Back on Track

I was going to write this last night, but I went on my baby tirade and didn't want to overwhelm you.

So I'm in the predicament that I have now read two chapters and need to report on them both...and I can't skip one because they are both awesome..........decisions decisions.

Ok, I'll start from Chapter 6 and see how far I get.

Romans 6:2
"We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?"

Here's what I love about Paul - he talks like me.  He's wordy and not concise and he makes you read his material over and over trying to get what he's saying.  But then he has these moments of perfection (that part I haven't mastered!).  He goes on and on in chapter 5 about how grace is increased where sin is increased, but he doesn't let you rationalize it out.  He then right away stops you from your train of thought and says "no, that does not mean keep sinning so you can have more grace...but good effort".

I just love the matter-of-factness of the statement.  We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?  I feel like he probably wrote "duh" at the end of that and erased it because it wasn't cool to say yet.

I struggle with this process.  Not with the idea of wanting to sin more, but of what it means to not live in sin.   Technically, I have died to sin...but I continue to sin.  I am by no means perfect and anyone who has spent more than 5 minutes with me can attest to this...loudly.  The point is Galatians (that's right, I am cross-referencing...I think that means I just graduated!).
Galatians 2:20-21, that is, one of my all-time favorite verses:
"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.  The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.  I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing"

I don't know if this is coming together...probably because I'm still trying to wrap my little brain around it all.  This whole process is one that has baffled me, but if in my salvation I died to myself so that Christ might live in me, then it is the grace of God that covers my sins.  I cannot live in sin, because Christ lives in me and He conquered sin.

I think it means that at the end of the day, I sin when I turn away from the grace offered to me, when I reject the leading of the Spirit, when I ignore Christ's direction in me.  Even still, when I return to the grace freely offered me in my salvation, I've been covered because I've already claimed my eternal life.  Sin does not have a hold on my life because it has been conquered by the One who should consume my being.  It's when I give sin the foothold that I get into trouble.

See, Paul and I talk the same.

Ultimately, the point is that if Christ is living in me, then I have the power residing in my very soul to conquer the temptations that arise every day.  "For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace" Romans 6:14.

It becomes a choice, I think.  I have access to grace and strength and resurrecting power...but I am not always willing to tap into that power when I find myself in desperate need of that very thing.  I can choose to offer my body to sin OR I can offer myself to God as an instrument for righteousness....which kind of sounds awesome-er.

"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." v.23

Grace, strength, resurrecting power, AND eternal life?  Sounds like a pretty sweet deal when pitted against that whole slave to sin and death thing.  And that's the point of the grace thing...my sins are great, but Christ has paid the debt and has consumed my soul with Himself such that I can tap into the awesomeness that is a resurrected Savior.

oh baby, oh baby...

Recently in my attempt to be an adult I had the "why do you want to have a baby" conversation.

I don't know why I feel like I need to hash this out on my blog, but with everyone I know popping out babies right now (quite literally, almost everyone), I think it's an apt topic of conversation.

The answer is I don't have an answer.  Mostly, I have every plan to be so completely in love with my husband that the idea of taking the very best of him and smashing it together with the very best of me in some perfect little buddle of joy makes me super happy.  And while I occasionally have to fight off the paralyzing fear of being a bad mom or having crazy psycho children or having some scary thing happen during my pregnancy...I realize that the risk of all of those things is worth it.

I am looking forward to having kiddos who bring joy into my house.  I'm looking forward to soccer games, and family Christmas, and playing with the cousins.  I want to tie dye socks and shirts and plant flowers (that I will surely kill) and play board games and sing songs and do homework together...

Granted, I have committed a huge chunk of my life to work...and I'm kind of ok with that.  I grew up with two parents on call for their jobs, but they always made it to our big events.  I recently got cornered for accidentally somehow insinuating that I wanted to have kids so that I have something to do with my husband.  Of course, that's not what I meant.  I want kids so that I have someone to take care of and someone to invest my life in. 

For how much I love my baby cousins and my new little nephew, I cannot imagine how much more I could love my own baby to raise and care for and do the mom thing.  And while I still demand a jet ski while I can still play on it...I think I'm ok with the guaranteed messy house for the sake of loving my kids unconditionally.

But to be clear...no babies anytime soon.  I would like to be settled in life before I start trying to take care of someone else.

That's today's musings...

She Stole My Happily Ever After

I saw a picture.  I wasn't supposed to...but it popped up before I had a chance to delete the newsfeed.

