I think I need to learn to be myopic.  I guess from some perspectives, that might sound like a bad thing.  “Short-sighted” is not usually something said as a compliment.  Yet, I’m learning that there is benefit in only seeing what immediately surrounds you.  ‘Cause you can’t tell if the grass is greener on the other side of the fence if you can’t see the grass.  I need to not be seeing any grass but my own.  I need to realize that it doesn’t matter what someone else’s life looks like, because God didn’t call me to be someone else.

I won’t say that there aren’t good examples out there to learn from, but somehow, instead of gleaning, I tend to pile condemnation on myself and end up feeling pretty hopeless about my meager attempts to succeed at life.  So, for now, I need to just focus on what’s going on inside this house and this family.  After all, it’s not like I need to look at someone else to see areas that need improvement.  And maybe by not looking at others, I can filter out the “very necessary” from the “that would be nice”.  Maybe I can decide how life should look based on who we are instead of who someone else is.  Maybe I can start seeing the good, unique, and gifted aspects of who we are and realize those can (and should!) be different from what someone else can claim.  I guess we’ll see.

When disappointments come, I often see myself for who I really am….and I don’t like it.  At all.  See, I hate being disappointed.  I usually go out of my way to have unnecessarily low expectations so that they don’t go unmet.  That’s probably not the most mature way to avoid disappointment, but it’s what I do.

Yet, somehow, disappointments still come.  Shocking, I know.  And when they do, I become childish.  I feel like God has let me down, so I get angry at Him.  I feel like people have let me down, so I get angry at them.  And then I see how faithless and undone I have become by what is often something relatively insignificant, and I get angry at myself.  Is this the real fruit of my life?  Not the good spiritual fruit of Galatians 5, but all of the bad fruit that would indicate a bad “tree”?

I don’t know how to respond.  On one hand, I think I just need more discipline…somehow, I need to figure out how to keep silent, and have an eternal perspective, and respond in faith-filled, heartfelt prayer…but in my own strength.  On the other hand, I think I shouldn’t have to do this in my own strength.  I think God should be doing something to help me…shouldn’t He?  In either case, I feel pretty hopeless.  If it’s up to me, then I feel certain that I will always completely fail.  If it’s up to God, then I wonder why in the world He hasn’t helped me so far.  I’ve been a Christian for pretty much all of my life, but at these times, I feel like such a baby in my faith, and it discourages me.  It’s hard to even want to try anymore.

But I will.

I wonder if that’s part of the lesson for me.  Being faithful in the trying.  Recognizing, again, that who I am is not who I need to be and always yearning to be better, for Him.  I wish the changing came easily.  I wish I had a character that even slightly resembled Christ.  I wish I could understand why things just don’t seem to sink in.  I wish I was more than I am.  But, for now, I just need to cling to the truth that He is faithful to complete the good work He has begun in me…whether I think it’s my effort or His, ultimately, He is the one who has promised to accomplish it.

Sometimes, it’s hard to write about the things that are on my mind and heart.  Sometimes, they are just too random that I feel incapable of forming cohesive sentences.  Sometimes, they are too personal…revealing more of me than I would like.  Sometimes, I worry that I might offend someone.  But sometimes, I feel like I am about to burst if I don’t write something, so even if the words come out in a confusing, embarrassing, offensive mess, I write.  That’s what this post is today.

There’s a lot on my heart and mind right now.  There are wonderings of whether I am really doing all I can for God.  I mean, I’m sure the answer is no, but am I possibly doing worse than I imagine?  I don’t necessarily feel like God has called me to a lot of soapbox-type of ministering.  What I feel compelled to is more often the opposite…closed rooms, silent moments of kneeling before Him, pleading with Him, “standing in the gap” for people and circumstances, believing with all my heart that God hears and answers.  But is there more?  I wonder and examine my heart and motives.  I second guess myself.  I think about my fears and question if they are hindering me from something more.  You know what, though?  I have come to the conclusion that God knows me and He is faithful to me.  What I mean is, He is going to let me know what I need to know.  If I have to wonder or worry, chances are, whatever I am wondering or worrying about is not important.  If I am honestly seeking Him, He will help me with the rest.

I also have been thinking today about how God sees us when we are hypocritical…when we honor Him with our lips, but our hearts are far from Him.  If we come to Him with the right words, the right outward expressions, but with our own plans and purposes, might we offend Him?  I know that one version of 1Corinthians 13 says that love takes no offense, but it seems like there were times when God did take offense in the Bible…even if that wasn’t the word used.  To one of the churches in Revelation (pardon me for not looking it up at the moment), He said that He wished they were either hot or cold, but because they were lukewarm, He would spit them out of His mouth.  Sounds a lot like offense to me.  And the condition of that offense sounds a lot like many Christians today.  We’ve put God on our level.  We’ve made Him our friend and confidant.  We’ve counted our plans as being as good as His, as long as they seem good, even if we haven’t consulted Him on them.  We’ve decided that He wants us to come and sing at Him with smiles and clapping for exactly 20 minutes, and that He will feel worshiped.  What I think?  He would prefer silence over performance.  He would take a heartfelt “thank you” over a declaration shouted because that’s what everyone else is doing.  He would rather half as many people show up at a church service if it meant that the appeal would be found in Him and not in the “everything else”. I think He’s jealous for our time and attention and praise.  I think He’s waiting to be truly exalted, which by necessity, means we will be low in comparison…humbled.  I think He wants to be seen as more than a friend…I think He wants to be seen as holy.  Or maybe, more appropriately, HOLY…because He’s not like us. He is so much more, and He deserves everything we have to give, and more.

Ugh.  I hate pretense.  I had written a couple other posts on here…an introduction, an attempt at something meaningful…but they weren’t me, honestly.  If you want to know me…well, I was gonna say you could keep reading this blog for a while, but no matter how long you read, you won’t really know me.

I think that’s a mistake a lot of people make – thinking that somehow reading words that have been pondered over, deleted and rewritten who knows how many times, left as unfinished thoughts until a convenient moment, polished and fashioned to paint the perfect picture…that those words will be the means to forming a true connection, to really knowing someone.  They won’t.  Or at least, they never have for me.

They have helped me maintain a connection with someone already truly known – someone who has heard me fumble for words, or have something come out the wrong way, or seen me turn beet red from embarrassment over something silly, and they have helped me learn a whole lot about countless other people.

But it’s weird and unnatural to find out information about your neighbor by checking their status updates and blogs, when you see them a couple times a week and neither of you can seem to manage more than a 10 second conversation.  It just makes me think that I shouldn’t know everything I know about them, and they shouldn’t know things about me either.  I can’t help but feel like knowledge of someone should be earned, not brazenly displayed as a cure to someone’s boredom in the middle of the day.

I’ve just realized lately that I don’t actually know anybody I see on a regular basis.  And they don’t know me.  At all.  We know a lot about each other, but that makes conversation even more difficult.  If you already know everything I did this week, how can we even start a conversation?  It’s frustrating, and isolating, and deceptive, and sometimes hurtful.

All that to say, you won’t really get to know me from what I write on here, but maybe you’ll identify with me occasionally, or get a new perspective on something, or maybe just find a momentary solution to your boredom some afternoon.  After all, there’s only so much you can expect to get out of some words on a screen.