Thursday, April 22, 2010

Some realizations

These realizations of mine are pretty basic, but I'm pretty much a complete idiot, so it takes me a long time to get things and as previously mentioned I forget things. Perhaps you can relate.

1.) God is bigger than my sin.
He can own my sin. He can pick it up, crumple it into a ball, throw it in the trash and not miss. He hates it. So while I think stupid things like, "Oh well, I will try to get over this on my own and then I will pray about it" or "I can't stop doing this so why do anything," I am turning away from my only hope because in reality, I alone can do nothing about my sin. I should be running to Him because He has chosen to forgive me and all my sin. He knows everything. He knows I am going to mess up. He loves me still. It is inconceivable and baffling, but it's True. By His power and grace, and not without time and persistence, I can and will overcome sin. I long for the day when my body will be made new and I won't have to come to Him time and time again saying, "Father, forgive me." There will be a day when I can no longer do anything but praise His name.

2.) Persistence
So last Sunday I went to church with my friend and we sang that old worship song we have all heard ten thousand million times, "You Are My All in All" and when we came to the part were it said:
Seeking You as a precious jewel,
Lord to give up I'd be a fool.
I realized, "Hey, that is so true and amazing. Why would I ever want to stop pursuing this love?" What is more amazing is that He doesn't give up on us. He seeks us and calls us to repentance daily.

3.) Repenting is difficult.

At the time it is much easier to wallow in sinful subsistence, but why in the heck would I want to do that? I don't know either, but I do.

"For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do --- this I keep on doing."

BUT

"But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Paul often likened the Christian life to a race. I kinda started running, which is really some fast walking with a little bit of jogging tossed in, and it is hard. My muscles burn and it gets hard to breathe. I want to quit before I even get started. I want to do the bare minimum rather than give it my all. Towards the end though, after I get through the shin splits and get into the music, I enjoy the exercise. I feel like I accomplished something. I even want to go at it again. It is all worth it.

Turning away from sin isn't easy. Giving things up isn't easy. Overcoming addictions isn't easy. There is pain involved. Failure and relapse will be a temptation if not a reality. But, oh, how it is worth it. He is worth anything and everything. And it's not like you're ever alone in this fight, Helen, so stop complaining and get on with living a life that shines with Him.

Ok, this was officially a rant, but a good rant.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Grrr...

Sometimes I hate myself, the attitudes I have, the thoughts I think, and the things I do.

Sometimes I think I don't hate them enough.

Good night.

Friday, April 16, 2010

New Header!!!

Like the new header? I lOVE it! This is mostly due to the fact that I designed it myself! To give credit where credit is due, I got the froggy image from http://graphicsfairy.blogspot.com/ and the adorable typewriter is from shabbyblogs.com!

(P.S. I'm sorry for abusing my privilege to use exclamation marks, but I was really excited about this!)

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

And you think to yourself now I could be wrong,but I might have just stolen this scene from a song.

I haven't written poetry in forever. That makes me sad. I have heart scars and bad attitudes and a cold. Sometimes not knowing is better than knowing what is only a possibility and maybe just a childish dream. I haven't had my phone for three days now and I won't get it until tomorrow afternoon. I miss my phone more than I would like to admit, even though I use it more as an alarm clock than a device to communicate with people. My grandma is having a pacemaker put in tomorrow. I am wasting time right now. I have a paper due at 10:50 A.M. Thursday. It has to be six to eight pages. I hate writing papers. I tried to pick an interesting topic, but nothing interests me when I procrastinate. I even spent a lot of time calculating how bad I could do on the paper. If I didn't do the paper, the highest I could get in the class is a 75. If I make at least a 73 on the paper and make at least a 96 on the remaining tests, I can still get an A in the class. I don't like college. I don't like school. Actually, I am just complaining because I am lazy. I really love learning and reading and figuring things out and just knowing things. That, and the facts that I love kids and I am slightly off in the cranium, is why I want to be a teacher. I have a cold that makes me want to lay down in bed and not get back up. My nose is runny and my throat is sore and I still go to class. In high school I would have stayed home for like two days, but I am being a responsible adult because I know that in order to miss the days to go to Census training to become an enumerator, I have to have otherwise near perfect attendance. I used to hate typing. I can type well, but until recently I would much rather use a pen and pretty paper to vomit out words even if they were just as pointless as these. Now I am just taking up cyberspace. After I write the research paper mentioned above, I have to write one for my Introduction to Fiction class, which seems much less daunting because it isn't due for two more weeks. I ate way too many Sun Chips in the past two hours. Like probably half a bag. I want to go lay outside on the grass all alone and look up at the stars and dream dreams about how I think my life could be. Then I would go and be amazed at how it actually turned out.

Monday, April 5, 2010

Today this hit me in the face like a frying pan

Sometimes when I get bored in class I will doodle the "Love Chapter" from 1st Corinthians in fancy letters instead of taking notes. Today I started to do this and I didn't get past the first phrase. I wrote "Love is patient" and then the full reality of what that means at this point in my life hit me.



At that moment I realized exactly how true and beautiful and breath-taking that one little phrase is.

"Love is patient."

Love waits.

I am waiting. And I had always seen waiting as something you do before you get married, but until today I had never seen waiting as a part of being in love. In the act of waiting, I am also loving. It is beautiful to wait, to not give up. It is also difficult and sometimes heartbreaking, but "we can rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope doesn't disappoint us because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us" (Romans 5:3-5).

And I can hope because love never fails.

(P.S. I went through a lot of traumatic stuff trying to move that picture from my phone to here, so don't judge its poor quality.)