Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Glee - Beautiful
Why I love Glee!!!
Last week they tackled feminism and how women are objectified. This week it was body image. This is a really great show. I hope you all are watching.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Faith
My current story is a story of faith renewed. I feel like I have recently found my faith; it was missing for quite some time. I was just going through the motions of life.
It seems my three words, from my previous post entitled Grace, are going backwards. I wasn’t ready to heal or even think about it. I could understand humility as a concept. I knew that I had to be humble to know and accept that I needed to heal but I was not ready for either. However, I was willing to participate when I wasn’t yet willing to be humble or heal.
So I started to really participate. That was two weeks ago. The first time being that night’s Sunday dinner. Then I went to 2fortytwo on Tuesday and bible study on Thursday. Again, I went to church on Sunday and dinner at the Ameele’s. All of these talked about seeking god. At least that was the message I heard.
What does seeking god look like? The simple answer is participating. You participate in that relationship. You engage in bible studies. You worship at 2fortytwo. You pray for yourself and others. You serve and use your spiritual gifts. You become open to god’s Love because god’s Love can’t change you if you don’t accept it.
It is amazing what you will find when you look for it. I was actively participating but healing and humility did not start to surface until last week.
Last Tuesday, I almost did not come to 2fortytwo. It was a friend’s birthday and everyone was invited out to dinner at seven. I’m sure it was fun but I knew in my gut that I belonged at church that night and not at the party. And I am not in any way judging my friends for not coming; I just had an overwhelming feeling that I had to go. I needed to hear the message that night.
So I was shocked when Mike Ower started speaking about 1 Peter 5:5 and that first slide went up, a picture of a wall with two words: Pride and Fear. Those words were what was stopping me from healing or even being open to the idea of healing. As soon as I saw that wall … I thought to myself … ok God I’m listening. I’m ready to talk about humility. I’m ready to be humble. Let’s see what You have to say tonight.
I took detailed notes writing down verses and other tidbits. Just a few things I wrote: Humility lets you become free to heal; God’s love makes you humble; Humility leads to strength.
My emotions emerged in the middle of worship. Tears because I knew I wasn’t being honest with myself. I was afraid of what I would find if I climbed over that wall or tore it down. Also, I didn’t think I had the tools to accomplish that task. How do you destroy a wall you built to try and protect yourself? It could have been that my wall was just a bit higher than the one in the picture. Maybe it was thicker? At least it seems to have taken a while to get through it. It is weird just how confining your pride can be and how difficult it is to overcome your own obstacle.
At Thursday night bible study, humility surfaced again. We were studying Psalm 62. And verse 8 really stood out as I looked at it. Trust in Him at all times, O People; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge. Two things I wasn’t doing. Trusting and pouring out my heart to God. In my journal I wrote, “Am I not really trusting in You and is that why I can’t just give this stuff up to You? Why am I holding on to these feelings? They should and need to be in the past and let go.”
Mike had asked us to define the qualities in a relationship in which you could feel completely free to share your deepest fears and anxieties. Trust was the first thing we thought of and that was exactly what was missing from my relationship with god.
Friday presented me with the opportunity to really examine my life and let go of things. I went to the park and stretched out in the sunshine and re-read my testimony I wrote at the end of my freshman year of college. I had added to it slightly as a sophomore but hadn’t touched it in years. I found the file on my computer and found one of my original print outs. I was doing this because one of the things in the book, The Unmistakable Touch of Grace, was to break up your spiritual life into three parts and tell your story … you could share it with someone or just do it for yourself. I had the first two parts written in my testimony from before. But it was the last part, essentially the last 3-4 years of my life that I had not written about. To recap a few things that happened: my grandma passed away from ovarian cancer; I started attending 2fortytwo; my mom was diagnosed with cancer for the second time, ten years after being treated the first time; my brother and cousin both got married; my other grandma broke her ankle which facilitated a move of my grandparents into an assisted living facility; I graduated summa cum laude; my uncle got MRSA pneumonia after having the H1N1 virus and passed away; my aunt was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor that was causing double vision in one eye and she had gamma knife radiation surgery. Wow! So if you have talked to me in the last few years and I seemed distant or lost in my own world it was probably because I was. I wasn’t willing to share my worries, or how much I may have been hurting inside from some of these events. I didn't even want to tell myself so how was I going to tell others.
As I started writing about the last few years, I realized that I was not letting go of the feelings I had about them. All that worry and stress had built upon itself and it was terrible to carry that around. As soon as I let it go and gave it to god, I felt all the pressure release. The burden had been lifted from my shoulders. I am letting go of my burdens giving them to god to carry and worry about. I’m finding that as I let go new things can enter into my life.