She wore my dress.

I mean, come on.  Adding insult to injury while I start having to look for a new dream guy and a new dream gown and a new ever after.  Once again, I get to redefine my perfection and start over from scratch...while other people get to keep my perfection and call it their own.

I guess the blessing and the curse is I have to start over and I can't keep building on the plans I had because...well...they were stolen.

I suppose it's perfect...I mean, Ryan Adams has a song for both of them.  Which, I think I now have to stop listening to him because I'm pretty sure he is making me sadder as this whole process continues.

The problem is, I didn't even get a chance to find out for sure.  I just got this glimpse of perfect and I thought I was being perfect and I wanted it all to end perfectly.  I had this hope...I had this joy.  I had plans again.  My life kind of started making sense again.

I convinced myself that Together came back because I showed up...maybe it was because she did.

Colbie was getting me through this a little better than Ryan is.  At least with Colbie I was sleeping.

And now tomorrow I have to pretend to know something about pulmonology and probably make a complete fool of myself at mksap board review...

life is sometimes too hard.  and sometimes i think i have earned life to be less hard...and maybe that thought alone is why i don't.  and while my dinner date tonight with an old friend was refreshing and inspiring and encouraging...it still doesn't take the sting out of everything else.

I mean, she took my name.  The one I practiced writing in my notebook like a freaking 12 year old.

I would like some man to see enough value in me.  It would really only take one...but every passing day convinces me that there must be something wrong with me that no one has alerted me to because people's lives just don't go this way in real life.  it's too unfair for real life to be like this.

My Heart's Asleep

Romans 4:20-21
"Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what He promised."

I couldn't even give an opener to top that.

And I don't have much to say.  This verse today just stuck out at me during my reading.  I'm starting to realize that I haven't really read through the Bible yet at this point in my life.  Fortunately, my attempt at getting through the Old Testament over the last year has at least given me a jumping point for some of the historical references of the New Testament.

I guess I can say this.  Today was harder than the last few days.  I think the full weight of everything that's happened in the last month is really starting to set in.  I'm having a hard time figuring out what to do with it.  I can't decide if I'm mad, sad, lonely, embarrassed, relieved...  Right now, I'm mostly feeling kind of numb.  You know that feeling when you sit on your foot for too long and you lose all feeling to it...but then about the time the numbness starts wearing off, it starts to hurt more and more until finally the blood flow is restored and it's like nothing happened?

I think it's like that.  The pressure is finally off and the blood is starting to rush back to the places that have been numb and confused for 2 weeks...and now I'm starting to feel the pain of the situation.  What scares me is that I'm just now starting to appreciate how I feel, which I think means the rest of this week will likely be difficult.

So I needed this verse.  I needed the reminder that God has made promises to me.  I'm not sure what all those promises are, but I know that He promises to love me unconditionally.  Even in my numbness.  Even when I'm angry at the universe for all the people I've lost from my life this year.  Even when I find myself crying driving home from work without fully understanding why.  Even when I'm terrified for the decisions I have to make in the coming months.

Even then, He made promises.

I'm going to work on being more like Abraham.  Rather than scoffing at the impossibilities of being the father of great nations, having a child at such an old age with a barren wife...Abraham "did not waver through unbelief regarding the promises of God".

I need to stop wavering.  I need to stop questioning my place in this world or the plant hat's been laid out.  I just need to settle in and enjoy the ride while my faith reminds me that God's already made His promises and "that God [has] power to do what he [has] promised".  Honestly, I don't know all the promises God has in store for me...and while I would love to say He has promised me some amazing husband and children and a long life and a guaranteed career...I can't say it honestly.  I don't know.  And it does scare me to wonder if the promises I'm clinging to are just my own fantasies and I'm not looking for His direction anymore.  I don't know what to do with that.  God doesn't come down from the sky to the mountaintop in a cloud to write on a tablet what He would have me do...but He does have His Spirit stir in my heart and that's probably what I should be going on.

I have a lot of figuring out to do, which I'm sure I say all the time...but it's true.  I want to have faith in the promises, but part of that faith is believing in the promises that have yet to be revealed.  And that is going to take some pretty significant effort in the faith department for me.

