The Cookbook

The Body of Christ

2012-01-02T11:28:00.004-06:00

I'm typing from an iPhone so you'll have to bear with me (my computer is down).

God has been showing me some things recently about the Body of Christ. It's been good because, having been raised in "secular Christianity," there's been lingering confusion in my mind sometimes about what's really, Biblically true vs. what I've been taught. Here are some things that are probably obvious to a lot of you, but that haven't always been obvious to me...

1. Christ has only ONE body. This has confused me before, because of how many churches there are in the world. But a group of people that call themselves a church is not necessarily a church just because they call themselves one. They're either a part of the Body of Christ, or they're not. Period. But multiple churches does not equal God having multiple bodies. He has only one. If a church is doing what God does, saying what God says, and living the way Jesus lived, they are part of His Body because they are under submission to the Head of the Body, which is Christ.

2. Just because someone does not live in Rose Creek Village does not mean they are not part of the Body. I have cells in my body with which I've never become acquainted. But they're still a part of me. I still need them. They still matter. I may never learn exactly who/what they are or what they do, but they're part of my body nonetheless. Same thing with the Body of Christ.

3. However...this is the tricky part. Once someone has BEEN a part of the Body, and they choose to willfully separate themselves (leave the Body)--against the better judgment of the Head and the other members--they are no longer doing anything incredibly useful to God. They may do good things, and God may turn the things they do into good, because He's God and He's merciful and He can, but they've cut themselves off from their source of Life...in which case, how long can they expect to last? There are only two categories a person in this situation can be in: either they were never part of the Body to begin with, or they've amputated themselves from the Body and need to repent and be re-attached. In the last case, as members remaining in the Body, why would we continue to try to have fellowship with the amputated members? It would be like trying in vain to keep pumping blood into an amputated arm to keep it from dying off. It not only wastes a lot of time and energy that could be spent elsewhere, but it ultimately isn't going to work, long-term. It isn't meeting the real need, which is re-attachment. And we who are still in the Body long for re-attachment. We don't hate the parts we lost, we mourn for them. We long for them. We ask God for their restoration.

And by "re-attachment," as it refers to people who have left the physical location of Rose Creek Village, I don't necessarily mean that they would move back to Rose Creek Village. Maybe that's God's will; maybe it isn't. But there's a spiritual re-attachment that comes from returning to the Body and being re-connected to the Head and the heart of Christ that can be felt and perceived, when it happens. This is what I'm talking about.

God has been revealing a lot of these things to me through the analogy of my own physical body, which is easier for me to understand.

Anyway...these are just some things I've felt like God has been showing me.

If any of the leaders or other readers see an error in my thinking (or way of communicating), please bring it to my attention. I'm always a little suspicious of my own thoughts, even when they're between me and God, because there are still so many things that color my perspective. To be totally honest, writing these things and posting them on the internet (or in a place where multiple people can read them) is hard for me. I'm afraid to be wrong, afraid to be ridiculed, judged, misunderstood, etc ad infinitum. But nevertheless, though it's a step down from having face-to-face conversations, it's still an outlet to communicate and put things in the light. I'd rather be rebuked and become wiser, than keep my thoughts to myself and not even know if I'm in unreality.

Loyalty

2011-12-10T15:16:00.002-06:00

It's been a loooong time since I posted. [Insert normal excuses here.] I'll just jump right back in...

I've been thinking the last few days about loyalty. It's not a word that you find in the Bible very much - at least not in the more classic translations (in the NIV or KJV it's more likely to be rendered "faithful" or "steadfast"). At any rate, Merriam-Webster Online defines the word "loyal" as follows:

1: unswerving in allegiance: as
a : faithful in allegiance to one's lawful sovereign or government
b : faithful to a private person to whom fidelity is due
c : faithful to a cause, ideal, custom, institution, or product

I've been thinking about how easy it is to get confused as to who our loyalty is to, or to whom it is due. I've been in situations before where I felt such loyalty toward a specific person that it made it hard for me to see the person clearly. It made it hard to see their faults, their humanity. This always (as in, 100% of the time) had disastrous results. But what I've learned is that ultimately, my loyalty has to be to God. And the truth...which to me are inseparable.

