A Modern Day Conversion

Let me outline my colorful religious past for you- the first church I remember attending was a Messianic Jewish Synagogue. My family moved on from there to various other churches and I can't precisely remember all of them, but we ended up in a Southern Baptist church where I remained until my late teens. However from the age of 5 until the age of 16, I concurrently attended a non-denominational/Pentecostal school in which I was an observer of prophecy, speaking in tongues, being slain in the spirit....you know the type. And if you don't, please do not feel that you are being left out of some great mystery- I pretty much had a panic attack daily because of these spiritual manifestations being forced into my life. Long story short, I married a Catholic and have been attending a Catholic church for the past 5 years or so. Needless to say, the focus of my faith has always been on my relationship with Christ and not necessarily the church that I was attending at the time or the "brand" of Christianity that was being taught at the time; that would be WAY too confusing to mish-mash all the specifics of each group into one new and homemade faith (although I'm pretty sure that is how many of the churches we see today probably got their start) I attended RCIA ( Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults- "Catholic Class" for those of you who are not aware of it) when my husband and I became engaged, but I did not convert to Catholicism at the time because my faith has always been too precious to me to just join a new faith community simply because I was marrying into it. But through the years, I have realized that being in such an uncomfortable and unfamiliar environment has caused me to continually re-evaluate my faith and my relationship with Christ. I have come to love and appreciate many of the Catholic traditions and I find myself wanting to commit. Finally. I realize that if I just let go of my uncertainties, God can bring me to a more fulfilled relationship with Him if I just take the first step. Some may question this decision and are more than entitled to, but what I know is this. Being in this Catholic community has caused me to grow in ways that were never even on my radar before. I find myself longing for the presence of God so much more than I ever have. My husband and I are taking steps to grow our relationship in Christ and introduce Him to our children. This is where I need to be. I have followed Jesus long enough to recognize his voice, and this is it. For me, for my family, for the glorification of Christ to the world. I'm doing it folks. I'm becoming Catholic. Stay Tuned.

To judge, or not to judge?

I caught myself in a humbling situation this weekend. I was listening in on a conversation between my husband and a person that drives me CRAZY for many reasons. As this person continued to spew profanity after profanity from his mouth it made me more and more sick to even be around  him and I was content to sit and roll my eyes occasionally at my husband and simply observe what I perceive to be a minor train wreck in progress. At first meeting this person, I tried to see the humor in his immature ways and it was superficially amusing for awhile. Then I began to feel convicted that I should not be allowing the presence of this person in my home where my young children could pick up on some nasty habits, etc. When the evening was over I began fuming about the immorality of the situaton. " How dare this person even claim affiliation with the Christian faith when they are so obviously so off base, etc?" My husband then made the comment that perhaps the faith of this person, no matter how neglected I perceived it to be, could possibly be the only bit of stability he was holding on to. BOOM. Ok then. Where do we as Christians get off on judging others? I get it, we are human, and humans like to judge each other to make themselves feel better. But is this not the exact opposite of what we are called to do on this earth? I don't recall ever receiving power from God to be the all knowing judge of people's character, and thank goodness! I wouldn't want the responsibility of determining someone's eternal fate. I simply recall being commissioned to "go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature." Mark 16:15. That includes creatures that drive us crazy. And that doesn't necessarily mean to read scriptures at someone until you are blue in the face and hope something clicks in their heart. It means to present your faith to be THE effective truth in such a way that others will want it for themselves. And it means never giving up on someone  because of how they make you feel; God never gave up on me and there were plenty of times where I was giving the Christian faith a bad rep as well. Most of all, as Christians we have to stay humble, and keep people around us that will keep us humble. I am the worst about making a teeny spiritual step forward then becoming "Super Christian" and wanting to point out the faults and stagnancy of others. How horrible am I? What I am saying is that "we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." Romans 3:23, but all of us who choose to accept His grace, no matter how many times we fall away and get distracted in our lives, will be saved. So get out there and quit pointing out the sins in others lives- they may already be aware of them. Just live your life the way you have been instructed to and God will do the rest.