At church this Sunday, we sang Overcome. And in the middle the Worship Leader prayed for us all to overcome and let go and heal. Hearing those words definitely made the hairs stand up. Here was my final word – Heal. “We will overcome by the blood of the lamb, and the word of our testimony, everyone overcome.” I had just been reading and adding to my testimony and the idea that we will overcome by the word of our testimony was just amazing. Because it was in writing and dissecting my life that I was able to let go, overcome and heal. Obviously healing is not something that happens overnight and can be a continuing process but being able to let go was HUGE.
To answer the last question from last night's Bible study: On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being crawling and 10 being giant leaps, how has your relationship with god progressed over the last year? In the last three weeks I would say a 12. And a year ago it may have been a one with any of the middle numbers happening in between that time.
"All authority, every victory is yours"
It seems my three words, from my previous post entitled Grace, are going backwards. I wasn’t ready to heal or even think about it. I could understand humility as a concept. I knew that I had to be humble to know and accept that I needed to heal but I was not ready for either. However, I was willing to participate when I wasn’t yet willing to be humble or heal.
So I started to really participate. That was two weeks ago. The first time being that night’s Sunday dinner. Then I went to 2fortytwo on Tuesday and bible study on Thursday. Again, I went to church on Sunday and dinner at the Ameele’s. All of these talked about seeking god. At least that was the message I heard.
What does seeking god look like? The simple answer is participating. You participate in that relationship. You engage in bible studies. You worship at 2fortytwo. You pray for yourself and others. You serve and use your spiritual gifts. You become open to god’s Love because god’s Love can’t change you if you don’t accept it.
It is amazing what you will find when you look for it. I was actively participating but healing and humility did not start to surface until last week.
Last Tuesday, I almost did not come to 2fortytwo. It was a friend’s birthday and everyone was invited out to dinner at seven. I’m sure it was fun but I knew in my gut that I belonged at church that night and not at the party. And I am not in any way judging my friends for not coming; I just had an overwhelming feeling that I had to go. I needed to hear the message that night.
So I was shocked when Mike Ower started speaking about 1 Peter 5:5 and that first slide went up, a picture of a wall with two words: Pride and Fear. Those words were what was stopping me from healing or even being open to the idea of healing. As soon as I saw that wall … I thought to myself … ok God I’m listening. I’m ready to talk about humility. I’m ready to be humble. Let’s see what You have to say tonight.
I took detailed notes writing down verses and other tidbits. Just a few things I wrote: Humility lets you become free to heal; God’s love makes you humble; Humility leads to strength.
My emotions emerged in the middle of worship. Tears because I knew I wasn’t being honest with myself. I was afraid of what I would find if I climbed over that wall or tore it down. Also, I didn’t think I had the tools to accomplish that task. How do you destroy a wall you built to try and protect yourself? It could have been that my wall was just a bit higher than the one in the picture. Maybe it was thicker? At least it seems to have taken a while to get through it. It is weird just how confining your pride can be and how difficult it is to overcome your own obstacle.
At Thursday night bible study, humility surfaced again. We were studying Psalm 62. And verse 8 really stood out as I looked at it. Trust in Him at all times, O People; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge. Two things I wasn’t doing. Trusting and pouring out my heart to God. In my journal I wrote, “Am I not really trusting in You and is that why I can’t just give this stuff up to You? Why am I holding on to these feelings? They should and need to be in the past and let go.”
Mike had asked us to define the qualities in a relationship in which you could feel completely free to share your deepest fears and anxieties. Trust was the first thing we thought of and that was exactly what was missing from my relationship with god.
Friday presented me with the opportunity to really examine my life and let go of things. I went to the park and stretched out in the sunshine and re-read my testimony I wrote at the end of my freshman year of college. I had added to it slightly as a sophomore but hadn’t touched it in years. I found the file on my computer and found one of my original print outs. I was doing this because one of the things in the book, The Unmistakable Touch of Grace, was to break up your spiritual life into three parts and tell your story … you could share it with someone or just do it for yourself. I had the first two parts written in my testimony from before. But it was the last part, essentially the last 3-4 years of my life that I had not written about. To recap a few things that happened: my grandma passed away from ovarian cancer; I started attending 2fortytwo; my mom was diagnosed with cancer for the second time, ten years after being treated the first time; my brother and cousin both got married; my other grandma broke her ankle which facilitated a move of my grandparents into an assisted living facility; I graduated summa cum laude; my uncle got MRSA pneumonia after having the H1N1 virus and passed away; my aunt was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor that was causing double vision in one eye and she had gamma knife radiation surgery. Wow! So if you have talked to me in the last few years and I seemed distant or lost in my own world it was probably because I was. I wasn’t willing to share my worries, or how much I may have been hurting inside from some of these events. I didn't even want to tell myself so how was I going to tell others.