The issue can be confused in corporate living, because we all - one would hope - desire to follow God and know the truth. But in some cases it's easy to feel like disagreeing with a person, or even comprehending their faults, or bringing correction to them, is diminishing them in some way. But even though it might seem (or feel) that way, it's not true. Kingdom logic is upside-down and backwards from what looks and feels right to the world in front of us. Disagreements happen so they can be explored, and worked through, with more light being shed in dark places in each others' souls. Getting all the way to the end of it, where both sides feel at peace, increases unity. Comprehending a person's faults reminds us that no one is perfect except the Godhead, and He alone can be trusted above all others. Bringing correction, when it's clearly needed, is an attempt to save someone from stepping away from God; even if it's only one small step and may seem like it's no big deal, when you add too many of those small steps together, suddenly a person can find themselves really far away from God and have no idea how they got there!

In corporate living, as the Body of Christ, we're called to be loyal to each other as well. But it doesn't mean we have to have a blind, reckless loyalty that says everything another person says and does is from God. I guess all I'm trying to say is that we have to be careful not to let our judgment be clouded. Our loyalty is to God first, and God only. I don't say that to mean that it would somehow exclude the Body, but rather, that we have to learn to endorse what God endorses, correct what God corrects, and withdraw from what God withdraws from.

I don't even know if this is making clear sense. Maybe I'll revisit it again later. I had a thought that ended up being a lot harder to flesh out than I imagined...but this is the best I can do for now. I'll try not to be a stranger! :)

Beautiful Devastation

2011-08-30T23:04:00.004-05:00

This phrase - beautiful devastation - has come up several times recently. Or maybe that was my interpretation of it, it might not be how it was actually used. My friend has been discovering some things God has to say about it, and for some reason the last time it came up made me think back to a poem I wrote about 4 or 5 years ago. I dug it up.

2006, I believe it was. Or sometime not long thereafter. If taken by itself, 2006 would go down in my personal history as one of the worst years of my life. Everything literally fell apart that year. My health, my brain, my life [unnecessary details omitted]. Ultimately, though, it led me to Rose Creek Village, and it led me to a deeper, closer, real-er relationship with God and His Church than I ever could have found otherwise. Sometime in the middle of the hurricane of my life called 2006, I wrote this. I hope you enjoy it, in an abstract, thought-y sort of way (because that's how I write)...

Through

It only looks like an alley--not a bridge--
when you pass through, press through the pain.
No manifest gain: seems like Loss lurks,
and Death smirks, and Logic slips the leash
and bounds away and there's nothing left to say
...yet again.

And you think, So, 'no man is an island': well all right.
But some are peninsulas, and funny how alone you wish you weren't.
But down here it's become clear
the ones you kept so near--thought so dear--
were just shields you hoped would keep you
from getting hurt.
(And what's that worth? It doesn't work.)
Give up the search.
Before Life comes birth.

Such a scary transfer...
'cause you never know, really,
if Love will answer when you're bound--
come break your fall--
or advance to kick you when you're down,
make a mockery of what it's found,
give you everyone's usual run-around...
or even acknowledge you at all.

And it seems like forever goes and comes
with nothing changing--
while everything does--
because you're waiting
while He digs and rips and prunes.
Desperate to keep yourself together,
Him willing you to come undone
so He can plunge the shovel in
right at the roots.
The best and worst is, you can choose.
(You've only Truth--and Life--to lose.)

Yet amongst the wreckage of deceptions
you aspired to stay away from,
hidden in the grief and shame
is a kind of beautiful devastation:
After fire, after earthquake,
after wind, and holy scars
comes the whisper, that, Broken is,
but, Broken isn't
all you are.

A painful process, seems the cost is
too much more than all you've got,
with the road too hot and narrow underfoot...
So continues the decision:
Blow your chance, and burn these bridges--
or embrace the barriers
until you're
Through.

Pain is Not the Worst Thing

2011-08-18T16:52:00.005-05:00

Man, there's been a lot going on. I know I haven't written in over a month, but it's hard to slow down and think about the battle when you're still busy swinging a sword. I hope one day I'll understand the significance of everything that's been happening.

Anyway, here is a thought God has been whispering to me. Let me back up and say, as a general rule, these days I'm a very stable, steady person. I'm content most of the time, and I don't waver in that. If something happens that keeps me from being at peace, I go talk to God and His people until I find peace again.

