Nesting

Many, many times over the course of my life, I have rared back (not sure this is a real term, but it's one we use in the South) and pitched myself headlong into my faith, with the express intention of giving Christ my all. Of selling out to Him lock, stock and barrel. This is a significant step for someone like me, who was ADD before it was cool. I have what I affectionately refer to as "motivational phasing." In short, I go AWOL from certain areas of my life while going OCD bananas in others. I scrap-booked for two or three years in manic fashion, then trailed off to pursue other things. I will steadfastly clean house (for a few minutes) then fall back into domestic lethargy while reading an entire book in days.

It is not as if I have EVER walked away from my faith in Jesus. It's just that following Him requires a single-mindedness of devotion that I have never mastered. At the rate I am going, I am going to be carried across the finish line, bowing low in thanksgiving that Jesus died for my (MANY) habitual sins. I have and do pay the heavy price of broken fellowship with Jesus, a life filled with fears that make daily duties sometimes feel like a walk through a fun-house of mirrors, and a continual sense that I am A) missing the mark, B) unworthy of fellowship with the very people who would help me to grow and C) wandering around in the mist and fog of someone else's destiny, not my own. And at my current weight (35 lbs over what I'd like), I guess I could say it's like a scene from "Gorillas in the Mist."

After reading a beautiful book by one of my favorite Christian writers, I started to make some meaningful changes in my spiritual life a few weeks ago. I was sleeping at night for the first time in recent memory. Satan immediately attacked, leaving my little fortress in tatters. He brought irresistible distractions, in the form of struggles involving my children and conflicts with other family members. He has studied me for a very long time. He knows what flings me into the wind. I suppose, instead of concentrating on my weaknesses and failures, I should get back up. Just get back up, take the Lord's hand, and move on. After all, following the Lord is NOT about me. It's about Jesus. If my life reflects Christ, it is CERTAINLY not to my credit. His overwhelming grace and mercy and the power of His Holy Spirit bring about any and all good in me and in my actions. He is the center, and I need to make my nest in Him.

Crooked Seams, Dusty Dreams!

My day began at 3:30 a.m., when I awoke from a glorious, generous slumber of approximately four hours. Give or take. I was thrilled that I could not go back to sleep, especially given the fact that I have only around ninety-five million things to do today.

An hour-and-a-half  (and a cup of coffee) later, I see that someone has posted something in Spanish on my favorite author's page. I burst into tears (whether from nostalgia, longing or sleep deprivation I simply cannot say) at the fact that, after all of these intellectually indolent years as a housewife, I can still read Spanish fairly well. Sometimes I get a nudge that I am not operating in my areas of giftedness. We know that nurturing, while maybe not a gift, is a passion of mine (hence the being home even though my kids have twice my shoe size), but cleaning and organization are not. We know that cooking, while necessary, has never captured my complete fascination to the degree that perhaps it should. Let's move on to sewing.

I decided that, since my husband said that his grandmothers had quilts about the house and the sight of them raised nostalgia, I would go "all-in" and learn how to do it! Hooray! I am going to challenge myself! I am going to make some amazing quilts. Gary will arise and call me "Blessed"!!!

Never mind that I had never flipped the on switch on a sewing machine. Never mind that I have notoriously rotten hand-eye coordination. Never mind any of that! Signed up for a beginner machine quilting class.

The very first three-hour class was a continuing series of disasters for me. We were given little pieces of fabric to practice sewing a straight seam on. At the slightest tap of my foot, my machine seemed to take off like a runaway train, sucking my little slips of fabric in at a bizarre angle. I felt as if my dignity had been yanked under the needle as well, only to emerge on the other side with the pitiful riverbed-crooked seams, as tattered and pockmarked as a bullet-ridden outlaw in the old West. I never got the practice seams done right. Had to move right on to my actual quilt strips. Fun, fun for everyone. At one point my fabric bunched up along the seam. Someone fixed my tension by removing my bobbin (which looked like an obscure part belonging to a one-hundred-year-old Buick) and tinkering with it. Another time there was a tangle of threads and I had no way to accurately report what I had done to cause said tangle. It was as mysterious as the ways of a goat family on a lonely Himalayan mountaintop.

After what felt like seven thousand tries, I had about half of the day's work done. "What you don't get done in class will be homework," announced the instructor. I immediately felt gongs of doom going off in my heart. It was as if someone had said "At this times next week you will be publicly executed." If I could not do the work in class without constant supervision, how on earth would I ever get it done at home?

I cried tears of humiliation, frustration and disappointment on the way to the middle school to pick up my child. I am not giving up learning to machine quilt. I like the idea of challenging myself, of strengthening a part of my brain that is apparently as unused as a frat house library. I am, however, going to try to find some balance.

I know that language is my greatest strength. I am praying for opportunities to strengthen those muscles, as they will allow me to run faster and leap higher with regards to God's plan for the rest of my life than the underlying craft muscles. It will be fun, exhilarating even, to produce a quilt from such a mammoth effort. It will be gratifying and affirming to write things that people read, or to teach others to do so, and to understand that my efforts will be rewarded with a God-inspired destiny. I don't want to be guilty of pursuing my own way and in so doing leaving my obvious gifts on a shelf to collect the dust of regret.

POST SCRIPT:  I dropped out of quilting class. Seems the mammoth effort equaled more misery than exhilaration. I get cold chills every time I drive past the quilting shop.

Seeking

This has shaped up to be the "SUMMER OF NO BLOGGING"!! However, my favorite post since beginning this online journal was inspired in June. That's when Nik Wallenda's high wire walk over a portion of the Grand Canyon captured the fascination of millions and bowled me over with the spiritual/life-application parallels.

It was as if scales were dropped from my eyes and I saw life the way God intended for it to be lived....minute-by-minute in complete trust of His provision and constant connection to Him. I was suddenly jerked from my SEA of self-pity into a realization that I had stopped praying (and really believing) for so many things and had instead bought my enemy's lies and retreated into the muddy trenches of negativity (which breeds foul things of every shape and size).

The last couple of weeks I have looked at my life with even greater scrutiny. What negative influences have I allowed to shape my thinking? What am I filling my mind with? What am I exposing myself to? I am pruning my already rather miniscule television viewing habits even further, cutting down all of the crime whodunit shows I have poured into my spirit. I am avoiding people who don't really want help from me, but would rather just splash their unhappiness in my face and bring me as low as they enjoy wallowing. I am working to use better judgment in the friendships I forge and be less of an open book to all people and more of an open book to the Lord, asking Him to show me who to associate with, who needs me, who would benefit from what I have to offer. That's not exclusivity, that's wisdom, which the Bible (particularly in the book of Proverbs) has an awful lot to say about.

I am PITIFULLY far from perfection in my faith....but I have confidence that if I keep seeking, I will find the Father's heart. And it's a big one!