One of those days



Ever have one of those days? Boy, I have lately, actually. more like one of those weeks. I have been unable to put my finger on it, but I have been out of sorts. I have been tired. I have been overwhelmed. I have been frustrated. I have been angry. I have been lonely. I am...self centered.
And as I was walking and praying, I suddenly had this moment of clarity: I am having a temper tantrum. As surely as a toddler who has been thrown off schedule by a holiday or a family trip gets cranky and out of sorts, I had lost that inability to rest in knowing things were the way they are supposed to be. My head whirled with decisions to be made, chores to be done, dreams to be fulfilled, apologies to be offered, changes to create...
It isn't that I am lacking for anything more than peace of mind or gratitude. I have been stuck in the "it's not fair" whine. For real, who told me it was supposed to be fair? Who told me that the world revolved around me? Why is it so hard to not slip back into this self centered skin? It certainly suffocates my spirit.
There are always chores to be done. Hello, I own a house and have a small zoo! There are decisions to be made as to how I can best use my time wisely to continue to nurture my spirit and those around me. Relationships are always changing, hopefully, because as individuals we grow and change. And dreams need to be dreamt....dreams for now and dreams for later. They keep me yearning to grow and learn.
But losing the gratitude for all that I have, well, that is dangerous. It creates this mindset that I did this, that I deserve this, that I can do it myself. Pride creeps in with its cousins resentment and self righteousness.
It is just another one of those days when the adult needs to take the child aside and remember a prayer of Thomas Merton:
Lord, thank You for what You have given me, thank You for what You have taken away, and thank You for what You have left me.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog Carnival: Community

Image
Blog Carnival: Community Community is getting to be a buzzword that hardly seems recognizable.  It has become permanently connected with a metrosexual worship leader at the hip church which has an outreach into some impoverished place.  But is that community? Yesterday I wrote about Facebook's social networking site.  Did you know that there are more than 300 million active users and that 50% of their active users (returned to the site in the last 30 days) log on to Facebook in any given day and that the average user has 130 friends on the site? Is that community? Do we really have a community or do we talk so much about it and request friends by the busload because we desire it intensely? We were made for community.  Creator said it was not good for that first man to be alone.  Even Creator was not alone.  We need to walk with others.  We need our village.  We need them to not only walk with us a...
Read more

He's Calling

Image
I didn't sleep well last night. I kept waking up, wanting to write. Those nights are annoying, particularly when I am working 12 hours the next day so I have no business getting out of bed to write. But here is the thing that kept bugging me...what if God is calling us not to greatness, but to smallness? Yeah, weird thing to keep a person awake, huh? Our group that went to the Leadership Summit are praying for ways that we can put what we learned into practice. Look around your neighborhood-there is so much need. Look around your coworkers-enough need to depress you. Look around the world-so much need it can paralyze. And then I think about this thing with callings... What if it isn't about being called to a thing, but to be like Him? What if it doesn't matter where I am or what I do but how I do it? What if His only desire is for me to respond to this broken world as He does? Right where I am? Jesus stopped to love the kids, he held up important people to talk to a woman, ...
Read more

The Reason for the Season

Image
This post is participating in today's blog carnival on the word LOVE.  To read other posts, click here . As all my friends texted holiday wishes this Christmas, one stood out.  This one seemed to go against all the "Keep Christ in Christmas" and "Jesus is the reason for the season" bumper stickers.  This text said simply, U r the reason 4 the season. At first I thought she wrote it incorrectly, so I read it again looking for the typo.  But, there wasn't one. That's when it hit me: without me, there wouldn't be a need for Christmas. Ok, so that sounds somewhat egocentric, but hang in there with me.  God is this crazy amazing being made of love.  It is out of that crazy, amazing love that he chose to step into flesh, to show us that God does love us and that he didn't abandon us to the evil that surrounds us, to bring us back to this relationship.  God, the first and greatest lover, pursues us, rescues us.  O...
Read more