Welcome To Rome

I realized that I am very good at letting the world around me interrupt my willingness and ability to continue to delve into the Scriptures.  I feel like that probably contributes to my relationships tanking very swiftly.  You know what they say about building up your relationship with Christ and then seeing who's next to you or something.  Not that at this point I'm really ready or willing to throw my heart into something new...I think if there's anything I've learned in the last year it is that my intuition is totally off and I am failing miserably at that "guarding your heart" catchphrase stuff.

However, I have made the decision to live purposefully.  Not like they say to in that book I've never read...so I guess it could be like that and I don't know.  I guess what I mean is that I want to start living my life in such a way that it invites the relationships and the people who will help me grow as a Christian and as an individual.  I don't think it's going to necessarily include any pruning of relationships on my part...but I guess I don't know yet.

Basically, I'm realizing that I'm sitting around waiting on life.  And that's not really the kind of girl I am.  I don't want to wait for life to come find me, I want to go out and make life.  In my reflections with close friends regarding the recent events of my life, I think it's time I just stop what I'm doing and start over from some starting place.  I don't think I've done anything particularly wrong recently, but I do think that I've given away a lot of myself without getting much in return...and I don't know that I'm convinced that's the way to really DO life.

So this friend and I have decided that rather than running ourselves into the ground looking for love in all the wrong places, maybe we need to start at a place where we've already found love.  We're trying to hold each other accountable to working through some Scriptures in an effort to be reminded of the grace and faithfulness that we have been so desperately lacking...or not taking advantage of.  And what better place to find grace than starting in Romans?

I'm not sure what this will look like in the blogging realm.  I definitely want to chronical some of this discovery stuff, but I'm not sure exactly how to go about doing it.  Chances are there will be several attempted styles happening in the coming week while I try to figure out how to go about really digging my heels in again like I did in my xanga days.

Today was the beginning of the next journey.  And it was pretty much a giant slap in the face to start with Romans.  The thing that really stuck out to me today was Romans 2:28-29
"A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical.  No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code."

A guess it's a good way to start the journey over...to be reminded that it's not good enough for me to smile along and say all the right things if my heart isn't in the right place.  The whole first couple of chapters in this book talk about how it's not good enough to point your finger at every one else.  It's not ok to call someone out for lusting or stealing when you're doing all the same things.  Paul says that "because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself".  Ouch.  Let's let that one sink in because, let's be real, stubborn and unrepentant are kind of how I roll more often than not.

The promise is in Chapter 3...well, one of the promises.  Paul tells us that "a righteousness from God, apart from the law" exists through Jesus Christ, and it's available to all who believe.  Romans 3:23 "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God".

I remember going to camp back in the day and this speaker came out and said one day "You're going to sin, there's nothing you can do to stop it, so it's ok".  I did not take that well.  At the time, I didn't understand how sin was ok.  I didn't believe that it was impossible for us to be like Christ.  I felt like you shouldn't just give people the green light to sin just because they'll never be any better anyway.  And I still kind of feel that way, but I also recognize that sense of failure that comes with missing the mark repeatedly.  Sometimes we just need the reminder that all have sinned and fall short of the glory, but the grace of God through Jesus Christ covers that gap for us.

I looked up the definition of grace because I think I still don't always understand what it is.  Grace is "an unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification"

So the journey begins...recognizing how desperately I need the divine assistance that I have done nothing to deserve in my hope for regeneration.

So I Have This Philosophy...

I actually have no less than a million of them, but they're usually all about relationships.  I share them when the time comes to share them, but few people have been privy to my wise musing about life, love and other mysteries.  Until today...but first, the finale to the saga.

So this Saturday I will reach a milestone in my life.  This Sat, for the first time, a boy I have liked or dated or quasi-dated or whathaveyou, is getting married.  Like, married married.  I tend to think very few people have experienced this.  I don't know why, but today I am quite sure I am the only person ever to feel this way.  How do I feel, you ask?  Well...if I could put it into words I wouldn't blog about it.  I blog because I lack the ability to be concise and eloquent.  I blog because I can't watch you tune me out.

I have no idea how I feel about it.  Probably because I feel a lot of different ways about it and I'm trying very hard to fight off those feelings.  I would feel better if this was a relationship from years ago that ended when I made out with someone hotter...you know, me on top kind of stuff (out of the gutter, people).  It didn't.  It ended because I moved...not because feelings had changed.  I guess the most surprising thing about it is that I thought the feelings I had at the time were mutual and with a fast approaching wedding date and some very sappy status messages, I have to believe that they just weren't.  Which is ok.

Kind of.

