Month: November 2014

The holidays are here!

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Well officially Thanksgiving in about 4 more days. I’m not sure how I feel about the upcoming holiday season. Am I dreading the actual Christmas shopping? I don’t know yet as I haven’t even started, no actually I have started, the gifts haven’t arrived yet via our wonderful postal system I almost forgot about them. One gift I did buy my husband I do actually have here in the house…hidden, haha!

Every year we jump through hoops trying to figure out what to buy our son Thomas. He loves opening gifts. However he isn’t the easiest person to buy gifts for. He’s not one to actually play with any toys, even when he was younger he didn’t really play with toys. Now that he’s 18 it’s more difficult since he isn’t a typical 18 year old young man. I also have family calling me for ideas of what to buy him and they usually are told “I don’t know” in response. Hopefully with Thomas home for Thanksgiving we can pry something out of him or maybe we’ll hit the jackpot and find out multiple “things” he’d like.

We put our tree up the day after thanksgiving. A Thomas tradition. He loves to watch me put the tree up and help. He is a great helper. He’ll carry boxes down from the attic and hang ornaments on the tree. But he won’t rest until all the decorations are up and/or out and in their respective places. I used to dread putting up the tree because Thomas will fixate on it, no one would rest until the darn tree was up. What? You want a “break”?? I don’t think so! But he’s mellowed a bit; either that or our patience has increased. It’s probably a combination of both. These days I don’t dread it, I actually look forward to putting up the tree. It wouldn’t be the same if Thomas wasn’t helping me.

I’ll never forget the one Christmas right after I had a miscarriage. I didn’t want to celebrate anything never mind put up the dang tree. Thomas and I brought the tree down from the attic and I started stringing the lights. I tested every strand of lights before putting them on the tree, then…Of course half the lights wouldn’t work once they were actually on the stupid tree and I literally had a half lit tree. It was horrible. I took all the lights off and threw them away and declared that unless we went out and bought a pre lit tree I wasn’t putting up a tree at all. Fast forward to all of us in Sears debating which pre lit tree was best for us. My husband is the best.

So this year we’ll buy a “real” tree and I’ll string the lights and Thomas will direct and supervise as usual. I’m looking forward to it.

Fighting

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Do you ever feel like you’re just fighting God?  I do. I feel this way a lot lately. I like my job but I don’t love it.  I want to love what I do, don’t we all? Perhaps that will come with time so I need to be patient. This job had everything on my checklist; part time, in Manhattan, in an office. So I shouldn’t be complaining but I am. I also believe God had a hand in me even getting this job as I know He holds our lives in His hands. I should be grateful since I have been job hunting for the past 9 months or so with no results. I believe He wants me to be where I am yet I feel as though I’m fighting Him the whole way.

I don’t believe in coincidences. God orchestrates and places us exactly where He wants us at all times. I did not fight Him when it came time to have Thomas live at a residential school. I did not fight when the perfect school was literally thrown in our laps with as an added bonus; awesome staffing. But here I am fighting Him over a job. I feel it in my gut, the fight, the inner tantrum we all have when things aren’t as we want them or envisioned them to be. I feel as though I’m a child pouting and stomping over not getting her way.

Why do we/I fight God so much? I find it so difficult to surrender to Him. Even though He will never leave me and His way is always ultimately the best, I’m choosing instead to fight Him. I want to surrender, I want to be obedient but…there’s that spoiled child kicking and having a tantrum. I’m tired of fighting.

God and outside church.

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I love when I’m in church and worshipping our Lord. I feel so content to be there and I know He hears me. Everything seems so black and white and comforting. We love Him, He loves us. Jesus died to save us who are sinners. Since entering the workforce I question how to integrate God and “work”. How to get that feeling on Sunday to last while at work? How do we bring God to work with us? I pray on the way to work constantly. Then afterwards I try to remember to pray for thanks for His presence in my life while I was at work.

Bringing God to work. I know some people who are able to do that successfully. Co-workers know they are Christians and I think that is wonderful. There are many times I would love to shout “I am a Christian, I love Him!” but I’m sure it wouldn’t go over well. My workplace isn’t a traditional office setting. I see clients and then they are on their way. There isn’t any way I could just slip God into the conversation. Or rather I don’t see a way to bring God into the conversation. The client is in my presence for a specific reason/procedure and that is exactly what we talk about, why they are there. Honestly I don’t necessarily want to witness at work, I want to bring God with me to work. Bring his presence with me, make it a part of me. I don’t want to feel the separation of “Sunday” me and “work” me. Its almost as if there are 2 worlds that can’t seem to collide. I want them to collide and coexist in a manner that it would be impossible to separate. It’s like my soul is craving more God in more places of my life.

I’m thinking I need to spend more time in the word. I don’t feel I spend enough time reading my bible and taking note of verses that speak to and/or convict me. I can’t think of any other way to draw closer to God and enable myself to make my worlds collide.

On another note I want my bible to be less “neat”, it’s only recently that I’ve felt bold enough to underline specific verses we’ve gone over while at bible study. A highlighter marker is now on the shopping list.

Prayers and Anxiety

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Anxiety, it stinks or more accurately it sucks. Plain and simple. It sucks to be worried about “things” all the time. Afraid that if you don’t worry that something even more terrible will happen. That’s how my mind works anyway. So I tend to pray more when anxious. Pray for God to take the anxiety away, pray for whatever I’m worried about to NOT actually happen and then pray again for Him to alleviate my anxiety. I have to say sometimes prayer actually works. IME anyway He does take the anxiety down a notch. I know He does. I wish I could lay it all on The Lord so that I have no anxieties the way it says to do in the bible:

1 Peter 5:6-7English Standard Version (ESV)

6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, 7 casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.

That’s the verse. The verse that really says it all to an anxious person. Now to actually apply it. That’s the tough part. There are times I feel the anxiety is simply a part of who I am as a person. I’ve learned some techniques for managing it but nothing really makes it go away. I should learn from my own past as the times that I have been able to cast my anxieties on Him; The Lord has not let me down. He truly answered my prayers. Those are the times where I’ve been exhausted by the anxiety and felt I had no where left to turn except to the Lord. I want to be in a place to cast my anxieties on him before I’m exhausted. I need to remember that He will never leave or forsake me.