Nevertheless, I do still struggle sometimes; I'm still human, after all. It's nothing major and it doesn't last long, but it happens. I started noticing a pattern the last few times. I guess God wanted to point it out to me. Here it is: no matter what the struggle is, I always end up in the same place: lying in a heap before the Lord, begging, "Please don't hurt me!" (by which I mean, please don't allow something to happen that would cause me unbearable pain)

The last time this happened, I heard, more clearly than I ever have, God whisper back: "Pain is not the worst thing that can happen to you." I knew instantly what He meant, because I've lived a lot of my pre-Village life in a state of numbness; apathetic. Nothing touched me. Nothing affected me (much). My heart was dead, my emotions were flat. I hardly ever cried. I felt like a ghost, drifting through life, observing but not participating. That is the worst thing that can happen to you.

Don't miss your life.

Feel. Love. Hurt. Cry. Smile. Laugh. Sacrifice. Hunger. Thirst. Ask. Help. Hold. Give. Release. Hope. Pray. Nourish. Receive. Bask. Appreciate. Risk. Win. Lose. Try. Fail. Achieve. Learn. Embrace.

Live your life.

Don't hold back.

Don't leave a trail of regrets in your wake.

Love.

Love.

Love.

Love.

Love.

Pain is not the worst thing that can happen to you.

About Makeup

2011-07-12T22:08:00.002-05:00

I know this is going to seem random, but I want to put a copy of an email I sent to Abba and Amma several months ago on here. Usually I tend to be kind of shy and private - at least about personal stuff. I keep things to myself, except for a select few people that I (sort of) trust. But I don't want to be like that. I want to be more open about more stuff. Like anybody else, it's hard for me to be vulnerable, but probably the best way to get better at that is to practice.

I've been thinking about the youth in the Village a whole lot. I can identify with so many of your struggles, and I want to be a place for you to come and talk if you want to. At any rate, this was from several months back, and it's hard for me to share, but nonetheless here it is:

Hi Abba and Amma,

I've been hearing a lot lately, about girls wanting to wear makeup, some who are actually doing it, some who have questions, even some ladies who do wear it or are starting to experiment with it or thinking about wearing it again. I have some thoughts about it; these are my reservations. These might be boring to you guys, I don't know, but you can always just stop reading if it is. :)

I have to preface everything with this: I came to the Village in a true state of bondage to the need to wear makeup at all times. I could stop wearing eyeliner and mascara and lipstick without a ton of trouble, even though I missed it and felt very plain without it. I have blonde(ish) hair, and my eyelashes are blonde too, so they don't show up much by themselves. I've also had a BAD habit of biting and chewing on my lips when I'm thinking about something, and the only way I used to be able to stop doing it was just keeping lipstick on all the time - I didn't bite them then b/c I didn't want lipstick on my teeth! Haha. The liquid foundation and concealer--to make my skin look perfect--is the thing I couldn't give up. I've had a major insecurity about my skin, my complexion in particular and the rest of my skin in general, for years now. But what ended up with me in bondage actually started very innocently. I began wearing makeup when I was 13 or 14, because it's just what teens did at that age, at that time, where I lived. I didn't start off doing full-face makeup, but I worked my way into it eventually, and here's the frightening thing. I'd never really thought about my skin one way or another until then. There was absolutely nothing wrong with it at that point, either. It was normal, healthy, teenage skin. But after just a short period of time of wearing foundation and concealer, that made my skin look totally flawless, I quickly got to the point where I not only disliked my real skin, I actually hated my own face when I wasn't wearing any makeup. I got to where I was ashamed to let anyone see me without it - even my own parents! I remember taking my bottle of foundation into the bathroom with me whenever I took a shower, so I could wash my face in the shower and then put makeup right back on as soon as I got out, so I wouldn't even have to walk 10 steps from the bathroom to my bedroom without any makeup on, in case someone might see me. I never foresaw this happening to me, or else I'd never have started. The sad thing is, people might not be aware of this, but the chemicals used to make the stuff we're (considering) putting on our faces are mostly toxic. So of course, after a short time of wearing it, my skin actually did react by breaking out. And, duh, the more I wore it, the more I broke out, which eventually caused some of the scarring that I was so afraid to let people see. That's how the cosmetic companies set their hooks in you; they get you addicted to looking "perfect," and then their products make your real skin break out, which requires you to buy more products to cover it up, which makes it break out more, which makes you buy more, and on and on it goes.

