The importance of dreaming

Setbacks are hard enough to handle when they are things like traffic or missed deadlines but sometimes setbacks happen and they strike at your heart and you know they are hitting a vein close to your dreams. I want to write words of encouragement  down because I’m hoping my thoughts will follow if I can just get it down on paper.  I am going to keep dreaming, it is the dream that closest resembles my reflection of who I believe God is creating me to be and it is something I will never leave behind. Regardless of life’s circumstances, this dream is coming with me, strapped tightly on my back as I wander around the crossroads of my will and God’s will trying to figure out which signpost is which.

Is it well with my soul

I’m not sure what exactly to title this post. I woke up this morning and our fridge was not working.  Then I got ready for work and on my way out the door I noticed that some critter had torn open our trash and ate it. I got in my car to drive to work and the entire frame started shaking. I know very little about cars but I knew that you shouldn’t drive a violently vibrating car. And you know what? It’s a great day. I mean an awesome day. There’s a point  where you realise that your circumstances don’t have the control over you that they once had. You know that God is amazingly good and takes care of you no matter what and you experience a different texture of peace in your life. I wish I could describe it better, but today when everything is going wrong (I’m still a little suspicious of our milk right now) everything is still well with my soul.

Day 20: Home Stretch

I used my day off this wednesday to do a little food shopping because we haven’t had any food in our house for a while. One result of our fasting is I have become very aware of what a lot of manufacturers put in their food and ultimately we put in our bodies. I went to Fresh Market, Whole Foods and the greenwise section of Publix looking for healthy, pure food. I was alarmed to see high fructose corn syrup as an ingredient in chocolate milk and especially in 12 grain bread! When I eat bread I want to well, eat bread and not a syrupy form of sugar that has been added because it makes it cheaper to manufacture. It was also kinda fun to do the price comparisons. We bought 4 Kashi organic frozen pizzas because they were on sale for 50% off which will be perfect for nights when Mike and I have class. It feels really good to do a little bit more each day towards having a healthy and green home, menu and life. I also found an article where they tested all of the green cleaners out there and the winner was Method, tub and shower cleaner. I found a 50 cent off coupon for Method products on Mambo Sprouts website too so that might be a future purchase. I think I finally found a catalyst for ending how much we eat out; my desire to buy and eat organic and healthy.  I am so excited to start cooking again too. I’ve already planned next weeks meals out, which is a big accomplishment in my book.

Is it too soon to blog about soup?

When I was in London on vacation I was trying to stretch my american dollars (which didn’t go very far as euros) As a result, I ordered the cheapest item on the menu at the Victoria and Albert museum cafeteria, Carrot and corriander soup. I was presented a nearly overflowing bowl of rich light orange with a crusty hunk of bread and it was my favorite meal of my entire trip. I am a Floridan and before that a Texan and was so unaccustomed to the cold English grey that the soup was warm and just a touch spicy enough to reenergize my soul. I have a special relationship with this meal; it signifies comfort and adventure and stretching out all of the possibilites that life can offer. A couple years later, I was in New York  on vacation with Mike and we were dating at the time and he was tirelessly searching for a restaurant he had been to once before. We finally started asking people on the street, and thankfully the 7th person knew. Triumphant we slid into heavy cherry wood booths and eagerly gazed over the menu. There it was like a long lost friend, my carrot and corriander soup. I ordered a bowl and my future husband who initially wrinkled his nose at it ended up eating almost the entire thing. It will soon be our 3 year anniversary and we already have the plane ticket to New York to go once again in search of our favorite soup. This time though, we’ll order two bowls.

Day 17 Contentment and Gratitude

Blogging is kind of an odd thing. You are putting your thoughts out into cyber space unsure of who is going to read them and if they will have an impact. It actually has striking similarities to ministry now that I think about it, because I have learned at Seminary in no uncertain terms that if you want to be a minister and can’t deal with not ever seeing your harvest then you have no business being on this side of the pulpit. Which is to say that the act of releasing encouragement and love and ultimately the movement of God into this world should be enough. It is an action that I seek to complete every day but I fall so short sometimes. God has influenced my life dramatically and sometimes I want evidence that He is working in me but that pales in comparison to genuinely loving someone and encouraging them.  So day 17 is about smelling the roses, about being richly blessed and ruminating in the love of God as it inspires me to reach out in kindness towards others. Sounds easy right?  I think contentment and gratitude are goals I want to set, sign posts on my journey to this crazy wonderful calling, so when I get there the journey will have meant something to the construction and growth of my heart and my ministry. Godliness with contentment is great gain, I wrote that on my wall once, it’s a verse from Timothy that I wanted to become part of who I was.