I have been reading "My Upmost for His Highest" by Oswald Chambers, and today's reading went right along with my thought process so I wanted to share: " The Purpose of Prayer"

To say that "prayer changes things" is not as close to the truth as saying "Prayer changes me, and then I change things." God has established things so that prayer, on the basis of redemption, changes the way a person looks at things. Prayer is not a matter of changing things externally, but one of working miracles in a person's inner nature.

24 Hour Call

24 Hour Call. As the wife of a resident physician I am becoming more familiar with these large chunks of time in which our home is thrown into varying levels of chaos. I don't so much dread the extended absence of my husband, although I admit I do miss him a lot-I enjoy that we will forever be like teenagers because his job ensures that we connect through the day ( and sometimes night) through goofy texts and emails. It keeps the spark alive, what can I say? I do dread the concept itself, because from experience I have learned that bad things happen on these days, and I always seem to feel less than prepared to deal with them. The first time he had his 24 hour+ experience at work, I got so sick that I couldn't even drag myself out of bed, much less take care of a 2 month old and 17 month old. My super amazing mother came to my rescue that night which may or may have not been a ploy to spend more time with her grand babies? I think we all know the truth now, mom. :) Love you! The second time he was on 24 hour call, I lost water at my house. After few hours and a panicked phone call to my father, the water came back on. ( That may not sound like a huge deal to some people, but to a mother of two babies who require baths daily, the laundry slave, and being a human being in general who requires water to survive and had only had about a half a drink of water until the point of it being turned off (thank you, children! :)- this was a big deal. Oh, and it was around 115 degrees at the time. As I said, the water came back on and all is well. Most recently, both boys decided to wake up super early and steal the last minutes of mommy and daddy's sanity for the next couple of days. Yes, it takes a couple of days to recover from "The Chaos." So while my husband is sleepily performing procedures and I am stumbling around my already messy house trying to figure out what smells like # 2, I am wondering what might happen today. In the meantime I a enjoying a morning with my boys and craving some McDonald's French fries.

A Balancing Act

I suppose most people of faith understand that it is possible to know doctrine forward and backward and still not know Christ. I believe that a personal interaction and relationship with Christ takes precedence to knowing loads of doctrine any day. I get the feeling that this concept has been drilled into our heads due to previous generations of Christians dealing with this struggle, and they thought best to warn us of this.
What I wonder is this: is this mindset creating a whole new generation of Christians that have a very shallow understanding of the basics of their own personal faith because they are too focused on the "feel good" parts of Christianity?  I feel justified in saying this because I grew up as part of that group. I was raised attending Christian school, church, and was strongly encouraged in my faith by my loving family. But as everyone does, I reached a point where I needed a deeper understanding of Christ that could only be found through personal exploration. I was strongly encouraged by my fellow Christians to ask questions and put to the test the foundations of my faith as a means to obtaining a deeper understanding. Unfortunately I found out too late that once I started asking the questions, those that had encouraged me to ask them were not there with a solid Biblical means of answering them. This led to many years of confusion for me that, by the grace of God has brought me to a more thriving spiritual life than I feel I have ever had. But it took years. Years people.....probably like 10. Painful questioning, hard learned lessons, and all this from a gal who had been raised in a Christian environment. I can't imagine how hard the church is to navigate for those who aren't so familiar with its idiosyncrasies.
While doctrine should never take precedence to our personal relationship with Jesus, I believe it is still a very important tool of our Christian faith that provides us common ground with our fellow believers and should not be neglected. In order to live our faith, we have to understand how to do that in the first place, which is outlined where? Doctrine. I have seen too many people ( myself included) following someone else's version of the Gospel wholeheartedly without ever bothering to understand Christ's teachings for themselves. We must have a balance of both time tested and Biblical doctrine AND  personal testimony in order to effectively reach others for Christ and simply understand Him for ourselves.