At any rate, it took me years to come out of this bondage. Even when I moved to Rose Creek Village, I still wore foundation and concealer. This might sound weird, but for a long time, it helped me think less about myself to just go ahead and put it on than to stop wearing it. If I'd stopped cold-turkey before I was ready, it would have made me overly self-conscious and focused on myself and too distracted from worrying about it to think about anything else. I feel like God was gentle with me on this issue, and I'm really grateful for that. I finally stopped wearing makeup after I got baptized this past (most recent) Ingathering, and I wasn't really planning on it. It's just something God did for me. I'd wanted to stop for awhile, but just didn't have the courage, so I'd been praying for God to help me. When I went under the water in the baptism trough-thingy, then went home to take a shower, I felt God showing me my opportunity to escape. I looked in the mirror after my shower, fresh-faced, and decided whether I liked it or not, I wasn't going to cover it up anymore and I never have, since then. On the one hand, it's WONDERFUL to feel so free. On another hand, sometimes I do still struggle with not liking my skin. But I guess where I end up is, there are SO many more important things to think about and do, than worry about whether I like my skin or not! Who cares! Really.

I think therein lies a lot of the problem with makeup. It's not just makeup, it's this whole thing that women struggle with (and guys too, but in different ways), with how they look and whether they're beautiful and wanting to look a certain way. The problem with any of it, with all of it, is that it puts our focus on our selves! I've heard more times than I can count, "There's nothing wrong with wanting to look nice," but I've really started to question that. I feel like we should take care of ourselves, because God gave us bodies to use to do His work, but beyond taking care of them, what ARE the reasons we do what we do and look how we look? IS there something wrong with wanting to look nice? Maybe. If it 1) makes us focus on ourselves more and longer than we need to (which ultimately distracts us from whatever God wants us to be busy doing at the moment), and/or 2) if it makes someone else look at US and not GOD, then maybe there IS something wrong with wanting to look nice! I can't tell you how many times a week (or even a day, sometimes) I have the fleeting thought "I feel ugly" - and how many times I can happily throw it out the window with, "Who cares! I've got things to do!" I don't lose sleep at night, fearing that when I die and stand before God, He's going to ask me why I didn't wear flared jeans and knee-high boots that one season when they were "in", because they were just so cute! I DO worry that I've wasted too much of my time trying to fit into the world's definition of what I should look like, and fooled around and not done what God's asked me to do with my time here on this planet, because I was too busy worrying about whether my thighs are too fat or my eyelashes are too blonde.

This all might sound extreme, and maybe it is. I'm totally open to discussion and correction. You are definitely wise enough to take what I'm saying and find the middle ground with it. But at the least, I think it's hard for Americans to realize, and especially young ladies in America, that there are SO many things that are MORE important than what we look like. Beauty has a very similar deceptive allure to it that money has - it promises that once we have it, we will be happy. But it's a total lie. For one thing, there is rarely a person on the earth who ever feels they are beautiful (or rich) enough. For another, if you could ever believe you were beautiful enough, the disappointing truth is that IT DOESN'T FIX ANYTHING. Your problems are all still there, when you're beautiful. You are still YOU, no matter what you look like or how much you change or perfect the outer (wo)man. The world is still a mess. Focusing on our appearance is a tragic waste of precious time that could be used for more eternal purposes. People are dying and going to hell every single day, and we're worried about whether people are going to think badly of us because we forgot to pluck our eyebrows or shave our legs.

Anyway...I think I'm starting to ramble and maybe lose the focus of the things I'm trying to say. Sorry. Sometimes I feel things and am not the best in trying to get them out. I think my conclusion has come to this, for me personally: everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible, but I will not be mastered by anything. And also, I've been thinking a lot about how it says in Romans that it's wrong for us to do something that's going to cause someone else to stumble. Because of my history, I have no desire whatsoever to go back to wearing makeup. But if I did, I think I could just look at the young girls and their struggles, and leave makeup alone for their sake. I'm not saying I think this is God's word for us as a Village because I have no idea. It's just what I've felt like He's been speaking to me about it. I'm very interested and open to everyone else's thoughts on it too. Just in case you're interested at all, here's an article about the toxins they put in cosmetics (even personal care products) -

http://toxicfreeawareness.com/2010/08/09/the-story-of-cosmetics-video/

There are many more references out there too. It's kind of scary, since the FDA does not regulate cosmetic or personal care products so people can pretty much put whatever they want in it. They're not even required to list all the ingredients.

