This Is It.... an Epiphany.

Take a look around you right now.  What do you see?  For me, it's my mostly decorated living room, if I am honest a little bit of a mess.  If I look deeper into my life I see the beginning of a few things: friendships, this house, other things.  I see the deepening of a few things: my business, my faith, other things.  I see the completion of a few things: my grief process, the love of my husband, a few friendships, other things.

What else do you see?  Do you see your gifts?  Do you see the desires you have for your life?  Do you see the people around you who are hurting?  Do you see an opportunity?  What is it that is stopping you from acting on the things you see?

Guess what, kids?  This is it.  This is your life.  This life is your ministry.  This is how God wants to use you - He wants to use you right here and now; He wants to be seen in your life right now.

I noticed the other day when I re-read what I had written about wondering how God wanted to use me (in that whiny post a few days ago about being single) that it occurred to me that He is using me.  He's using me right now.

My friend Jennifer said to me the other day, "You're impatient because you want things the way you envision them. Relax and know that things are happening the way God envisions them."  Control freaks unite, but my friends, THIS is really crazy good advice.

I don't know what tomorrow brings.  Well, I know some of the things that tomorrow brings.  It's cold here and I have market in a rather cold building for 6 hours and then I am singing in a Christmas cantata.  Tomorrow will bring laughter with the coffee guy who has the booth next to mine.  It will bring friends and people I care about deeply to my booth for hugs and encouragement and advice... which will go both ways.  Tomorrow will bring an opportunity for me to spend more than a few moments in prayer and worship.  Tomorrow brings time to write, time to relax, probably a hot bath.

What I don't know about tomorrow is exactly how God will use me.  I won't know even in the moment how the words that I use might impact the people I meet and speak to, or the people who will overhear them.  My job, my ministry will be to be open to God using me, willing to be used, and submissive to the urging of the Holy Spirit to say what I might be directed to say or act how I am directed to act.  I probably won't know how things will work out.  Because so often the ministry of our lives isn't something we see the affect of in others.

So again, this is it.  THIS.  Right here?  This is your life.  If you want God to use you and to have a ministry?  You have one.  That's your life.  That desire comes from Him.  Get to know Him.  Establish and maintain a daily, intimate, humble relationship with Him.  I am going to give you a huge piece of advise here too: Pray that God purge you of the crap in your life that you are hiding.  Stop the sin that is in your life and seek to live a blameless life.  Be honest with yourself about who you are, be open and vulnerable to God and to the people who are around you (I recommend finding an accountability partner who you both trust and is trustworthy).  Life is complicated, but be as vulnerable and open as you can be with people in your life.  Be gentle with the people you meet because I guarantee they are going through stuff.  Care about people with everything you have available to you.  This is your ministry.

I have been reading a few books about faith, and in one, "Jesus Manifest" the authors talk about Jesus' ministry (which as Christians we are to emulate).  Jesus went about his day and he kinda just hung out.  He chatted with people.  He said things that had impact because he had constant contact and relationship with Father God and he cared about people.  He spoke life to people.  He loved on them in friendship.  He didn't condemn them.  He showed them that there was forgiveness and a pathway out of the hurt and pain and destruction of their lives. He showed them that there was opportunity for more and for relationship with God through his sacrifice.

So, let your life be a ministry.  Your life is your ministry.  Seek relationship with Jesus, depth of relationship with God.  Be blessed and be a blessing my dear friends.

Grief (part eleventy) and moving on and loneliness.

I'm doing ok, and then I'm not.

It is so hard, so unbelievably hard to miss someone like this.  I miss someone who got me in a way that so very few do, and I can't do anything at all to fix it.

I know that today's tears are connected to a few things:  My mom called today and we talked about him.  I'm at that point in my hormonal cycle where a low day is typical.  I didn't get accomplished what I wanted to do today.  A new man with whom I'd started conversing showed that his character wasn't worthy of me.  I found a photo that had been stuck in a book.  I could go on... but it's circumstantial.

I am impatient.  I am impatient with myself and I am impatient with God.  I'm very productive, huh?  I know that this is all a timing issue.  I've proven very little and it's just barely been six months back into the depth of faith - I am still rocky soil being churned... and the churn has slowed because the big surface rocks have been picked and tossed into the pile of forgiveness, and yet I am not quite fertile soil.  I don't know how long that takes, how many tests and trials nor how much digging and watering needs to happen before I am, but there we go.

Sigh.

I pray for my relationship with God to be enough for me.  I pray that He show me, work on ME to see Him and how much He loves me.  The issue is me.  I don't know if it's a good thing that it's a daily request or not...  But I am desperate for Him.

I like that I know who I am, I like that I actually like me.  God has blessed me with a lot of great stuff, and as it says, to whom much is given, much is required.  I'm wanting so much to be ready for whatever that is, whatever His plan is for my life.  I really want God to be enough, and yet I desire intimacy with another human being - with a man - which may not ever be fulfilled again.

It's a struggle that I am trying to be honest about because I know that I am not alone.  I WANT God to be enough.  I do.  But I am honest about the other aspects too.  I am a human woman.  I mean, in Genesis God says that it's not good that man be alone so he creates woman for him and makes her out of his side so they will cling together.  I want to cling to God, but I want to cling with someone to God.  My fear is that I've had mine and he went away.  My fear is that I will be single forever.

I know I am not the only single woman who has had that fear.  When I was single, before those nearly 15 years of marriage, I feared that I would never marry.  I find that fear is back and I think about this... is that my thorn in my side?  What if I not only shouldn't have been married, but that I never was to be married - and will never be married again.  I've been told that it's not something that I should think about, let alone worry about.  I'm told that if God has someone for me, He'll bring that man to me.

And when that's said I want to shout, "I KNOW!!"  and "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, YOU ARE MARRIED."  It's a cold comfort to know that God has this in His plan - whatever it is... because I hurt now.  Because I am lonely now.  Because life is hard now.  I ache now.  I want things now.  ME!  Heh, I am a toddler.  I know it.

But, I am honest about it.  I am honest when I say that I am seeking God for change in my heart.  I am honest, and open, and vulnerable because this point of raw human is where I find that God reaches me, where I can accept where He has me now.  Being vulnerable isn't always pleasant, but I don't know how to be anything other than this.

So, single woman?  I get it.  You pray for me, I'll pray for you.  I'll pray that God have a spectacular man for you, who is worthy of you and partnering with you in marriage.  I hope you will pray that for me too... but above all else, let's pray for each other that God's will be done in our lives, marriage or not.  And let's pray for each other that we are fulfilled in our relationship with Jesus first, foremost and solidly.

Amen.