. I moved the generator into the basement, so crazies who actually made it through all of the snow to our back porch couldn't steal it.We get our lanterns and get ready to go upstairs, when mom stops. "Did the freezer motor just go on?" Click goes the light by the washing machine. Light. Oh well.
The weekend was full of shoveling, shoveling, cold, snow, and more shoveling. My dad and I did a lot of clean up work, part of which involved cleaning out George, little sister's car, who got buried in the snow, and knocking the icicles off the gutter. May I just add that I was TERRIFIED that I would be impaled by a falling icicles? I was! (I almost put a video link to it here, but decided against it. It brings flashbacks.) Needless to say, I pretty much stood back and watched for that one.
I should get working on something now...that would be good. A little bit of school work, a little bit of resume work. And I swear, if there is any more snow I'm moving to somewhere HOT. Or to London. Either way...

"He is already in tomorrow"

An hour after I posted my last entry, I read an excerpt from Mere Christianity that coincided almost exactly to what I was trying to express! I was completely blown away. I wanted to share some of what the great C. S. Lewis has to say about the way God sees time:

...suppose God is outside and above the Time-line. In that case, what we call 'tomorrow is visible to Him in just the same way as what we call 'today.' All the days are 'Now' for Him.

I find this thought to be extraordinarily encouraging. Why should I worry (or be concerned) with things that will happen tomorrow or today? If God sees our tomorrow's and today's as a great big NOW, why should I think He doesn't see every thing that came/comes/will come my way?

It means that the pregnancy my friend prayed for (and is finally experiencing!) was on the Time-line before she even thought about it! It means that the baptism of my (other) friend's husband that we had been praying for ever since I met them (and years beyond that) was already on God's agenda for this past Sunday! It means the thesis paper I am struggling to write is already completed! (And can I get a great big AMEN on that one?!?!)

You know what it means? It means that Matthew 6:25-34 is RIGHT!

~So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself~ Matt. 6:34

Eternal vs. Temporal

I think one of the hardest things for me in life is wrapping my head around the fact that this life is not the end goal. It is so easy to forget in a world that promotes the "now" with no regard to the "later". I was reminded of this twice in two days. Repetition is God's highlighter--maybe if I hear it enough, it will sink in.
Today's sermon was about the worshiping disciple. We were reminded (I say reminded, because I think we all knew this in the back of our heads, somewhere. Anyway, it feels like I should have known it...) that God needs to have the place of glory in our lives. That place of glory is the thing we worship. Worship, we were told, doesn't stop when the music stops, nor does it need music to begin. I was struck by the notion that, like prayer, worshiping our Creator is something we should be doing all the time. The concept of doing anything 'without ceasing' is foreign to our minds. People talk a lot, but eventually they need to take a break. They need to sleep, eat, read--whatever. Breathing is something we do without ceasing, but that is even something we can't control. We could stop breathing tomorrow; that doesn't mean the worship stops. I think this is a struggle for some (myself included) because our time lines are so linear.
I'm sorta glad God's time line is different than ours. Though I would love to know just what is coming, when it is coming, and what I need to do in order to be prepared for it, believing and trusting that He has everything perfectly planned takes the pressure off of me. It sounds like a crutch, and maybe it is. But I honestly would rather that than have to worry and plan and force my (tiny) linear plan any where near God's perfect plan.
I was reminded yet again of God's plan and His timing in my devotional Experiencing God Day-by-Day by Henry & Richard Blackaby. On 16 January (for those who might have it), they talk about the story of Abram. God made Abram a promise that his name would be great and that all the families of the earth would be blessed through him (Gen. 12:1-3). Abram had no children, but a promise from God is a promise from God, right? And so, Abram waited on God. The Blackaby's said over the course of 25 years, God shaped and adjusted Abram's character so that it would be exactly right for the task that God had called him to accomplish. A promise that took 25 years?!? Excuse me! That does NOT fit on my time line! Abram had some troubles remembering what God had promised him, but I think when he heard Isaac's first cry he remembered.
I have the same promises to hold on to. I am told I am a child of God, that He has a plan to prosper me, a plan of hope and not a plan to harm me, a way of salvation. He tells me He gives perfect peace, a spirit not of fear but of love, power & a sound mind. He promises to never leave me. I have trouble remembering to worship on an eternal time line; I have trouble remembering that God's time line is different than mine. But now that I am reminded of it, I have to wait. I have to watch. I have to see what God is needing to teach me before His promises come to fruition. Maybe that means waiting for a job, waiting for direction with school, waiting for relationships, waiting for travel plans.
But even now, in all the waiting, I am given another promise: If I wait on God, He will renew my strength. I will run and not get tired. I will walk and not be weary (Isaiah 40:31). Did you notice that the person is going from running to walking? Sometimes life slows us down. But the verse doesn't say they would sit around and not get bored or anything else resembling a noncommittal or apathetic response. The person waiting on God is ACTIVELY waiting on God. They are living in the temporal with their eyes on the eternal.

when prayer is answered

The Bible tells us to "pray without ceasing" (1 Thes. 5:17). We are to trust God with whatever we are dealing with--relationships, jobs, our Christian walk, finances, families-- and not worry about it. Easier said than done, let me tell you.
Actually, I bet I don't need to tell you. You have probably already come across something in your life that you have struggled to give to God completely. Sometimes, it seems I am constantly telling God, "Okay you need to take care of this because I just can't" a la Hezekiah and the scroll (2 Kings 19: 14-16). I find it hard to learn my lessons and am often praying and returning control to God for the same things. He, however, is full of grace and love and continues to read the scroll that contains my struggles I put before him. In all of my failings, He never leaves. I was reminded of this fact once again last night.
About four years ago, I was getting ready to graduate high school. My youth group was also in a transition; the search for a new youth pastor was underway. Even though I wouldn't be in the youth group much longer, I felt that it was important that I care about the process and who was picked because it would be my sister and many of my friends that would be affected by the choice made. I wanted them to have a good godly example and to grow in God. That youth group has been through more than a few trials in four years, and is now searching for a place for their growing number. At a church meeting where this issue was discussed, many youth leaders spoke about the good attitudes the youth had about their small meeting space and the spiritual growth in spite of their small space;after this, the youth were given an opportunity to share their thoughts. With complete and utter respect, these youth members shared honestly with the members their desire for a bigger space. But not only that, they also shared their own thoughts on their spiritual growth. Though others saw growth, the youth all stated that there seemed to be a regression, a slowing even reversal of growth. This, their desire for spiritual growth, was the motivation for a bigger space, and not the space itself. I was impressed with their poise and confidence to speak to the adult members of the church.
As I was driving home, I realized that they were an answer to that prayer that I had prayed four years ago. Through the struggles they went through, by God's Grace, they came through it with the sole desire to honor God. They desire better communication with other members of the youth group. They want, desperately it seems, to have a better relationship with their God, deeper than what people think they already have. There is no way I would have wished that they had struggles or hard times; however, I am thankful that God saw fit to work things out for good, for those who love Him. And I'm thankful that God, in the round about way that He does things (round about in my mind), chose to answer my prayers. So what that it took four years for me to see results? It isn't about that.
The prayer was answered. That is all that matters. And so, I will keep praying. Keep praying for peace in a job search, peace in my relationships, peace for the future. Why? Because He is faithful, even when and especially, when I am not.