Daniel Day Three

I'm really enjoying the group study of Daniel through She Read Truth.  So thankful my sister-in-law asked me to join her in reading it!

Are you struggling to serve both the true God and a false god?

I know that to some degree I am because my heart aches sometimes with the yearning for a closer connection to my God.  I feel the distance and know something is out of balance.  My problem is that I don't even know exactly which false God I'm serving.  I'm almost nine months pregnant with my fourth baby in under seven years and I'm working full time and those aren't the end of the complications in my life.  Most of the time, it feels like I'm just in survival mode and it's the day to day stuff that takes my time and energy so that there's so little left at the end of the day to crack open a Bible or prayer journal and settle into the warm palms of my savior.  I think back on today and how I frittered away 15 minutes here and there-- looking for area rugs for the kids' room, browsing a cookbook, looking up Karen Horney's pioneering psychological theories for no reason except just 'cuz (and because it's super interesting).  Nothing too nefarious, but when time and life is stretched so thin, it's those little things that matter, that make a difference between having the time and not.  I know I'm distracted, too.  My mind going places, analyzing things, trying to figure people out.  It's hard to know where the line is between just getting through life and over-indulging in fruitless thought, trying to provide peace, understanding, wisdom for myself instead of letting God do His work.  So maybe that's the answer:  go to Him first, let him work in me.  And if there's time left over, spend it looking at the rugs, browsing for a good Tuscan soup, trying to understand the dynamics of painful relationships.
What is your “identity crisis?” 

My identity crisis is something I was exploring this weekend when I was studying Luke 18.  One of the questions I posed to myself and then journaled on is what does God see when He looks into my heart.  It was sobering to admit to myself that while my actions are generally good (okay, I screw up plenty, but it's easy to say that, relatively speaking, I'm doing decent as a human being) my heart isn't so easy to excuse.  I'm hard on myself.  I'm hard on other people.  There's pain in there and some bitterness and resistance.  There's pride.  There's a whole corner reserved for the weak creatures in me: the lonely one, the sad one, the scared one, the heartbroken one, the recovering one, the anxious one.  They huddle together like mice or lizards, trembling tails and black, glittering eyes looking out into the room hoping no one's come to crush them.

I've been encountering a lot of different authors advocating that we write and think about our real selves and our ideal selves.  Not as some sort of shame exercise, but to look at what we want our identity to be and how we can bridge that distance to get a little closer.  I think that's often where an identity crisis comes from.  We know that the distance between our real and ideal selves is great and the distress of that can lead to an identity crisis.  My prayer for all of us is that we can settle these identity crises by moving toward God.  He knows who we are, He formed us each, lovingly, and then called us each by name.  Who else could help us become the best of what we truly are?

I've got to say, though, that I'm still working at that personal relationship with Christ.  When it's right there, I feel it, but it's hard for me to be there and I don't know what the hang up is.  what part of me is still closed off.  I know sometimes it's the intellectualizing I do;  sometimes it's easier to analyze scripture than to use is at a conduit to the God who inspired the words.  It's easier to read books about spirituality than to lay my heart bare and open, to sustain that openness without distractions long enough to let God come through the doorway.  I used to wonder why people got more spiritually devoted as they got older.  When I was in middle school  through college, or really, earl adulthood (adultolecence), I thought it was mostly because they were getting closer to death and facing mortality is a good motivation to move Jesus-ward.  Now I'm understanding that it's not until the late afternoon and evening of life that a person has enough QUIET to just rest in Christ.  Not if you have kids and work and house and all the rest.  It's so difficult.  I hope to figure out a solution at some point soon because I want Jesus.  I want to know him in my bones and blood in every moment.  I want more than just the waking awe of the beauty of His creation.  I want to know and be known so deeply.  There's distance to bridge and it's like every time I put in a shift laying bricks, all the multitudinous legitimate distractions and people who need my attention creep in when I'm on a coffee break to chisel the mortar back and knock the bricks back down.

I feel like I'm making lame excuses.  How do people with this many needy people and concerns in their life do it?  One day, one step closer at a time, I suppose.  

These guys have such nice voices.  Dang.  Listening to "Brothers" right now.  Wow. Just good and wow.  It's totally feasible to drive to Columbus with a three week old babe to see them, right?