Double Portion

I went to a New Year's Eve service at the church of two of my friends last night. It is a church that practises annointing with oil more often than mine does and as we prayed in the new year, the deacons of the church and their wives went around and annointed everyone with oil and prayed over them. One lady annointed me and then, about five minutes later, a man came from the other side of my row and annointed me again. All I could think was, "I want a double portion of Your blessing for 2011, Lord." Is that selfish? I don't know. I already feel like He has blessed me immensely in 2010 and my cup is overflowing with gratitude but I am still praying for some big things and so I asked Him for a double portion. I have written a song called "Reckless Belief" and that is what I want to have. I have seen God do things that looked a bit hopeless to me as I was praying for them and so I know that He still wants believers to pray prayers in reckless abandon and innocent faith. God wants us to expect him to do things that look impossible to us so that HE can get the glory when it happens. Lord, I need a double portion of your power for this next year. I want you to answer my prayers in big ways and I ask it only because I KNOW that You want to grant it. You delight to answer the impossible looking prayers of Your children!

Weathering the Emotional Storms

Weathering the Emotional Storms

Until recently, I was content to write songs in hope that someday one of three talented CD writing relatives would record one of my songs or someday I will be able to record them myself.  I was content to homeschool my kids, teach one morning a week in a co-op, teach my preschool “Music and Motion” classes and develop my “Urge to Purge” pizza parties business. 

I can be a bit choleric and as such, I read that cholerics are most likely to go into business for themselves.  I think in my case it is because I am very creative and I am bad at keeping jobs long term because I have a terrible memory and don’t deal well in very stressful, fast-paced situations.

Always, my creative months come and go.  My motivation reaches highs and then swoops viciously down to low valleys.  In the fall I always have lofty plans and sweepingly ambitious intentions then January comes and I get depressed because I think I set my sights too high in the fall and surely I was crazy to assume I could accomplish all that I thought I could.  My best laid marketing plans come crashing down around me and I can barely get out of bed in the morning to teach my kids.  I let them teach themselves mostly.  My oldest is always eager to teach my second youngest and if I want to call the whole thing off twice in one week for a movie day, no one complains.

Then February rolls around and that is one of my favourite months of the year, generally.  I plan a Valentine’s party for my homeschool group, and usually a live theatre date with my mother for my birthday.  Also, my husband proposed to me in February so we usually get a dinner date in.

The rest of the year goes somewhat on schedule with maybe a week or two of depression in the spring because I am bored with homeschooling and then I have a birthday party to plan for my youngest in April, so I have reason to be creative again until about the end of May when I start to feeling burnt out from homeschooling and I wish June away in plans for a fun-filled summer (in which I always end up having more schooling to finish up because my personality is such that I can’t stand it if my kids don’t do 99% percent of the pages in their books).

Well, everything goes out the window in July.  I think I don’t do well with free time.  I get depressed – crazy, eh?  I like to be busy.  If I sit around too much and don’t have routine, I get depressed and then when I am depressed, I get lazier and dislike myself and the cycle continues.  By August, I snap out of it and wonder why I wasted so much time in July when I could have been quilting and accomplishing things I don’t have time for in the schoolyear.

Such is my life.  The pattern is fairly well-established.  The fall comes again and I start waking up between 3:30 – 5:00 everyday with my mind bursting with business ideas and schooling opportunities.  I love the fall and Christmas and February.  I hate January and July.

Maybe you can’t put your finger on a pattern the same way I can but maybe you too struggle with depression at times in your life.  Maybe you too feel like the routine is dragging you down and you can’t get your head above water.  Being a housewife or a busy career woman can leave you feeling empty at the end of the day at times and you feel like you go through regular “mid-year life crisises.”

In my early years of marriage, I was unbearable to live with during my highs.  I would stress too easily and snap too soon.  I used to say I had “spaz mode” and “sloth mode” and my husband far preferred my “sloth mode.”  I have learned that I can’t always expect him to be on the same motivational page as I am and that I would rather have a peaceful relationship than the house finished in a week.