Well, thank you for reading all this (if you did). I love you very much! Allison

Dreams

2011-07-04T07:26:00.002-05:00

Haven't had much time to write, and when I've had time, I've been sleeping. I've been extremely tired lately. I think I probably just stay up too late (I'm a night owl) and my toddler is getting up around 5:30 or 6am these days, and not going back to sleep. :-/

Anyway, I keep having the same kind of dream. It's been happening for a few months now. Last night I dreamed that me and a few other people (can't remember who) were in a tornado. It actually hit us. We were in the attic of a big house, with sleeping bags laid out on the floor. Why? Who knows. It's a dream. The colors of gold and golden brown were abundant in this dream - the house had lots of hardwood floors. Even the walls looked like hardwood flooring. When the storm hit, the sun stayed out.

When the tornado hit, it rocked the house a little bit, and I ran downstairs. (I was thinking about the storm drills we used to do in school; for a tornado, you're supposed to go to the basement, not the attic.) But no one followed me, so I ran back upstairs to be with everyone else. For some reason I remember a bunch of papers flying through the air with the wind. And then it was over.

I've had a lot of dreams lately about storms, tornadoes, disasters. They're never the exact same dream, but they all have the same elements. Something tragic threatens us (it's always an "us" in the dreams), maybe even strikes us, but it never hurts us. It only shakes us up a little and possibly moves some papers around. No one dies. No one even has a scratch. What looks looming and terrible to us, when it approaches, turns out to be nothing but a lot of noise and a little bit of wind, and it passes quickly.

I don't necessarily think all dreams mean something (other than maybe I should watch what I eat before bed), but I do think God can use them to say something if He wants to. I think what He's saying in these is obvious. Fear not. I am with you. This is not unto death, but for the glory of God. Though a thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand by your right hand, it shall not come near you.

Just wanted to encourage you with this today. :)

God is with us...

2011-06-28T11:27:00.003-05:00

I don't have anything profound to say today, though I do have something to write later or tomorrow, or whenever I have time to sit down and focus on how to say it.

Right now (meaning yesterday, last night, today), I'm in a still, quiet place with God. I know there's a lot going on right now, but I feel God drawing nearer and nearer to us as a body. He is moving. He is among us. He is changing us, working on, re-ordering, saving, and loving us. I don't care what external circumstances look like, this is what I feel and see with my spirit. I, of all people, have an intense sense of hope and expectancy. (this is unusual for me...LOL) As an individual, I'm at the point where I don't have any questions for God. I understand and think it's absolutely okay if others do. But I'm in a time where I feel a sense of deep trust in Him. I don't need to ask "Why?" because in the end, I don't care why. He is going to have His way, and this is the way He has chosen, so it must be good, because He is good. That's a good enough answer for me.

The only question I have for God is, "How may I serve You, in the midst of all of this?" And He is answering that. It's the same answer, I think, that He's always given: Do what's in front of you. Take care of everyone you come into contact with. Put others before yourself. Love, love, love, and love more.

Family, please be encouraged. I wish I had the words to convey to you what I feel. I feel like God's eyes are on us, intensely. I don't mean in a critical way. I mean in the sense that we have gotten his attention. He is with us! If anyone else feels anything in agreement (or disagreement) with what I'm writing, I hope they will share too. Not necessarily even on this blog, but in person the next time we're gathered.

Most of all, I feel God's intense, incredible love for us. He's our shepherd, and He has not, and will not, abandon us. He is caring for us and He is leading us in the way He wants us to go.

I hope this was understandable. I see and feel a lot but sometimes it's hard to put it into words.

On Those Who Have Left

2011-06-25T14:05:00.002-05:00

Hello everyone.

I want to give some thoughts on those who have left, or those who are leaving, the Village. Don't misunderstand the purpose of this blog - I do not want it to be a place where my opinions can just run free and unchallenged. I don't write things here that I haven't talked plainly about with others. I just want to encourage us, and hopefully increase our hope in God.

Just to remind everyone, I, myself, have left the Village before. Twice, but the last (most recent) time it was by my choice (the first time, I was asked to leave, but that's another story for another time). I know everyone is an individual case, so I'm only giving my perspective. When I chose to leave, I was confused. I just wasn't sure if God was here, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to live this life. There were situations where I saw the leaders handle people (including myself) and I either disagreed with the way they did it, or I didn't understand. What's important isn't that I disagreed or didn't understand, the important thing is, I didn't go talk to them. Even in cases where I tried, I didn't persist until I felt satisfied. I had a lot of already-formed opinions about people that were based on rumors and unfair assumptions, and instead of talking to those people with an open heart, I was looking at them through my own filters of suspicion and distrust. Of course, that made them seem even more suspicious and untrustworthy. In the end, I didn't want to live in a place like this unless I was sure it was what I wanted. I didn't want to torture everyone, including myself, by sitting on the fence. So I left.