As I started writing about the last few years, I realized that I was not letting go of the feelings I had about them. All that worry and stress had built upon itself and it was terrible to carry that around. As soon as I let it go and gave it to god, I felt all the pressure release. The burden had been lifted from my shoulders. I am letting go of my burdens giving them to god to carry and worry about. I’m finding that as I let go new things can enter into my life.
At church this Sunday, we sang Overcome. And in the middle the Worship Leader prayed for us all to overcome and let go and heal. Hearing those words definitely made the hairs stand up. Here was my final word – Heal. “We will overcome by the blood of the lamb, and the word of our testimony, everyone overcome.” I had just been reading and adding to my testimony and the idea that we will overcome by the word of our testimony was just amazing. Because it was in writing and dissecting my life that I was able to let go, overcome and heal. Obviously healing is not something that happens overnight and can be a continuing process but being able to let go was HUGE.
To answer the last question from last night's Bible study: On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being crawling and 10 being giant leaps, how has your relationship with god progressed over the last year? In the last three weeks I would say a 12. And a year ago it may have been a one with any of the middle numbers happening in between that time.
"All authority, every victory is yours"
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
Grace
So I started reading, "The Unmistakable Touch of Grace" this past week. And it has been opening my eyes and heart to seeing the presence of Grace in my life. The author Cheryl Richardson came to writing this book after finally paying attention to the power of grace in her own life.
In the first chapters, Richardson writes about when she started noticing grace. One example was when she met Michele, an intuitive consultant, who has a website with a "word magic" application that people are really drawn to. The application consists of eight bubbles of different colors that move around the screen. As you look at them, you are to ask a question or think of whatever you want and then see what the bubble reveals as an answer. Richardson was thinking of writing a book about grace but wasn't completely sure. She went to the website and clicked on a bubble after some meditation. The answer she got was "Grace." But because she had just met the woman who created the website she called her to see just what the odds of getting that word were. Michele told her that there are "more that 75 words available to be assigned to a sphere at any given moment and the words were assigned at random with each visit to her site." So the odds that she would pick Grace were more than a million to one. Not just a coincidence but the power of grace at work.
After finishing the first chapters, I was really interested in the Word Magic exercise and decided to google it to see if I could find the website. I found it and clicked on it. I asked as I looked at the bubbles float around, “okay … what do I need to be doing?” I was drawn to the pink bubble. The answer I received, "Heal."
"What? I don’t need to heal. I am fine. I'm doing pretty good," I thought.
So I went back to the main page and re-clicked on Word Magic. Again the bubbles started moving around on the screen and I asked, “What do I need to be doing?” This time I clicked on the green bubble.
The answer again was Heal.
I was completely taken aback. What are the chances that the same word would appear twice from clicking on two different bubbles? If the chance of getting one word appearing randomly is more than a million to one then what are the odds of the same word appearing twice from different bubbles on different visits to the site? Not just a coincidence but the true power of grace trying to show me what I needed to be doing. Healing.
However, I still didn’t believe that I really needed to heal; I thought I was doing pretty well in that department so I waited a few more minutes thinking about what I could possibly need to heal from. I came up with nothing. So I thought what the heck let’s do it again and if I get heal again then I guess that must be what needs to happen. But I don’t know what I need to heal from or how to heal.
Once again I clicked on the word magic application and the bubbles filled the screen. This time the purple bubble caught my eye and my answer was ...
"Humility”
All I could think was … ok. I need to be humble ok … how does this fit with healing?
And it was obvious that I had to get over my pride or arrogance. I needed to be humble with myself so I could see where and how I needed to heal. I could no longer deny that I needed to heal and I had to be real with myself about it. But that day, I was still not sure what healing needed to be done. However, I was willing to think about it. And the first step towards healing is admitting you need to. Or to put it in another way every journey begins with a single step.
The next day, Sunday, after attending church, I was contemplating going to the Sunday night dinner at the Ameele's. As I checked my facebook to see how many people had RSVP, I saw that I had left the Word Magic site open on my internet browser tab. So I clicked once more on it and picked the yellow bubble this time. The word was Participate, which is a pretty simple concept that really can apply to everything. I had just been asking if I should go and here was my answer participate.