In the early years of my marriage, I had times when I was sure if I just ended it all by running away from my family (heaven forbid), my mother or my mother-in-law could do a better job raising my kids.  The enemy hit hard and I gave in emotionally to his attacks.  He was ruthless and I didn’t fight him off as I should have.  I believed his lies that my family would be better off without me but I never had the nerve to run away because I knew I would be just as miserable on the run.  I have never lived in the world but I have seen enough people that have and Christians that have given up on living the Christian life to know that they are not happier because of it.  Once you have tasted the fulfilled life in Christ, there does not seem to be any place that you can run to that could bring satisfaction and meaning.

In recent years, when the enemy comes to attack, I might give in and stay home from church if my husband is away flying or have a week where I read a couple Christian novels in bed while my kids are schooling themselves but I have learned to say, “Get thee behind me Satan” a lot better than I used to.  In the back of my head I know, that I will feel better in a week or two and so I try to grin and bear it for the sake of my kids.  In fact, I have had times when I tried to generate some happy endorphins by laughing and acting crazy with my kids despite how I felt.  My kids think I have gone over the deep end but I find it can actually work.  I have had times when my temper was explosive with my husband so I have stayed away from him and coaxed myself to believe again that he is a good man (because he most certainly is) and that I am irrationally just focusing on small things that bug me and blowing them out of proportion.  In fact, I get out my emotional pump and pump for all my might to make the tiny infraction inflate to zeppelin-sized proportions and then use a large rifle to explode the whole thing to smithereens.

So I tell you all this, young moms, and older wives, young, single women and older widows or divorcees, that life is full of mountains and valleys (for some the plateaus are rather scarce) but we have a source of strength and hope at our finger tips that we can access as Christians that has far more power than the Enemy has to point his bony, clawing finger at you and tell you that you are useless and not needed.  Christ died for us so that we can die to our selfish introspection.  If we can put the needs of others above our own thoughts of self-pity, than we have a chance of surviving the lows and the manic highs.  Since Jesus Christ had victory over the grave, we have available to us victory over our emotions and the devastating effects that negative emotions can have on our lives. 

I recently lost a cousin to suicide and it was a surprise to all his family.  He was the type of guy to “suck it up” and just go on with his responsibilities but I don’t think he took his woes to Jesus.  I think that he let the Enemy finally persuade him that in the long run his wife and kids would do better without him.  I have been there.  I have thought those thoughts but always my Jesus became the “lifter of my head.”  I can’t thank Him enough for always being patient with my negativity and waiting out my craziness until I came crawling back to him and saying, “Thank you, Jesus, that You have tossed my sins into the deepest sea and you remember them no more.”  You are good!  I am blessed!”

New Years Resolutions and Dark Days

I picked five simple ones this year and my husband stealthily added three more to my list.  I have a few prayers for 2011 that I feel confident the Lord will answer because He has been in the business of answering a few of my prayers in 2010.  It was either 2009 or 2008 when I felt that, despite all my weekly fasting and praying, God wasn't hearing my prayers.  Bad things were happening to Christians all around me and I felt like an agnostic.  "God is real but He isn't intervening in this awful world," I thought.  I wanted to believe that when I died, I would just go to the grave and exist no more, just so that I wouldn't have to believe there is a hell and people I care about are headed there because they don't believe in Jesus.  Well, that may have been the darkest valley I ever went through in my Christian life.  I didn't want to go to my current church any more and I felt like praying was futile but I kept telling myself that "This is the life I have chosen.  I WILL confess in my heart that the Bible is true and, despite my very real doubts, I will tell my children and all around me that GOD IS GOOD even though I feel like He is uninvolved down here!
 
