When relationships bite!

As many of you know we have recently taken in a kitten. I am not a cat person but my husband has always wanted a cat and never was able to due to apartment rules. So we have a house now and I figured maybe if got a kitten I would warm up to him. We picked him in the litter because he seemed sophisticated. We named him Edgar Allen Poe and he has become a good friend to me over a lonely summer. Last night I had a dream that I was with a girlfriend in the woods and we saw a cat. I did not understand why she didn't like the cute thing. She told me she never let him get close and didn't like him around. But the cat was coming toward me and I reached out my hand to rub it's neck. But as he touched me I became frightened by the look of him and a shudder went up my spine as the cat did not stop at my arms length. He kept moving toward my face and neck and started making a growling hissing sound. HE WAS GOING TO BITE AND IT WAS TOO LATE TO PREVENT IT! That is where I woke up gasping and rolling backwards in the bed trying to escape. lol. I laid there awake at 5am thinking about my dream. I don't remember dreams often and asked the Lord what it may mean for my heart. I realized that in the dream, all I wanted from that cat was to be loved by it. I think often in relationships in our life we are just longing to be loved so deeply. So often as we move closer into a relationship we want to feel close (it's how God made us). But many times when we soften our guard to let someone in we are making ourselves vulnerable to a "bite". There is nothing worse than letting someone close and then finding that there is just pain and hurt that is reciprocated. I have felt that pain recently by someone close to me and it leaves me with such a deep ache. I feel like I am carrying it around with me all the time and letting it consume my thoughts. I find anger and bitterness that just sits in me until it erupts onto my husband or some poor stranger at Walmart :). Someone once told me that you can't expect balloons to grow from trees. And there are some people who are just not capable of giving us what we need from a relationship. That doesn't mean we should banish them from our lives or refuse to forgive. It just means we must try to not expect as much and realize that we may never get what we want or need from them. I thank God that he has shown me his safe, unfailing love through Christ. He will never fail and his love is "new every morning" (Lamentations 3). And through him I can continue to love those who hurt me (in healthy ways). I can give and give again because Christ did that for me at Calvary...even though I didn't deserve it. And you know what? It is so worth it when we take those risks and they turn out to be surprisingly awesome in our life. So here is to not giving up!

Just keep swimming

I was swimming through Lee Lake with a few friends and the waves were getting quite large as we cut back up the other side of the lake. I was concentrating on staying with my friend who seemed to be pushing it at a very fast pace. My mind was focused on one thing...swimming. There are so few times am just focused on one thing. So often I can even stress myself out trying to mentally juggle all the many things that need to get done to keep our life and home running smoothly. I think about work, appointments, making lunch for my husband and setting up coffee for the next day. I stress about family situations and how life still doesn't seem to be landing where I thought it would. I can wind myself up in knots in my mind just thinking of too many things at once. But as I swam today I only thought about what I was doing in the present and I wondered...what if my mind were this one tracked all the time? Life would feel a little easier that is for sure. Walking with the Lord is a lot like swimming. He helps me find that focused place of calm and reminds me that it will all be ok....and today I seem to hear him whisper, "Just keep swimming"!

Those Who Wait on the Lord....

So how many times have we read that verse from Isaiah 40:31?  "Those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength.  They will rise up on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint".  I mean really? How many times have we quoted it to each other?  How many times have we prayed it?  But still we may not feel our strength being renewed.  Instead, we may feel weary, anxious, depressed, alone but we rarely feel a new kind of strength within us. 

  Do you ever hear things like this and wonder, "Well, then why don't I feel stronger"? 

  Sometimes with passages like this we have heard a million times I think we can start to pick and choose what we see or hear.  We can make it out to be something it is not.  It is the difference between two strange words: Isogesis and Exogesis.  Isogesis is defined out of reading "into" the scripture.  Exogesis is defined by reading "out of" the scripture.  And what if there is treasure there to see if we dig a little deeper?  We need to try to pull out the meaning and not read into it what we wish that it said. 

  This passage doesn't say we will all feel strong all the time.  It doesn't say we will have renewed strength in every circumstance.  It is not a free pass to ask God (like a genie in a bottle) to give us strength.  It is a promise from him but it is conditional (as are many of his promises). 

  The passage actually says, "Those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength".  The ASV changes the word wait to "hope in the Lord".  Maybe we are overwhelmed because we want God's strength but we don't want to wait on his will?  Maybe we desire his peace but we don't want to hope in him while remaining under tough circumstances.  We will become drained when we are putting our hope in "things to change" and not in "hoping in the Lord". 

  It seems it is and may always be a pattern of God's will to keep me under difficult circumstances for long amounts of time.  Maybe God knows I  need the practice at putting my hope in  him.  I so quickly want to get out of a bad situation or ask God to miraculously fix it.  But it is part of our sanctification to "remain under" our trials as they produce perseverance in us.

   I was just doing the butterfly stroke this morning at swim practice.  The coach told us we would focus on it today, which many of us thought meant he would talk and we wouldn't have to swim much.  But instead, he kept sending us back and forth doing the same drills....over, and over and over until it was ingrained in us to do it without thinking.  "Go again" he would say.  We would come up panting, out of breath and begging for mercy.  "Good job! Do it again," he repeated.  By the end, I had little left to give but I knew I had the tools to improve my stroke.  It was boring, it was not fun and I sometimes questioned what good it was doing.  But it made me better!

  Jesus is making us better!  He wants to conform us to his own character and prepare us to stand before the Father "without fault and with great joy" (Jd. 1:24).  How he accomplishes that is up to him but it may often mean teaching us to stay in circumstances we would rather that he remove.  If we really want our strength renewed like the eagles than we must put our hope and full trust in Him daily.

  And what a difference it makes friends!  Try it.  Go ahead, get in  your Bibles and ask God to help you wait on him and hope in him alone.  He will not dissappoint.