There's a phrase that's been thrown around a lot in the last few years - "God is everywhere." This is true for the most part. But what isn't true is this: "God's Body is everywhere." That is blatantly untrue. I don't mean this in an elitist way, and I'm not saying those who live in RCV are the only ones who are going to be saved. But it is definitely true that just because a group of people meet at a church and call themselves Christians, does NOT mean they're part of God's real Body in the earth.

I felt the separation when I left. I felt it instantly. At first, I just ignored it, because I was having a crisis of faith (*insert eye roll here*) and didn't know if I even wanted God or corporate life anyway. I went back to all my little vices and works of the flesh, to see if they still gave me the "fix" they used to give me. Like a drug addict. Only they didn't work anymore. It took more, to achieve less of a "high."

I won't bore you with all the details, because they don't matter. The point is, it took me less than 2 months to realize that I do, in fact, believe in God - and desire Him very much - and that I'd made a horrible mistake. It occurred to me that maybe I'd missed my chance to be with Him, in the corporate sense. I did know, even then, that God was with me, but I remember the realization that I also needed to be with His Body, who were painfully absent since I'd left. I felt the loss.

And God, via the leaders, did let me come back. I've never been the same. My heart is "settled," and I'm truly here. A lot of those issues I'd had before leaving, have been cleared up - but only later, because I could listen and believe with an open heart, did God give me the eyes to see.

I have learned something of the largeness of God. I've learned that even if the leaders, the women, me, my friends, or anyone else, mis-handle or flat out blow it with someone, God is big enough to use that experience for His purposes. It's possible that the leaders don't handle everyone perfectly. (I don't handle everyone perfectly either, and neither does anyone I know.) But I could see, after the fact, that God used even their mistakes to 1) teach me something, or 2) aggravate me enough to force me to talk to them and clear things up (which would lead to a closer relationship with them), 3) get me to trust in someone other than myself...and 4) myriads of other things I'm not even aware of.

Because of all this, I have hope for the people who are leaving or left. If they want God, He will use their experiences to bring Him to Himself. It might not look the way we want or imagine or hope. We may never see them again. We don't know what God has for them, we don't know where their journey will take them. But we can give to people freely, and love without holding back, because if it's done in Jesus' Name, it will never be in vain. There were times when I was away from the Village, when God would bring something to mind that my friends had told me, or tried to tell me, though I didn't get it at the time. It wasn't until later that I understood what they meant, or even what they were talking about. God has the power to call something to life inside us, that was buried (dead) for a long time, so long that the giver had given up on it.

I've also continually been thinking about the verse in Hebrews 12 that says something to the effect of, Once again God will shake both the heavens and the earth, so that what can be shaken, will be, and what cannot be shaken, shall remain. I can marvel at the ability of mankind to deceive themselves, but I can't judge too harshly, because there was a time when I was one of the ones who couldn't handle the shaking, and didn't remain. But God used it to build something in me. Something, I pray, that is eternal.

I am convicted though, about how I talk about those people. It's easy to fall into conversations that are mean, or mocking, or derisive of people. I don't mean to, and my words can come out more judgmental than I really feel inside. May God remind me that I have been one of them, and there's no place for my self-righteousness. If you haven't been one of them, may God remind you that not everyone has had the privilege of their life being built on a solid foundation.

I love you all.

God is fun!

2011-06-22T21:46:00.008-05:00

I don't know about you, but I feel a renewal sweeping through our community. I know I feel it in myself. Since I can't speak for everyone, let me tell you about God's most recent work in my life...