I feel like I did the rebound phase of my life.  I had the long relationship that ended and then limped along in limbo until one day in a hellstorm of fire and fury, it ended horrifically and made me cry through family Christmas.  That took awhile to recover from...and it took a couple of rebound type dates to help me get through that recovery phase.  So I know what that relationship looks like.  I know how people treat the rebound or the less-than-serious relationship because I've both been the rebounder and reboundee.

This relationship wasn't so much like that.  However, because there is officially no chance of it happening I have to agree with the wise words of my current muse, Colbie, "it's my fault for all the kisses we had by the sea.  i am scared i won't forget you and that's why i need to let you go so hoy me voy"

In the process of moving on, I like to reflect on what I've learned about myself in a relationship.  I figure if my ultimate goal is to be a wicked awesome wifey (which, believe me, I'm getting so much practice in there's no chance I won't be), then reflection is key.  This time around I learned that I am not actually crazy.  I also learned that I have every capacity to act like a grown up and have grown up conversations.  In the same token, I learned that I'm kind of a cool chick even in my complete ridiculousness and I should be proud to showcase me as me.  I also learned that I still struggle with my self-conscious issues anad it is still acting as a barrier at times to me really being myself or allowing myself to be comfortable in situations...so I need to work on that.

Ultimately though, I'm pretty proud of this last little relationship.  In fact, I'm walking out of it not completely devastated and feeling like some miserable failure at relationships.  I really believe I did everything right.  I think I asked the right questions, was true to myself, put in the right amount of effort without being horribly overbearing, and worked very hard at letting him have his life recognizing that the relationship wasn't in a serious place and I didn't need to go poking my nose around.  Now, granted, there are some questions I wish I had asked after the fact, but at the same time, I think I'm glad I didn't.

Occasionally the thought crosses my mind that if I had met him 3 or 4 years ago we would totally end up together...but then I think about the person I was 3 or 4 years ago and there's probably not much chance.  So much of my growing up has been in the last few years.  The last year especially has been the time I've learned to see value in myself and believe I have something to offer a potential partner.

I don't really believe the timing issue excuse.  I think you make your own timing in a relationship.  If you want something to happen, you make the effort to make it happen.  You can substitute another cliche there like "go out there and fight for what you want" or "anything worth having is worth fighting for."  Whatever phrasology you prefer, the end result is the same: I'm not convinced he was ready for me in the first place.  And I completely respect that because I would not have been ready for him back in January when I was reeling from my ended relationship.  I think the timing was actually perfect, he just didn't see the value in the effort.

Which is ok because the effort would have been significant with all the traveling and decision making I have to do in the coming months.  In reality, it was probably unfair of me to rope him into it all.  At the end of the day, though, as hard as I've tried, I cannot convince myself that I was just some rebound girl to him.  I think he really did care, and I do believe he meant what he said.  And maybe that's my naive girl side coming out, but I think he really did just get a better offer.  Or maybe, to say it better, I think he didn't realize his heart was still yearning for her until she came along and gave it the option.

I can't blame her.  He was pretty awesome.  And she trained him to be that way, so she must be a pretty cool chick herself.  She really should get to reap the rewards of her hardwork on that man.  And while I'm not sure I will be able to face her or him anytime soon, I hope someday we do get the chance to make an attempt at being friends.

I peppered the philosophies around for you, so go look for them.  Obviously, you'll want to write them down, frame them and place them in inspirational places like your bathroom where all great wisdom dwells.

Oh, and I'm still aiming for that Thanksgiving 2010 wedding date so...any takers?

Good to be Home

I forgot how much I missed my apartment. There's nothing more refreshing than coming into a house full of my flowers, my dining room table, my ducks shower curtain...I don't think I realized how much I missed it. My couch still fits me perfectly for napping. It is so good to be home.

Baby Cayden came this weekend. He is a gorgeous baby boy who will undoubtedly be as stubborn as his dad. I remember growing up how much fun I would have with my aunts and uncles at various holidays and I cannot wait to hang with this little dude all the time. I even bought him a toy story sippy cup so that we could bond faster :) He is beautiful: dark brown curly hair and dark gray eyes. I am so excited to be an aunt to this little snuggle bug I cannot even begin to express it.

I feel like I have so much more to say, but I'm not quite ready with the words. I thought if I sat down to type they would just come, but that doesn't seem to be the case. We'll leave today short and sweet with expectations for the next big blog just around the corner...