Move with grace

Sometimes I allow people and situations to just wear me out.

Recently I have found my emotional cup at its peak and at those moments it seems life is most volatile and I am most prone to pride.

I was annoyed and so blinded to the truth.

I was hurt and so arrogant of my own wrongs.

Shamefully, I voiced these opinions to other friends who listened.

They supported my frustrations—as friends often do.  They offered advice. They told me to speak out. They told me to walk away. They told me a million things that I felt in my own heart—my prideful,deceitful heart.

They offered prayers and support—another things friends often do, but I found my frustrations only amplified rather than sated. They were loving me, but not in the way that I needed at the moment.

Without realizing it I began to pray. I was so tired of being…well, tired. I felt as though this battle I was fighting was one I had fought a million times and frankly I was just exhausted. (Isn’t it one of the most beautiful things to just find oneself praying, though? To be caught up in the middle of prayer and find that peace that only comes from a dependence on God?)

And once I had vented all that I wanted to say to God he offered me beautiful words of encouragement from the most unlikely of sources. I had recently sent a friend a few past blogs. One that spoke of my current frustrations—one that spoke of where I wanted my heart to be. This friend and I do not share the same faith, but his response encouraged me in a way that none other had. He told me he envied my ability to believe and that he felt my prayers were leading to something. He said he admired my strength and then ended his message with the last words his grandfather told him the day he died:

Move with grace, it’s just pain

And something changed in my heart at that moment—how I wish it were a forever change, but my heart is a mess and tends to stray—I found myself questioning things and sent them to another friend:

What if rather than allowing myself to become angry, I see every wrong done against me as an opportunity for prayer?

What if rather than seeking my own justice, I sought love trusting God to deliver justice where He sees fit and being content in that?

What if I allowed the doors of my heart to be opened and loved without fear?

What if I allowed God to guard what I am incapable of guarding and studied his word well enough to be close enough to know when to act and when to be silent?

I think the greatest problem I face at present is that somewhere down the line I became so afraid to love that I became vengeful and angry when I was wronged. I think that is the natural human response, but I think we are also called to something more.

Just my musings, but I think I am onto something better than the bitterness I so often allow to invade my thoughts and heart and when I am broken.

This most beautiful of hearts opened my eyes to the very things I had begun to consider in her response, that all was never as I saw it but that love really was at work. I just missed it—as I often do.

I listened in my office today to husbands complaining about wives and friends complaining about friends and I thought, “How quickly we choose to complain about everything rather than seeking love—seeking God first and letting him lead us to the best guidance for our hearts.

I pray with everything in me that I can execute this change that I can look past the things that frustrate me to the love that may be hidden within its layers. That I can see past my own pride and selfishness and find God’s grace and mercy and share that with those around me rather than my own bitterness and pains.

When I hit the ground

Neither lost nor found

When I’m on my knees I’ll still believe

-Holland Road by Mumford & Sons

I Don't Believe You

"You're a disappointment."

"You'll never be loved."

"You'll never amount to more than this."

"You'll never achieve your dreams."

"You'll never be smart/pretty/good enough."

"You're not worth the time/energy."

Words hurt. Worse than words told by others are the lies we tell ourselves. These attacks on our spirits have the ability to crumble our very foundations and when we are at our lowest we not only believe them, we add to them and we attempt to make them become our very identity. When asked if I believe that spiritual warfare is real I can firmly say yes as I witness the increasing amount of suicide and self-harm in our nation. My own brother has fallen victim to that pain and it breaks my heart. I cannot say that I am immune. The lies I began with are all things that I have believed of myself. With a single glance or word I watch my own walls crumble around me. These lies are thrown at me daily and in their way they are the most obvious, but other lies follow us as well. A week ago I went to a concert and afterwards I was talking to the singer (Greg Holden) about wanting to move to India. He had recently visited and advised against it simply because of the poor conditions. "I want to go to help." I told him and he smiled. "We were fortunate enough to be born in the wealthy west, " he said. "It's our obligation to help those who weren't." He's right. We believe the lies that as long as we aren't causing more problems we aren't hurting those around us but our silence is just as painful as our words. By not acting we are making the choice to let others fall to the wayside. I watch as we claim to know love and to follow Christ, but when I see the way we treat each other, the way we treat ourselves--and I am not exempt from this. I am equally guilty--it has to break God's heart. We use words flippantly. We tell people they are not worth our time. We tell them by our actions if not by our actual words. We tell those who are starving that we cannot spare a few dollars or a few hours of our time because we would rather watch Netflix and drink that extra coffee at Starbucks. Is that really the story we want to tell? We rush through the beautiful moments of life to indulge in the very things that are truly meaningless. How often do we rush a hug with someone we love because we are running late? Or neglect to answer a phone call because we just cannot spare the second. I am tired of living my life this way, hurrying as the most amazing things pass me by. I have always been the person who took the time to read a book or marvel at a sunrise, but somewhere down the line I got distracted. I let life overwhelm me. I pray this changes. I pray today is a start of a new era in my life. Thank you God for taking the time to bring me back--to slow me down. Life is far too beautiful to rush through. It is too wonderful to not love the people around us. To not love this gift of a world we have been given. To become so blinded by ourselves and the lies that the world feeds to us that we miss the truths that God has whispered into our very souls.
If you had the time to read this...I pray you will take another few moments to just reflect on all of the beauty around you and to thank God for it because He is worthy of our praise.