God has been after me for awhile, about certain things I've gotten in the habit of doing that eat up lots of my free time. Most recently it's been computer games. I didn't have a Facebook account for a long time; just didn't have any use for it. Early this year I reactivated my account, and by the end of February I got involved in a game called Farmville. Blame it on my circumstances, blame it on my personality, blame it on bad time management skills or lack of self-discipline, blame it on whatever you want, but I got hooked on Farmville a little too much. It all sounds really stupid to explain the game to someone - it's basically a virtual farm that you can decorate and farm, with time-sensitive quests and goals and rewards - but it became one of those time-suckers that started pulling me in further and further. I never got to the point of neglecting my daughter or shirking my adult responsibilities, but a lot of my free time was being consumed with playing this game. It didn't start out that way. It was a gradual process birthed out of boredom, uncertainty about what I should be doing at any given moment, selfishness ("I just want to veg for a little while"), and laziness when it came to finding where God wanted me to be plugged in. Anyway, after awhile, I felt God asking me to give it up. I resisted. It's so easy to find a million excuses. And God was a gentleman. The conversation always went:

GOD: "Do you want more of Me, badly enough yet? Are you ready to give up the computer games?"

ME: "Hmm...not yet."

GOD: "Okay. Take your time. If you want Me, it'll have to cost you something. But take your time. Whenever you're ready, I'll be waiting."

It would take more than the scope of this blog post to describe how I finally became ready, so I'll leave that for another time. To cut to the chase, several weeks ago, I was finally ready. I deleted all my Farmville friends, blocked the game, and closed my Facebook account. I felt so free! I was very anxious about what I would do with my time, once I didn't have a plan to fall back on, but God has been so faithful to show up for me! Here is what I'm finding out:

God is fun!

And so is freedom!

By the way, this is not a rant against Facebook or Farmville. I don't think they are evil, and I don't think if you participate in either one that it means anything whatsoever about you. Just thought I should put a little disclaimer in here and this seemed like a good spot. :)

Anyway, there've been so many things I've always wanted to do, that I never bothered pursuing. I figured I'd "get to it", you know, "one of these days." Finally I realized that if I didn't start actively pursuing goals, my life was going to pass me by while I sat passively on the sidelines and waited for something to happen.

So I'm having a lot of fun learning new things. And it seems to me like God has blessed me with the ability to pick things up faster than I'd have thought I would (old dog, new tricks kind of thinking, I guess). Here's what He's having me learn how to do, instead of waste my life on the computer:

learning to play the guitar for the very first time, and it's going well, and I'm loving it!
learning how to braid hair in lots of different ways (hey, I know lots of long[ish]-haired people, and I have a daughter that will [one day, hopefully] have hair) :)
learning a little bit of basic first aid - bandaging wounds, poultices, etc.
reading Pride and Prejudice for the first time...not really significant but it's still educational (sort of)
learning how to clean...(*gulp*)
learning how to follow a schedule (not my strong point) so that I can work part-time

These are just a few things I can think of. I'm wanting to start reading the Bible again too. I feel a little reluctant about that because it's hard to read it without it putting me back into some of the old religious mindsets. But I want to try it anyway. I'm also excited to help harvest produce on the farm right here on our land.

Confession: I'm not a very "fun" person. I don't know what "fun" is. I'm playful (um...sometimes), but I don't really know how to play. And I know how to look like I'm having fun, and even act like it, but few things are really, truly "fun" to me...I get tangled up in trying to figure out what fun is, exactly. But the things I listed are a step closer. I think what I'm learning is that doing God's will is fun. Even when it's painful, because we have to deny the flesh, it's still fun. So that's where I'm at, right now. Cheers!

Overhaul

2011-06-21T18:23:00.003-05:00

Hey everyone...are you still out there?

If you haven't noticed, I deleted all my old posts. Yep, ALL of them. I want a fresh start. Really, I thought about making a new blog. But I don't want to. I hate "dead blogs," so why would I create yet one more?

Anyway, I just want to make some changes in my writing; the subjects, the style, everything. When I go back and read my old posts, most of them are annoying because I'm too formal when I write. I don't talk that way (at least, I hope not!). Why do I write that way? Well, I'll tell you: I was taught to write that way. Thank you, public school system, for teaching me to make everything I write sound like the first (read: crappy) draft of my college thesis. (writing skills = FAIL.)

So I'm starting over, but staying here. I hope to practice sharpening things up when I write. It's more fun to read when the paragraph (or even the sentence) is not a million characters long, and peppered with commas and hyphens and complexities. Bleh!

I'd also like to TRY to lighten up a little. I get thoughty when I write, and while that's fine, there's no reason to make everything so HEAVY... Even thoughty-ness can be funny. And heck, I have a toddler now. Tell me they don't give you GREAT blog material to work with!!!

So, that's the plan. I'll be back soon. (not sure if that's a threat or a promise) :)