Our family trip to Dallas was fantastic.
It was also extremely exhausting. Welcome to traveling with narcolepsy and children.
Today is actually the third day back for us- I'm only just now getting back into not collapsing into a heap and letting out tears after getting the kids off to school in the morning.
Life can be exhausting at times. Social media sure doesn't help that situation. Neither does winter depression.
I have a life goal of eventually working into a position where I can travel to warmer locations every winter. Fingers-crossed it works out for me! I really love to dream, but now its time to buckle down and study God's word.
In Women of the Word, she quotes a pleasure-researcher, Paul Bloom in explaining how do you get more pleasure out of life? Study more. By learning about a thing, you learn to enjoy it more. I wonder if I learned more about Utah's winter weather if I might enjoy it more? Not related to coming to know God, perhaps, but very relevant to my current struggle....
Psalm 16:11 Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.
As I come to know the Lord, His history, His acts, I can find more heart-felt pleasure in the Lord and what He is doing in my life and in the lives of my children, parents, all who are around me!
In the section: God Before Me, Mind Before Heart, I learned the importance of putting myself on the back-burner so to speak as I focus first on God. By focusing first on God, I will learn what He wants me to know, feel His love for me, and be directed and nourished in the correct order.
Here are the final questions for reflection, and my answers:
1. I have seen the scriptures as a book about me when I expect to be emotionally moved and comforted by every verse of scripture I read. This isn't really realistic. It definitely has caused unneeded doubt in my heart. When I see the scriptures as being about God, and I focus on using my mind to learn about Him, it becomes like other study topics, something I can dive deeply in with enjoyment, not expecting to feel or be moved by any particular idea.
2. I totally fall into measuring the strength of my faith by how I feel! This is why depression has been so very painful for me. It deadens all feeling and makes me worry that I don't have faith, that I don't love God, even that I don't love my husband or children! The danger of trusting feelings is that there is much that is temporal and not under my control that goes into these feelings.
3. I love the idea that if I love playing the piano, I will make a disciplined study of it, it will become an important part of my life. By focusing on coming to know God and making a disciplined study of Him, I can find a closure relationship with Him, just as I come to know my spouse through getting to know him deeply.
4. I have been taught and have believed some pretty nasty things about God and my relationship with Him- namely that in order to be worthy of being saved in the celestial kingdom I had to be as near to being perfect as made no difference. Doubt and questioning were shamed, rules were made up to keep me "far from the line" of actual sin. You were allowed to sin in not praying deeply enough or not studying scripture deeply enough, but to leave the church for any reason opened you to public shaming and gossip. The idea that through the process of doubting and questioning, I could find pleasure in turning to and learning about God is a little mind-blowing to me. I guess I still, deep down, struggle with the belief that righteousness equates to suffering. You must attend church every single Sunday, even on vacation with family. You must shun things you find pleasure in, because that could lead to carnality. I have been very well taught how to fear God, and to call that fear love. I have never been taught to take pleasure in my relationship with God. It sounds pleasing, and maybe even makes my learning heart nervous.
Here is my epiphany:
For perhaps my whole life, I have believed that there was something fundamentally wrong with me because I was taught that I should:
Serve the Lord with fear, Ps. 2:11.
Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, Ps. 111:10.
Fear the Lord and depart from evil, Prov. 3:7.
It shall be well with them that fear God, Eccl. 8:12.
Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, Philip. 2:12.
I am starting to consider that fearing God, and trying to work out my own salvation in fear and trembling are perhaps idols I have been taught to worship. They are idols of self-castigation. They are idols that make me believe I am capable of saving myself with enough fear of God.
Instead, I wonder if I shouldn't learn from John that:
15 Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.
16 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.
17 Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.
18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
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