About a month ago now, I asked God for a do-over. I'd gotten into a bad place, and trust me, it had taken a long time to get there. But I felt like somehow my head and heart had gotten filled up with a lot of BS about God and the Christian life. Too much teaching, too many books, and not enough of the Bible itself, I think. And I like to read the Bible, so it wasn't as if I hadn't been reading it.
But somehow my head had gotten full of other people's ideas and thoughts about God...and ultimately that had led me to some dark places. Because God didn't seem to me to be who other people made him out to be...and that led me to a lot of pain and confusion. I've been working my way through all of that for a long time, trying to sift truth from untruth...but perhaps because life feels so incredibly overwhelming right now and I can scarcely finish my own thoughts, I felt I needed a fresh start. I wanted to just throw out all the old stuff and start again. Mostly I didn't want to grapple any longer with my lingering feelings of anger toward God for this, that, and the other thing. I suspected it was all a load of crap anyhow. And so I asked God if we could start again, and if he could show me who he is and what it means to follow him and live as he would have me live. I decided the epistles would be a good place to start, and soon I'll probably thrown in Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.
The whole experiment is going pretty well so far, which isn't surprising since I think God really does want us to know who he is and how we can live in response to that knowledge. Here's a verse that jumped out at me yesterday:
"For it has been GRANTED TO YOU on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him but also TO SUFFER FOR HIM." (Philippians 1:29). This feels like medicine for my American-culturized soul.
And this verse caught my eye this morning from Philippians 2: "Each of you should look not only to your own interests but also to the interest of others." It intrigues me that the verse says to look "NOT ONLY to your own interests." Because I have had trouble looking to my own interests.
I think when you're in the throes of motherhood, it's easy to look to the interests of others but not so easy to look to your own. For a long time I forgot that I had my own interests. That I mattered at all in this equation. I completely subjugated myself to my kids and what they wanted. Not that they're brats. They're not. But I got trapped in thinking that what they wanted was far more important than what I wanted, and now I don't think that's the case anymore. I can look to my own interests, and I can look to theirs, though the whole thing can be a pretty confusing process. Not particularly cut and dried. In other words, a lot like life.
4 comments:
very interesting blog!
Nina, I love reading your thoughts. Every time I read one of your posts, it fills my heart and my mind up and I come away thinking differently and it's a better kind of differently, indeed.
You are absolutely lovely. thank you for sharing. And I don't mean that in a glib way at all; I really mean that the world is better for it.
AAbida, thanks for stopping by. Glad you found it interesting.
Jess, thank you. That means so very much to me, more than I can say. Really.
I want to make time for blogging, but it's such a challenge. So little time to even read them! And I can't tell you how many times I've read your blog in the past few months and have then run out of time to comment.
I just stumbled on blog by hitting "Next blog" from one I follow. Wow! As a fellow mother of 3 sons, there is so much to relate to here. Thank you for being so real.
Post a Comment