Well, the Lord honoured my mental tenacity.  He saw my weak and faltering faith and he "lifted my head!"  I can now say that I love going to my church.  He has answered a few of my prayers and I am more excited about my Christian life and the possibilities ahead of me than I may have ever been since my idealistic teenage years.  I feel that there are big things around the corner for Aaron and I and our kids and I know that, even if there aren't, and things continue much as they are now, that GOD IS STILL GOOD and I am seeing him at work in the lives of people around me in great ways.  The valley I experienced a couple of years ago was very bleak and at the time I shared my traitorous thoughts with no one.  My husband had no idea just how bleak my outlook was and I tried to keep a smile on my face despite my inner turmoil.  I am very confident that my Lord did not hold it against me.  In fact, He has blessed me for "keeping the faith" even when I felt like I had no faith left to keep.  HE IS GOOD!  I will bless His name at ALL TIMES!  "His praise shall continually be on my mouth!" (Psalm 34:1)

Snowy Grass

As I look out my large family room window, Brampton only has a small layer of snow and the grass is peaking through.  In London, Ontario, most of my family was pummelled with snow for a couple weeks.  My nieces and nephews that aren't homeschooled rejoiced at having three snow days in a row and then the next week, there were more storms.  For once, London had more snow than Muskoka.  I love snow and I homeschool so I don't have to drive every day, so I was a little jealous of London.  In the GTA, we rarely get crazy amounts of snow.  But as I think about the grass attempting to poke it's head out of the white layer of fluffiness, I think about how some Christians deadness is still showing even though they have the white robe of Christ's righteousness.  They go to church every Sunday and say most of the right things but they are really dead underneath.  They are protected somewhat by the white layer of Christ's righteousness but it is evident to all around them that they are really just dead grass.  "The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand forever."  I think it is wonderful how God can make the dead of winter pretty with snow.  Dead Christians can still look somewhat appealing to those in the world whose lives are a mess.  Dead Christians can have decent marriages and decent family lives but there is no zeal, no passion, no zest to see God do amazing things with their lives.  I feel sorry for Christians without vision.  Going to church every week but not seeing God change the lives of people who you come into contact with is fine but boring.  I want to be used by God to encourage others that are discouraged with life.  I want others to see my zeal and faith and be inspired by it.  God wants to use us for great things.  We have only to ask, beg, pray, and go out there to help the lonely and hurting.

God use us, we pray!!

Better than a Thousand Elsewhere

"For a day is Your house is better than a thousand." Psalm 84:10  We can find salvation, direction, protection, restoration, sanctification, satisfaction, revelation, inspiration, motivation,  and preservation. (William McDowell).

I have found all that true in my life.  Any day that I have ignored His presence, my spirit has been unsettled, my stomach in knots sometimes, my ability to think clearly distorted, and my emotions raw.  I need Him every hour and my every hour needs to have Him starring in it.

Everywhere I turn, somedays, it seems I see people wallowing in sorrow and often it is because they have tried to snuff out God's presence in their lives or they have never sought it in the first place.  I think of a former friend who is suffering in alcoholic despair.  I think of a marriage that is on the rocks, a family that is steel reeling from an unexpected suicide, a couple friends that are still grieving the loss of marriages of over thirty years, young children being raised by their grandmother after the murder of their mother by her fiance.  I think of another marriage that ended in a grievious and shocking way to those around them.  Those are just the cases that have touched me personally in the last year or two and my social sphere isn't that huge (if you don't count Facebook).

Lord, we live in a world fraught with sadness, so we need Your Presence all the more to give us hope and contentment and purpose.  Please comfort my sad friends and for those that don't know you, shine Your beautiful light into their lives and illuminate their darkness, I pray.  You are Hope and Life and Light and in You there is no darkness at all.  Praise Your name!