Growing Pains

"Do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by him." Hebrews 12:5

This verse grabbed my attention this morning- it is so easy to get discouraged when things aren't going smoothly in our lives; I would say that's a pretty natural reaction to stress. However, It is surprising the change in outlook that occurs when we begin to view our hardships through God's perspective. Of course this shift in perspectives won't happen overnight and probably won't ever be a complete transformation because if we allow it, God wants to continue to re-shape our outlooks for the rest of our lives- which means He will continue to present us with difficult situations through which we can learn to trust Him. I'm not saying I enjoy those times when I'm being tested, but I have come to recognize that those times are opportunities for me to grow in my faith. I liken it to the instance where the kids are both unhappily screaming in the backseat of the car and you suddenly realize you have been going 90 down the highway just to get home and hasten the end of that horrible, horrible noise. That is a very uncomfortable/painful experience for all involved, and your brain has some sort of chemical reaction that causes the biggest case of lead-foot you have ever experienced without you even realizing it. I think that the more that I grow in my faith the same is true for my spirit; when I am uncomfortable/growing my "spiritual lead foot" kicks in because I know I would rather just buckle down and take a nugget of wisdom from the whole experience rather than slowly suffer through it, complain the whole time, learn nothing, and possibly have to learn that painful lesson again.

The Problem With Complaining

Where do I start? I LOVE to complain, it's true and I'm not denying it. For some odd reason, I feel that silently (or not so silently) ruminating on my distresses will make me feel better about myself. Why do I need to feel better about myself, do you ask? Because I have been looking at myself through a microscope for so long that I have neglected to be the hands and feet of Christ that I have been called to be. This sounds so odd because I have two children under 2 and rarely have time to think about myself but what I am referring to is a deep-seeded habit that I think many of us have established and don't realize we are doing. I am referring to that incident or memory that we all have from our past that affected for better or worse our view of our faith. We have all attended the church that has treated us badly or encountered the "Christian" whose life is so obviously not bearing the fruit of a life surrendered to Christ that it is laughable. I'm sure not everyone allows these incidents to make them bitter, but many of us do, and I was no exception. It is one thing to learn from these experiences and move on, but to wake up 10 years later and realize I was still fighting the same battle was ridiculous. I finally just realized that I couldn't change what had happened in the past but I obviously wasn't growing from that experience anymore, so I needed to actively search for opportunities to allow God to begin a new journey for me. Having children has significantly accelerated this process because I didnt want them to learn their faith through my views of the past, but rather I wanted us as a family to begin learning new things together.
I give you this brief history just to say this: we all have things we need to work through, but when we spend so much time dwelling on those things instead of just surrendering them to Christ, we waste the time that we have been given to be an encouragement to others by looking at ourself under the "pity microscope" and we begin to stagnate. We need to realize the God doesn't bless us because we deserve it- He does it so that we can share what we have with others, and if we fail to do this (whether monetarily or with spiritual gifts) the excess which was meant to be a blessing to others will poison us when we keep it to ourselves.

Dear Children....

I am starting this blog as a record for myself of how being a mother continually re-shapes my views on, well, everything. This includes most importantly my faith and my attitude towards daily life, and I hope to express to my children someday how instrumental they were in bringing me back to life, just as I am responsible for giving them life.
   I am like many stay-at-home mothers; frazzled, burning the candle at both ends AND the middle. I have dealt with my share of loneliness, boredom, despair- yes, you know exactly what I am talking about. However, this is really just about me, wife and mom, and how I am learning to get back to basics and witness the movement of The Holy Spirit in everyday occurrences- there have been so many instances where I have a mom-trauma (example: I was scrambling eggs this morning and I look down to see my 18 month old happily playing with a paring knife) that I can choose to freak out, or I can choose to find a spiritual lesson in it. I have to say that this little exercise has caused me to really think in a more proactively Christian way, and I have my children to thank for providing me with plenty of opportunities daily in which to seek Christ's counsel. :) My lesson from the paring knife, in case you were wondering was 1) Don't put paring knives in that drawer anymore, and 2) Daily entrust your children and the safety of their hearts and bodies to Christ- there is no way we can always see what's going on or be there for every little incident, but God will be, and it is important for us to surrender that to Christ so we busy moms have one less thing on our plate to worry about, and also important so that we can teach our children that they will never truly be alone.
I have a crying baby in the next room, so until next time....