Participating can be as simple as showing up or as complex as becoming a leader. Participate could mean to go somewhere you haven't or to have the courage to speak when you usually remain silent. Often it is the difference between hearing and listening. In order to have relationships, you must participate in them. It takes two. When one person stops participating, relationships tend to fail.
It has now been a week since that happened and the word participate still seems to be around every corner I turn. It is the answer for bible study questions or whether I should go do something. Also, I began to really examine my life and find where the healing needs to occur. I'm still working on it but I'm feeling better about it.
Are you participating in your life? Are you participating in your relationships be it with god, your spouse, your family, your friends, coworkers, students, groups, organizations, etc? Are you participating in a positive or negative way? How are you going to change the way you participate? Are you just standing on the sidelines listening or are you engaged in the discussion?
I encourage you to actively participate in something new this week. You never know it may be the change agent of your life.
In the first chapters, Richardson writes about when she started noticing grace. One example was when she met Michele, an intuitive consultant, who has a website with a "word magic" application that people are really drawn to. The application consists of eight bubbles of different colors that move around the screen. As you look at them, you are to ask a question or think of whatever you want and then see what the bubble reveals as an answer. Richardson was thinking of writing a book about grace but wasn't completely sure. She went to the website and clicked on a bubble after some meditation. The answer she got was "Grace." But because she had just met the woman who created the website she called her to see just what the odds of getting that word were. Michele told her that there are "more that 75 words available to be assigned to a sphere at any given moment and the words were assigned at random with each visit to her site." So the odds that she would pick Grace were more than a million to one. Not just a coincidence but the power of grace at work.
After finishing the first chapters, I was really interested in the Word Magic exercise and decided to google it to see if I could find the website. I found it and clicked on it. I asked as I looked at the bubbles float around, “okay … what do I need to be doing?” I was drawn to the pink bubble. The answer I received, "Heal."
"What? I don’t need to heal. I am fine. I'm doing pretty good," I thought.
So I went back to the main page and re-clicked on Word Magic. Again the bubbles started moving around on the screen and I asked, “What do I need to be doing?” This time I clicked on the green bubble.
The answer again was Heal.
I was completely taken aback. What are the chances that the same word would appear twice from clicking on two different bubbles? If the chance of getting one word appearing randomly is more than a million to one then what are the odds of the same word appearing twice from different bubbles on different visits to the site? Not just a coincidence but the true power of grace trying to show me what I needed to be doing. Healing.
However, I still didn’t believe that I really needed to heal; I thought I was doing pretty well in that department so I waited a few more minutes thinking about what I could possibly need to heal from. I came up with nothing. So I thought what the heck let’s do it again and if I get heal again then I guess that must be what needs to happen. But I don’t know what I need to heal from or how to heal.
Once again I clicked on the word magic application and the bubbles filled the screen. This time the purple bubble caught my eye and my answer was ...
"Humility”
All I could think was … ok. I need to be humble ok … how does this fit with healing?
And it was obvious that I had to get over my pride or arrogance. I needed to be humble with myself so I could see where and how I needed to heal. I could no longer deny that I needed to heal and I had to be real with myself about it. But that day, I was still not sure what healing needed to be done. However, I was willing to think about it. And the first step towards healing is admitting you need to. Or to put it in another way every journey begins with a single step.
The next day, Sunday, after attending church, I was contemplating going to the Sunday night dinner at the Ameele's. As I checked my facebook to see how many people had RSVP, I saw that I had left the Word Magic site open on my internet browser tab. So I clicked once more on it and picked the yellow bubble this time. The word was Participate, which is a pretty simple concept that really can apply to everything. I had just been asking if I should go and here was my answer participate.
Participating can be as simple as showing up or as complex as becoming a leader. Participate could mean to go somewhere you haven't or to have the courage to speak when you usually remain silent. Often it is the difference between hearing and listening. In order to have relationships, you must participate in them. It takes two. When one person stops participating, relationships tend to fail.
It has now been a week since that happened and the word participate still seems to be around every corner I turn. It is the answer for bible study questions or whether I should go do something. Also, I began to really examine my life and find where the healing needs to occur. I'm still working on it but I'm feeling better about it.
Are you participating in your life? Are you participating in your relationships be it with god, your spouse, your family, your friends, coworkers, students, groups, organizations, etc? Are you participating in a positive or negative way? How are you going to change the way you participate? Are you just standing on the sidelines listening or are you engaged in the discussion?
I encourage you to actively participate in something new this week. You never know it may be the change agent of your life.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Thursday, April 8, 2010
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