judgment

One of the things that I hope I am getting better at, and I can only give God credit for, is being judgmental of others. After losing Joshua, one of the things that started to come into focus for me was how others' each have their own story. Each person I come across each day of my life, they have a story. God created that person. He allowed them to make it to birth and allowed them to wake up this morning. They have a mother and a father, those relationships might be good, and they might be bad. That person is loved and cherished by someone (and if they're not, then they have a whole different story). They have things that have brought them joy and pain and things that have shaped who they are and the decisions they have made. Even in the midst of trying to not judge others, I still recognize that not everyone is going to be my friend and of course we are all sinful. But recognizing the sin in them is kind of like recognizing it in myself; I am sinful, yet I hope my sin is not what others see first when they see me.

This exercise in trying to escape judging others goes beyond just "not thinking bad things" about another person; it is opening my eyes to the whole story of each person's life. Questions about people's decisions to have children, or the decision to have more children, or children very close in age used to be things I didn't really think fell into the category of judgment, but I see it differently now. The comments: "Wow! Another baby? They sure are going to be close in age!", "Really, you don't want anymore kids?", "So, when are y'all going to have kids?". Those questions and others like them aren't intended to cast judgment on the person, but even unknowingly, they do. I am humbled by seeing the inside of how things that happen to you can transform your views on life and the decisions you make.

More often than not, I don't know that family's story. The family who struggled for years with infertility or multiple miscarriages just can't bring themselves to go through that again to have another child. Or perhaps medically, they cannot. That family who financially just cannot sustain another child. That family who is expecting another child when they have a three month old at home, they were told they couldn't have children. That family with six kids and a crazy house, God's blessing came with each one of those children. People's decisions are their own and based on a lot more than my eyes looking from the outside in can see. My questions, even unknowingly, are filled with my own perspectives and judgment.

I'm not always good at avoiding my natural inclination to make a judgment on sight or sound of a person, but I am working on it and I am praying that God will continue to strip away my natural inclinations and replace them with His perspective.

I read this today and thought about all of the judgments we all carry around, and I thought I would share the link to a mother's story.

Grace and peace.

Faith and love

I started writing this post by trying to summarize what I read here. I can't do it justice, so I will say just click on the link to read a beautiful story of faith and love.

purpose and adversity

The devotionals in Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest over the past week or so have really hit home with me.  I've read that same daily devotional for years off and on and they never get old , and often some speak right into my life, right as I need to hear it.  

His writings lately have been about God's purpose in your life and how that purpose plays out in adversity.  In the July 29th entry Chambers writes about clouds as the sufferings or providential circumstances that seem to contradict the sovereignty of God.  He goes on to say that the clouds actually help to teach us to walk by faith; if there were no clouds, we wouldn't have need of faith.  Clouds, he writes, are what we find at the feet of the Lord.  The clouds may make you doubt and may make you question, but ultimately, they can lead to a simple and child-like faith that He calls all of us to.  I've written a lot of about how the trial of losing Joshua has stripped away so many things, it puts life and faith and God and myself into perspective.  While I still can't say that I wouldn't change things if I could, I have come to see and appreciate what this particular set of clouds has brought into my life - or perhaps, more accurately, what those clouds have taken away.  

In the August 3rd devotion Chambers writes that for Jesus, Jerusalem was the culmination of God the Father's will in His life.  Think about that.  The place where he would be venerated, celebrated, and then mocked, crucified, and buried was the culmination of Jesus' life and ministry!  I had to let that sink in, because, honestly, that's not where I want my faith in God to lead me.  I want it to lead me to something comfortable and fulfilling for me personally.  In the midst of all that Jesus went through, if you are looking through human eyes, He had every reason to proclaim that God wasn't good - I mean look at what God led His own Son into!  Jesus' life at the Cross had to look like an utter failure to the world.  He was an unmarried, childless, itinerant rabbi who was being killed for proclaiming that He was the Son of God.  Jesus cried, He dreaded it, He asked for there to be another way, and when there wasn't, He trusted in God's purpose and not His own.  "The greatest thing to remember is that we go up to Jerusalem to fulfill God's purpose and not our own."  What in your life looks like tragedy or defeat, that could be the very thing that God is using to fulfill His purpose in you and in the world.  That tragedy, that circumstance, that trial could well be your Jerusalem.  

What in the world could God be doing with all the tragedy and sorrow that this world brings?  I honestly don't know, but I trust that he is redeeming what looks to be failure and what looks to contradict His goodness.  

Grace and peace.  

control

I started this post last Tuesday and I couldn't really get my thoughts together for it and had to keep coming back to it.  I'm still not sure if I made any sense, perhaps it's a work in progress, much like me!   

I am a typical "oldest child", type A personality, driven, rule-following, self-reliant. You name those prototypical oldest child stereotypes and I fit most of them. I like to be in control (and maybe I'm just humoring myself, if so, friends speak up - but for those of you who don't know me or don't know me well, I don't think I'm "controlling", but I like to know what's going to happen). In school I hated group projects because not everyone cared. about making an "A" and I'd usually end up doing most of the work, just to be sure it was done "right". In hindsight so much of that sounds selfish and self-centered, but there you have it - oh, and another thing about me is that I am a horrible liar.

The type A, oldest child in me has been on quite a journey these past few months. While I have always known and "trusted" that God is in control, that belief and trust has been put to the test in a huge and unavoidable way. I have been wrestling with questions like, What is faith? What is trust? What do they look like on a daily basis?  

I can't remember where I heard this, but someone recently said that trust doesn't mean the road ahead or the road behind is all okay, it just means that I promise to walk with you no matter what that road brings; trusting that God will walk next me, has walked next to me each step of the road I'm on.    

 We had our 20 week ultrasound this past Monday and the weekend leading up to it was filled with a spectrum of feelings, from excitement and anticipation to fear and anxiety.  The wait for that appointment was enough to make me sick.  That oldest child in me who wants to know how it's all going to go down and to prepare and be in control was lost!  I had absolutely no say or control over how things would go in that office Monday morning.  As the ultrasound began, my fears were taken over by my joy at seeing a beautiful heart beating, an active baby moving around just like her big sister did on her 20 week ultrasound 3 years ago, and all the measurements coming out "normal".  Worry and anxiety don't change the way things turn out though, so why do I continually return to those feelings?  My worry didn't make the ultrasound go well or cause us to get good news on Monday.  

The more I think about it, the more I see that anxiety as my last ditch effort to control the outcome of something I consciously know that I have zero control over.  Obviously, I need to stay healthy and eat right, take my vitamins, give myself my shots, etc., but so much of what could go wrong is out of my hands.  

God, help me to loosen that grip of control, to live in the light, to see my blessings, to trust and hope in you - to be less of me and more of Jesus.  

I hope that I don't constantly sound like all I think about is the negative, because that is certainly not the case, but these questions plague me and writing about them somehow helps me to make sense of it.