I am Meant to Be an Oregonian...

 When I started this blog I meant it to be honest to goodness, real life, encouragement with a focus on Christ.  I know this blog and writing is gonna go to dust someday.  And I am really bad at sticking with too many things for very long.  Not to mention the fact that there are a billion out there, but hopefully it serves a greater purpose for the one person who reads it and needs it. Often times I feel like when I write I am trying to encourage myself, but I get too excited about what God is revealing to me and it becomes preachy or too deep.  Don't get me wrong, I end up there because I love Deep.  But as much as I love it I am often shallow in my life.  So instead of being a conduit of the living water I am often a runoff from the rain.  

Today Ron and I went on a walk in the park.  We live in a small town that has started to adopt some big town things and ideas...well, at least some bigger town things and ideas.  the park is nice and one place where change is happening slowly.  The old park benches are decaying, new ones are in different places. Most of the old play equipment has been changed out with the new fangled, ergonomical, plastic stuff. I realize how much my husband and I sound like old farts with how we miss the old stuff that really has little impact on us.  

As we walked around the park I still really found some joy in the fact that for being almost July it was overcast and cool.  Everything is super green right now.  It made me start to think about growing up in Portland and working for a year down town and never going to any of the parks in that part of town, though I rode the bus there every day.  I cannot even remember what anything on my 6 block walk from the bus stop looked like.  
Now, to be fair, I was 18 at the time and pretty self absorbed.  I had appreciated sights, sounds, and nature as a kid, but as a teen it lost the magic for me in the wake of boys, malls, and self.  Also, I remember always being scared of people I didn't know and avoided eye contact and confrontation.  
I am plenty beyond that now.  Two grown kids and two half way there.  Married 22 years this week.  I realized that I still take very little time to actually suck in the beauty and appreciation for the stuff God created without my input.  I didn't know God back then, but what are my excuses now?  I am often still absorbed by what ever is currently in my life.  So boys, malls, and self have given away to children, second-hand stores, and the husband.  All the same in different clothing.  
Most of all I came to realize that I never appreciated those things when it was raining.  Nothing like being a native Oregonian and hating the rain.  

And yes, I know there are parts of Oregon that are not that stereotypical. But I have always lived in fitting places.  I have lovely seasonally affected emotions and when it is gray, wet, and cold I tend to be a real drip myself.  I know it is not going to kill me and I am not going to drown in it, but I just don't like it.  There, I said it.  I don't like the rain.  But, I want to like it...
I have heard all the Pollyanna positive points to the rain.  And I know them in my heart.  God's way of watering the earth.  So as I walked around the park I appreciated the greenness, but I had no desire to get wet and was glad that the rain held off for the walk.  I did enjoy really taking in the sound of the large creek, the wind in the trees, children laughing, the soft touch of Ron's hand in mine.  The smell of the flowers and green damp earth. It was nice.  But I am still not sure if when another 25 years pass if I will even remember anything about it.  I still come home and realize there is a water leak, kids fighting, housework to be done.  I wonder if the fleet moment of joy in the park will make a stand out memory, as nice as it was.  

I love my God, but I do not appreciate everything that he has surrounded me with in life.  I realize it all has purpose.  And it serves a greater purpose that I do not even have the brains to comprehend.  But I don't like some stuff.  I find myself having to pray so verses I learned from the bible to help me not just want to call myself a lost cause. (Yes, that is being dramatic.) And really in a world where people who don't have faith believe reality is what you make it I would be (and was) feeling hopeless and miserable.  But God gave me some insight into the fact that there are bigger things and bigger meaning to things in the last 15 years.  
I know I am not perfect and I don't ever intend on achieving anything close in this life.  I still stave off some of those same self focused fatalistic emotions.  I am still a sufferer of the weakness and frailties of humanity.  But I am gradually learning to spend more time, than not, now focusing on the meaningful things and appreciating God's handiwork more than mans.  Maybe I am getting old. Maybe a spark of wisdom is creeping in my life.  Or maybe God is just whispering louder so I can hear him touching my life.  I don't know exactly. This is what I can hear Him say...This is the way you felt, 

Ecclesiastes 3:1- 22 (NIV)
A Time for Everything

There is a time for everything,
    and a season for every activity under the heavens:
 a time to be born and a time to die,
    a time to plant and a time to uproot, 
 a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,
 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
    a time to mourn and a time to dance,
 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
 a time to search and a time to give up,
    a time to keep and a time to throw away,
 a time to tear and a time to mend,
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,
 a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace.
What do workers gain from their toil?  I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race.  He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live.  That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God.  I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.
 Whatever is has already been, 
    and what will be has been before; 
    and God will call the past to account.
And I saw something else under the sun:
In the place of judgment—wickedness was there,
    in the place of justice—wickedness was there.
I said to myself,
“God will bring into judgment 
    both the righteous and the wicked,
for there will be a time for every activity,
    a time to judge every deed.”
I also said to myself, “As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals.  Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?”
 So I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work, because that is their lot. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them?

