Busyness?

Just a few thoughts here. This has been a busy month. An incredibly busy month, which followed another very busy month, to be precise.

Let's reflect on busyness. While many may say that "Cleanliness is next to Godliness", (which is not exactly scriptural, but that's another post) I have decided that "Busyness is next to......well.......insanity."

Let me begin by showing you my datebook.

My husband looked at this page, and asked me if I realized how absolutely insane it is. My response to him was. "Try living this life Bucky!"

In the past couple of months, I have realized how out of control my life is getting/has gotten. I have to slow down. Really I do. I go on about 4 hours of sleep a night during the week, and crash when the weekend comes. This is not good for my body or for my family. Weekends should be a time of relaxing and enjoying family activities, not spent crashed in my bed from burnout. It has gotten to the point that I can't remember how to relax anymore. We went to Jacksonville last week, for some required testing for my husband's job, and I was still in such an "on" mode that I couldn't even relax and enjoy the jacuzzi tub.

What is wrong with me?

I began reflecting on some teaching by Joyce Meyer late last month. I used to watch her program all the time! A lot of what she said is stuck in my head, but nothing more than her teaching on busyness. She said, (and although this is a paraphrase I will put it in quotations. This is just the gist of what she said, I could never quote her word for word, so this is what I got out of it.. You can read an article on this from her here.)

"God never called us to be busy, he called us to be fruitful!"
and....another wonderful Joyce-ism....
"God called us to be human BEings, not human DOings."

So am I busy or fruitful? If I am brutally honest with myself, some of what I do is bearing fruit. Some of it is necessary for the function of my home and family. Some of it is flitter and fluff.

The first weekend of this month I attended a Women's Conference in Tifton GA with my church. We were blessed to hear Darlene Bishop preach, and guess what she talked about? Yep. Being busy.  She said that sometimes we get so busy doing the Kingdom's business that we forget who we are in business for.

Wow.

So.....I am not committing to anything new right now. I am finishing up all of my commitments for the month, and I am earnestly seeking God about what I need to do in the upcoming season. I was to be fruitful. I want to be vital in the Kingdom . I want to be productive without being CRAZY!

Am I alone in this? I think not. Somehow it seems to me that as a woman, if I am not busy, then I am perceived as lazy. (Especially as a stay at home mom, which is a specific calling on my life, not just a choice) But in my mind, if I stay busy, then I appear to be valuable. My question to myself is this: Who am I living my life for?

My answer is this. God first. My husband second. My child third. And everything and everybody else falls into place.

A Resurgence of Blogging....

I am amazed that blogging seems to be making a comeback! I have seen people begin blogging for the first time, and I am enjoying their excitement. I hope it is contagious, because lately I have been in a blogging funk! Life is crazy busy right now, and blogging seems like another thing on my to-do list. It used to be an escape....an outlet....a way to vent. Hopefully I can catch blog fever again and reinvent my blog. It is tired of being neglected.

I don't think it is just me though. I have seen several of the blogs I have followed for years go through the same thing. I have one blog that I follow that went on sort of a bloggy vacation, and I missed her terribly! (That is you Cassandra!!!!) One of my favorite blogs of all time is From Dhu Land With Love...., which started out as the Savannah Scrapbooking blog but when the store closed, it became a personal blog by my friend Jamie. (Disclaimer.....go to the bathroom and do not have food or drink in your mouth when you read her blog. You will either wet your pants or spew-or maybe both- if you don't. It is that funny. I promise.)

So what interests new people about blogging? What makes them trip into this cyber rambling world? I think people do it for many reasons. To voice an opinion. To connect with others. To vent. To create. To find like minded friends. To connect with family far away, and keep them up to date on their life. I blog for all of these reasons. I just gotta get back to it.

Happy blogging!

Words That Make A Difference

Last night, I asked my Bishop (in some churches this would be the senior pastor, or Doctor of Divinity) to write a couple of letters for people who are going on a spiritual renewal/retreat weekend. Our church is very busy these days, with exponential growth and getting ready to launch another facility on the other side of town, allowing us the auspicious  honor of duplicating ourselves in ministry, so everyone is busy to say the least. In a joking manner he asked me why I didn't just write the letters myself and let him sign them. He is a real NUT sometimes!

For some reason I felt it was the appropriate time to blabber on and I told him that my mom and I were discussing my Dad recently. She was asking me what I remembered about my Dad, and I told her that the main thing I remembered was that he never said the words "I love you" to me. He would say "Daddy loves you". Mom said that she felt it was the same thing, and I told her I didn't think it was. I wanted to hear it from him! I wanted to hear the words "I love you" come out of my Daddy's mouth, directed at ME.! 

Now, if you know my Bishop, you know "the look". It is the look that says "I hear what you are saying, that makes sense to me", but it also has a deeper side that makes me think he might be chewing on what I said a little bit more.

So I pondered this conversation this morning. I have always struggled with self esteem issues, and wonder more often than not if I have just made a complete fool of myself by something I said.  I began thinking of what I had told Bishop last night, and the enemy began playing with my self doubt and telling me how he "might" have taken it. In my mind, I could hear him saying "That girl is messed up! I just joked around with her and she got all philosophical on me and drug up all her past baggage". Either that, or "the look" was actually him saying "Ok, ok, would you shut up now so I can go get something to eat?"  Or worse yet, he zoned out and went to his happy place.

Now if you know my Bishop, or have ever even been near him, you know this is not the case. This man of God loves each and every person with a love that only comes from Jesus. He is compassionate, caring and the most humble man I have ever met. His words are always uplifting, edifying and encouraging.  It was my own self doubt and my own mind allowing me to think of him in any other manner.

So this morning, as I played over all of this in my mind, I began to pray about it. I began asking God was I wrong to want to hear "I love you" from my Dad? Was that a trivial thing that I had allowed to haunt me all these years? [side note: Dad walked out of my life when I was nine and died when I was 21]

God began showing me some things about this, and a lesson came from it for me. I had no power over the words that came out of my Dad's mouth, or over what I heard with my own ears. 

BUT.......

What if I only allowed others to tell me that God loves me? What if I took everything that Sunday School teachers and pastors have told me and that was as far as I went with it? I would be living the same life, with an emptiness of never hearing my Heavenly Father say "I love you" with my own ears.

The Word tells us that God speaks to us through His Holy Spirit. I have heard the audible voice of Almighty God once and I hear the quiet voice of His Holy Spirit almost constantly. The Bible says "Blessed is the man who listens to me" (Proverbs 8:34) and Jesus said "My sheep listen to my voice." (John 10:27). We need to remember that  "the word of God is living and active" (Hebrews 4:12) God also speaks to us through other people and through dreams and visions.

If we only allowed others to tell us that God loved us, we miss the boat entirely. We need to hear it from Him. 

Are we listening?  We need to earnestly seek God, and cry out to Him. We need to hear "I love you" from Him, and He wants to hear it from us as well.

Sometimes things come to me slowly and quietly, but this didn't. It was a booming voice in my Spirit, a passionate cry from my Heavenly Father saying to me "My precious daughter, I LOVE YOU!" 

And that made all the difference.