The darkness is all over outside but in my apartment there are snowflakes flashing, two electric candles in the window, tree lights are on, and candles burning giving off scents of cinnamon and gingerbread. Two days before Christmas and as I look out from my ninth floor window I can see snow coming down but at least I can see the street lights. My apartment has finally warmed up from the south wind and I sit here wrapped in my prayer shawl and watching Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas.
Today I went and got my books for next semester The Family in A Psychological Crisis. I downloaded all the info I need. This is my last semester and I pray I can handle it. The stress from last semester about put me over the edge and I am so grateful for the next two weeks off. My plan is to repair my psyche.
What I will be doing on Christmas is still unknown to me. Mike, my son and Kary, my daughter-in-law will be in Hesperia with her folks, Sam and Brian are in Indiana and I can't get down there yet and Tim is in Muskegon but is banned from Hartford Terrace because he has spent 14 nights with me when I was recovering from knee surgery. Tomorrow I will be taking Pam shopping and then we are going to watch "It's A Wonderful Life" in the evening.
I did get a chance over Thanksgiving break to read "The Shack" and I really enjoyed it. I have made notes and underlined in the book. A couple of things really stuck out to me and I am praying that they sink into my brain and heart.
One is that maybe I don't trust God because I didn't believe He is good. I know He is good and I see Him being good to others, and I see his goodness but deep with in my heart I disn't believe He would be good to me. I had perceived and believed that if I were the last person on earth He would not have died for me because He would have found that intrinsic character flaw that would have canceled the deal. Whether it would have been the fact that I was female, my eyes were blue, too tall, too big, or I looked like my dad, got C's on a report card, or was too self-righteous, or too hard to live with or something else would have canceled the deal. Yet He did die for me and He dearly loves me. I have been meditating on how much He loves me and letting the Holy Spirit work on destroying the lie and replace it with my Father's truth. He dearly loves me.
Another thing that resounded in me was the fact that God does not want to justify my life but redeem it. Wow!
Here I have been working so hard for grace and it has been here all along and poured out on my life. My life has been of one performance after the other but it never impressed my Father because He loved me as He was knitting me together in my mother's womb. Now I am learning to live with this unconditional love and trusting Him with and in my life.
This truth is very new for me to revel in and allow the Spirit to imprint it in my being but I am letting Him and asking the Spirit to help my unbelief because Father says, " For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for wholeness and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Jeremiah 29:11 (ESV)" He knows the plans He has for me and I was OK with that but then I realized I don't have to have a Plan B because the Father will take care of that but I must admit I freaked when I realized Father does not have a Plan B and that it is Plan A all the way. Yeaks!!!!!!!!!!!!! For this check list, a place for everything and everything in its place, every blank filled person that was a panic attack waiting to happen! I am doing better now with that truth but this will take me a little bit to totally digest.
Redemption born in Bethlehem to a teenage mother and a stepfather carpenter that only shepherds came to visit whose first bed was a mangter filled with hay that animals had been eating out of during the day. Yeah I can relate to that.
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