Music to my Soul

I have finally discovered my two biggest addictions - Facebook and music.  I need a new CD at least every other month.  I am up early most mornings and I cherish the time to play music without my children awake to talk over it.  It is good for my mental health.  I love to buy clothes, new or gently used, but given a choice, I would buy a new CD.  I write music too.  I have written over 30 songs and done an amateur recording of 12 of my songs at Revelation Sound studio.  Someday I hope to produce a CD in collaboration with 3 or 4 other musicians in my life but in the mean time, I like to support local artists like my sister and my brother-in-law and a guy named Jacob Moon from the KW area.  I love to write music and I know that a lot of my songs have a similar feel to them but I have a talented brother-in-law that I am hoping can jazz a few of them up for me.  I am going to soon be taking improv piano lessons from my favourite pianist EVER (after Bach and Mendelsohn and Beethoven- okay I like Tchaikovsky too).  I am so excited to learn from him.  If I learn to play half as well as him, I will have improved a great deal.  I was at a concert at his church the other day and he must have had to work or something because he showed up for just the last half hour of a two and a half hour concert and so someone else was playing the keyboards but when he finally sat down to the keyboards, I thought, "Okay, NOW, the musician has entered the house, people!"  Anyway, I haven't even asked him his last name yet.  He leads the choir at his church and I sing with them once a week but don't perform with them as I go to another church.  I have a musical admiration and envy of him.  I want to play like that!!  Well, I am so glad for the gift of music.  It has little practical purpose in life except to lift our spirits and draw us closer to God.  It's emotive power is astounding.  Sometimes we can't sit still listening to it.  Other times, we can't stop the tears that it evokes.  Thank you, Lord, for the blessing of beautiful music!

Counting my Blessings

My girls woke me at 2:30 this a.m. and sleep eluded me thereafter.  I went to my computer, checked my gmail and FB, made tea and decided that I should start a blog page as I had a couple years ago but forgot the name of.  I love my life.  Christmas is coming and I am baking and doing a little shopping and buying little things to make my house look cuter since it is on the market privately.  I don't expect much interest as we have not posted pictures on kijiji yet and have not put an ad on Craig's list or Facebook but it is fun to think about showing the house more in the new year after we have painted one or two more rooms.  My husband flies and is getting busier so the hour commute to Kitchener will start to seem like a bit much as he is going into the office more these days.  I like Brampton just fine.  I have a great neighbour two doors down.  I belong to a great church that is tiny but has started growing lately.  I belong to a great little choir within walking distance at the Pentecostal church nearby and I am friends with two pretty special single girls in my complex.  As well I help lead a homeschooling support group in which I get to come up with creative ideas and be inspired by other creative, dedicated moms.  One of my favourite of the moms just lives three minutes away by car.  She has been widowed for almost two years now and she is busy, energetic and very stable in her desire to keep homeschooling her teen and two preteens even if it means losing their house and living in an apartment to make it work financially.  I admire her courage and determination and her hospitable spirit.  The Bible recommends that Christians take care of widows but I see her reaching out to other people and being the encourager when she could be the discouraged one looking for handouts.  If I ever suffer loss as she has, I hope to do it so graciously and humbly.  She is an inspiration.

So all that to say, that I have a wonderful life.  I have an 11 year old and a 9 year old that make me very proud with their desire for spiritual things.  I have a 7 year old and a 3 year old that keep my life from getting boring and add to the cute factor in my home.  I have a husband that flies planes (very cool), plays guitar, harmonizes with me when I sing, and supports my music habit (because it is an addiction).  He has been patient with me through manic highs and lows and has taught me a lot about how to get along with people when I didn't grow up always being the smoothest, most sedate person around.  When I don't like myself, he always has good to say about me and he tells me constantly that his friends think I am great because he tells them I am.  I am blessed.  If I don't ever move to Kitchener and get a bungalow with a bigger, fenced in back yard, I will still consider myself blessed.  If I lose the spacious townhouse I have now, I will still consider myself blessed to have the husband I have, the kids I have, and the God that I serve.

Wow, it is good to be me!