I'm Back!

Oh, I hope I'm back! I feel like I have slowly been digging my way out of a self-centered, self-protective hole for almost a year now. And today, at least, I have felt like my old self. For the first time in months, I felt the dark curtain that seemed to separate me from the rest of the world drop completely away. As I served at church this morning, I actually wanted to be helpful. I didn't feel like blaming everyone else for my mistakes (and I did make a few) and I didn't obsess over them.

My life has been such a roller coaster for several years. So many changes--huge changes... kids growing up, a 2,000 mile move from the city to the country, the loss of a child, the life-threatening struggle of my only remaining child, entering the time in a woman's life when hormones rage and moods swing like a giant pendulum, spending 5 years with an empty nest, then a year of waiting to fill that nest with a gorgeous little granddaughter, and finally, working to merge the schedule of a two-year old with the schedule of two older but wiser (and a little bit lazier) empty nesters. Oh, I'm tired just thinking about it!

Each one of those changes brings stress and has the potential to pull a person down. But God is good and patient. I have swung from faith filled days when my spirit soared as I worshiped to days so dark I wasn't even sure I wanted to follow God anymore and I could hardly pick myself up off the floor. But God never moved. He wasn't afraid of losing me. He knew I'd make it through with my faith not only in tact, but even deeper and stronger.

Will there be more challenges in my future? Uh, yeah! Will there be more changes and stress? Uh huh. Will there be more dark days? Probably. But now I know on a deeper level that even in the darkness, God is there. He doesn't get offended and storm off. He waits... And He sings... over me... that sends me to my knees.

It's good to be back.

It Really is All About God

I love personality tests like the Kiersy Temperament Sorter and Strengths Finder and even the silly quizzes we take on Facebook. I love learning about myself... finding out why I am the way I am and why I do the things I do. I even like to read my own blog. Yikes! I think I'm infatuated with me! I like to hear good things about myself. I like to be able to justify my shortcomings and focus on the positives.

That's all very helpful to a point, but we can get too wrapped up in them and become too dependant on them. Our view can be too narrowed by them. What if God is calling me to something outside my comfort zone? What if He's calling me to something I'm completely unqualified and ungifted for? Would He do that?

According to Oswald Chambers, yes. "The call of God is not the echo of my nature. My affinities and personal temperament are not considered. As long as I consider my personal temperament and think about what I am fitted for, I shall never hear the call of God. [ouch!] But when I am brought into relationship with God, I am in the condition Isaiah was in. Isaiah's soul was so attuned to God by the tremendous crisis he had gone through that he recorded the call of God to his amazed soul. The majority of us have no ear for anyhthing but ourselves, we cannot hear a thing God says. [ouch again!] To be brought into the zone of the call of God is to be profoundly altered."

What I'm learning from Oswald Chambers this year is that it really is all about God and not me. Wow, what a revelation!