Day 15

One of the hardest things I can sense about my ministry is that I have a hard time getting out of the way.  For so many things in our lives we rely almost immediately on our own skills and knowledge, striving to be intelligent or witty or articulate. I have spent a great deal of my life putting tremendous effort into how and what I communicate only to find the secret is to lean not on my own ability but rather to lean into God.  As our final week begins I desperately want to learn how to “just get out of the way” and be His vessel.

Day 13

So I’ve missed a couple days posting because I was sick but here it is day thirteen already. I have lost 12 lbs and drank more juice than I ever have in my life. I am also extremely susceptible to all types of food advertising; billboards, commercials, newspaper ads. For some reason I really want brown rice too. So it comes down to commitment and since my commitment is with God this is still a fast I am excited about doing. There’s something to day 13, a sense that I have been walking towards God, making sacrifices along the way and this part is all about staying the course. I used to run cross country and I remember getting to a point where your body is tired, your lungs can’t take in any more air because it feels like knives are poking them from the inside and you ask yourself why am I doing this? The answer is almost always spiritual or mental, somewhere in your head or your heart you commited to those 3 miles and at your body’s protest you will see it through. Such is fasting. I discover every day that it is a worthy sacrifice, that I have God’s undivided attention and He finally has mine. This provides for a deeper communication than I could have ever dreamed of. So am I hungry? Yes. Do I pray every day for God to change my physical hunger into spiritual hunger? Yes.  And He has overwhelmed and surprised me every day. Eight more days of that sounds like just what my faith needs.

Day 8 and 9: A freefall into faith

Wow nine days into our fast already. I still want more of a hunger for God. I want to look at people and see them starving for love and compassion and forgiveness and not walk by them without showing them how much God loves them. I was in Target a while ago, maybe even years ago and I don’t remember what I was thinking about but it was certaintly perplexing at the time and the woman behind me taps me on the shoulder and simpy says “you know Jesus loves you, right?” I smiled at her, completely caught off guard, I wanted to tell her yes I definetely do, I love Him and believe in Him with all my heart. But all I could do was smile and think how she was a great example of stepping out in faith. I have a habit of wanting to understand things before I do them, and that always crowds out the grace of God. I need to give Him room in my life and my prayer today is just that, that I shift from leaning on my own understanding to taking a leap towards God and experience a free-falling faith.

Day 7: Learning to breathe

“And on the seventh day He rested.” Remember how I was talking about my restless spirit? Well we received some really sad news that Mike’s grandmother had gotten out of her surgery and had a stroke.  There is something about leaning into God as a community, as the body of Christ that will provide rest in the most restless, heartbreaking situations. I am already looking forward to going to church tomorrow and praying for her in a mighty way because there are some incredible prayer warriors in our church that have lifted prayer up to God for their entire lives. Our pastor says that a house, or a church, filled with expectancy is the breeding ground of miracles. I finally understood the idea of expectancy today. It truly is a sense of peace of waiting on the Lord because you are no longer wondering if He will move.

This is an excerpt from one of my essays. When i wrote this I felt it deeply, but now I am living every word of it. “Nothing happens, no one walks another step until we ruminate on the love of God. Give yourself the opportunity and the ability to be healed by our God. Because He can. And He will. This is the only thought that I could make the axis of my life without my world tumbling down. This anchors it, whatever my belief what ever my emotion I can feel the pulse of the kingdom of God. It always startles me because it happens so suddenly and I am left searching for its heartbeat. I know it’s there. When I let it, when I surrender God washes over me. It’s as if my eyes are opened and every inch of this world can be captured and claimed for the Kingdom of God.  Intensity for God to me is like breathing. The act of turning over your hands and lifting them up to God should render you thankful to God.”

Lord tonight I pray you find me thankful and filled with the expectancy of the movement of Your grace towards Mary. Amen.

Day 6

Expectation. Expectancy. Expecting.  Waiting is not something I am naturally good at. One of my favorite characteristics of the bible is that it is a dynamic book. The language of movement is present all through out,  go and make disciples, come unto me, the Lord is coming from His dwelling place. The truth is if I am told to wait for someone in a certain place I almost always start walking in the direction that I think they’re coming thinking I will catch them and shorten the journey. Sometimes I end up missing them all together. I’m sure this shows up in my spiritual life as well.  I have prayed many times for God to nail my feet to the floor because I wrestle with such a restless heart. Let me do something. Let me create or pour out or cry out. I am completely convinced that I must first learn to sit and be quiet and wait. God has the opportunity to move in my life when I am still. I believe in His movement; in this world , in my life, in my church.  I pray today to sit and listen and rest in You. Come Lord, I will wait on you.