...But now you and others have a greater view of things because of the hope we have made possible through Jesus and the truth we live by.  The writer in Ecclesiastes got a lot of it right, but like so many of us he filled in the blanks with his own limited knowledge and the evil one found a way of making him feel hopeless.  Unlike him, we know that the human soul has a great hope!

Romans 5:1-2 (NIV)
Peace and Hope

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God

My hope for you is that you too find some encouragement in what God has to say and what I share.  
Blessings!

What is Your Path?

How often do you wonder what your path is?  Is it really your path or is it God's path and you just have to figure that out?  I wondered that for years.  Often feeling like it was my path when things were going good and it was a sabotaged plan or God's plan when things were just going wrong; when bad things happened, when it didn't go my way, etc.
I have been a Christian for only 15ish years.  When I think about that I feel like a baby.  For that matter at 42 years (my birthday is on Tuesday) I am told by all the older people at church that I am a baby!  Never would I have dreamed at 20 that anyone would say that when I had doubled my years.  But we are all babies compared to someone else.  Someone who is wiser, who has lived longer, who has experienced more, who has survived much or given up much.
And one of the things God has been kind to me on is learning much in such a short time.  Important things that the world may not value, but things I value because they have changed my life and made it the life I should have dreamed of.  How many of you can say you are living the life, the one that makes you wish for no other?  I can.
It took a change in everything.  My perspective, my value system, my maturity, and my relationship with God.  I know that if you would have told me that 20 years ago I would have told you to get lost.  My dreams were very textbook American and materialistic.  But in the last 15 years God has done something in me.

Psalm 51:10

Create in me a pure heart, O God,

    and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

This was not my prayer to start with when God found me.  It was a prayer of deliverance, but not for my heart.  But I didn't realize that it was something I needed. Felt pretty self righteous about my self and my life. My wants and needs were important, to me.  God needed me to live it out some and see what it held for me to be so self focused.  Conflict, loneliness, confusion, anxiety, unstable relationships, etc.

It is when I could no longer be faithful to God and faithful to my idea of how things were suppose to go that God had my full attention as to where he wanted me to go. I truly saw Him when he saved my soul, but I did not see Him relationally for who he was until I got to know Him.  It would have happened faster if I had not been looking for what I thought he should be, but once you get to know someone who they are will be revealed to you if you give time and energy to it.  One day you suddenly realize that something has changed and you suddenly get stuff.  Your heart is changing and you are growing to reflect the character of God more as time goes by.  In no way do you get perfect.  In no way do you stop making human decisions and mess up time to time.  But a pure heart is not perfect, it just has pure intentions and leans the right way.  That makes you stronger and makes your way smoother in life.  There are still just as many bumps in the road, but somehow they just don't feel as bad as they did before. 

Matthew 5:8. 

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

For me I start seeing God's hand in everything, and yet never had to assume that he was calling all the shots.  He just knows what is gonna be and sometimes helps things to go the way they are suppose to, to serve a purpose we cannot even imagine.  Suddenly your eyes open up to all that follows your heart being for God.

  

Psalm 33:21

In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name.

 Psalm 13:5

But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation.

Proverbs 3:5

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;

Lean not on your own understanding...I didn't get it when I thought I did and now that I realize I don't I think I may be closer than I ever have been.  It all falls back to something Jesus said when an 'important' man asked him what the Greatest commandment in God's law was. ( Matthew 22:34-40)

Jesus replied: 

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.

Read it time and time again.  Thought I felt it, but as long as I was loving me more than God and others I wasn't getting it.  When I realized that everything hinged on this, and this was God's will for me I suddenly realized that this had to be a choice I made.  The funny thing is I thought it was going to be about obedience, but it ended up being about a change in heart and realizing that God could put that in me once I opened myself up to it.  Now, everything is making sense.  And I am loving people for who they are, created in God's image.  I realize that we are all imperfect and in need and I am here to serve a greater function than making myself happy.  The happiest I have felt is right now.  Not because my life is perfect, but because my heart is in the right place.  I hope that in this you found encouragement and a way to make your own personal relationship with God deeper.

Well, I will have to write more later.  Only 4 days post-surgery and I am tired.  Blessed, grateful, thankful, but tired :)  

Blessings,

Stephanie