Coming to Terms With Self

Looking out my back door window, I couldn't help but feel how perfect this morning is. It isn't your typical sunny morning. No. The sky is grey as gosling down feather. Clouds roll inconspicuously by in a flat painted finish. If the world was just as surreal, it would make one wonder about reality. In starking contrast trees and grass added the excitement in view. It is a hopeful, silent excitement. It's hard to describe. It's a feeling so rare, that I wonder if I am the only one to experience it. It has been raining, off and on. The recent tropical storms far south in the gulf are to be thanked for that. Most definitely, my newly budding flowers thank God for that. I haven't been the responsible gardener that I hoped to be when I planted their seeds. Staring at the scenery. A line from Howl's Moving Castles floats in among my fleeting thoughts. "Somehow, when you're old, all you want to do is stare at the scenery."

Old, no, I'm not old, but I've grown. It's been one year and a month since Chris and I were married. It was a happy year, full of change, excitement, even tears and sadness. It's enligtening, I find, to be thinking of the years in review. Thinking about what I once was as compared to now. I'm sure my friends see it. I'm not the shy young girl hiding behind books but a fully realized woman. I'm more apt to talk for one, I have more opinnions and don't fail share them with anyone around me. It was happiness that changed me. I find confidence in myself that I never knew was there. I find that I'm an actual person. It's strange how love changes things. Love and happiness, that Is.

A year ago, I had an agenda. I was to finish college, become an emerging artist, and be halfway, if not through a whole novel. I'm totally different. I've only finished my AA and oddly enough, I'm okay with that. Where once I thought that a degree means everything in this world including personal standing, now I think of moral standings and everything but intellect. I've finished a total of 3 canvases in the past year, not quite enough to make a name for myself. Those 3 canvases now hang on various walls in my house, or in my lesson area, all for my benefit. How selfish is that! And that novel, has about 4 pages to it, where in the last paragraph I lost my whole reason for writing.

I'm not the same person. I've changed more over the last few years than I've ever done in my whole life. For once in my life, I am certain about my future. I found that I love teaching. Perhaps that was the very gift that God gave me, but for all my selfish motives desired to cover it up, with so called, "declarations of independence." Contrary to what my mother told me, I love being the housewife. Here's the part where all the housewives tell me, "Just you wait another couple years!" But really, I love making the home, pleasing and comfortable. My motive, my husband. With all the stress he has had (good stress) he deserves to come home and unwind in a clean and uncluttered home. We have no worries about finances, a huge blessing! We are even looking to buy our first home in one year! The rest of my college career is planned out and waiting to happen. I have no complaints. I can't even complain about the weather.
I know, it will happen. All those not so wonderful moments in life, but maybe I'll remember that life's really not that bad in a larger view. In fact, It's pretty amazing.

steel toe boots

argh!!!!!!! i should wear steel toe boots when my toes get stepped on. Then it wont hurt so much.

Cry

I've read the postmarked books that a friend of mine has.  It's a really cool idea and it makes money without ever writing a book.  I wish I had thought of it.  People anonomously send in letters and postcards alike with their deepest darkest secrets.  It's really interesting.  The first few books were amusing to read, nothing serious was in it.  The third edition has some heavy stuff in it, though.  Sometimes it is good to tell someone or anyone your secret just to get it off your shoulders.  The idea seems like a good one. Then maybe if you tell the right person, you don't feel alone or singled out. Maybe you'd feel that there are people who understand your pain and support you and even let you cry on your shoulder.  In the third edition, many people admited to being raped or molested but were to embarrassed to tell anyone about it.  Some were ashamed that they found that they liked it.   It makes me want to cry.  What kind of world do we live in? 

  It makes me wonder how these people live.  Do they think they are beautiful or handsome?  My husband has a poem on his laptop about an abundant lady.  It's very descriptive.  And in the end he says she is beautiful.   I think that's beautiful. I wonder if these people have people in their lives that think they are beautiful.  My husband tells me I'm pretty every day.  I wonder if they ignore the comment with loads of faked humility of just dismiss it.  I wonder if they are brave enough to apreciate it. I wonder if they've cried themselves to sleep countless nights wishing for someone to love and to know them for who they are.  I wonder if they pray that God  would take the shame away.  I wonder how many practice the perfect smile in the bathroom mirror. 

Why does life have to hurt so much? I want to cry with these people surround them with hugs and tell them I understand. Everything will be okay, there are people in life that make life worthwhile.  But then I ask myself, were those empty words or not?

Thursday Morning

Beautiful day.

I wish I were outside.

I hope it's not cold.

But my house is a mess.

And I despise the sight of ugly wires!

Help!

Wholly Man

"The Temptation of Jesus." I silently read the subtitle aloud in my book.  Already, my mind was rushing through the context of the New Testament story. "Jesus goes into the desert,  Satan tempts him with bread and jumping off the cliff and the whole 'you can have my kingdom' thing."  I had already gotten my piece out of the story.  If you ask me, Satan was pretty stupid to tempt Jesus.  I mean, he's God for crying out loud.  I considered skipping over it. The Subtitle, "Jesus Begins His work in Galilee," sounded much more interesting. "No, I said I'd read through Matthew." Reluctantly I focused on the first word.  

Somehow I thought that when I read each word of the Bible slowly, it might count for something in Heaven.   Like when I ask Jesus about some instance in my life when I get in Heaven He may reply with something that starts with--Remember when I spent 40 days in the desert?  Perhaps actually reading it slowly will make me remember it, even after death.  

I read down to the sixth verse of chapter 4. That was when I really got into it.   "He has put his angels in charge of you. They will catch you in their hands so that you will not hit your foot on a rock." Satan was tempting Jesus for the second time, inviting him to jump off a cliff.  (Honestly!)  The next few texts read "Psalm 91:11-12." My Bible has these references throughout the Bible and I never bothered to look them up. I thought I understood pretty well what the verses said and I did not need a 2nd source or background info. This time was different though.  It wouldn't hurt and I was curious about it.  Flipping the previous pages I found the passage with no problem.  Psalms 91 starts out with this verse: "Those who go to God Most High for safety will be protected by the Almighty."  Stop.  Is this right?  Psalms 91:11-12, okay that's the verse.  The verse that Satan quotes is in this passage.  I read the whole passage. In Psalms, the you means everyone who goes to God for safety, comfort, love, completeness.

Not just Jesus, but all of us can place claim on Psalms 91. 

Do you realize what Satan is revealing about God?  God, Jesus, Him and all his many aspects is WHOLLY MAN. I've always read the temptation of Jesus and particularly that verse to mean that God was God. So when I read "He has put his angels in charge of you" I said to myself: " Well of course, he's God's son! Of Course God has angels surrounding him!"  In my mind Jesus was more like an enlightened version of man than man capable of failing.  This changes the whole concept of the story.   

Jesus is wholly man.  

Jesus gets hungry.   Especially after forty days of fasting I bet he was famished!   I have afriend who did a forty day fast.  She ate soup but it was still a forty day fast.  I love food and I couldn't imaging how hungry and how many cravings I would have after one week let alone forty days.  I bet, as God is the creator of all creation that he loves food too!  I mean fresh baked bread...Goat's meat....Hebrew reuben sandwiches.....how could God not love food?  

Jesus meets pride face to face.

And I get riled at the thought of someone calling something of mine their own.  The same pride the same feeling we get from something we call our own is the same feeling that Jesus dealt with from day to day.  I am proud of my work, my life, my acheivements....sound familiar? Jesus had every right to say this is my handiwork, but he didn't.  At that time he chose not to be wholly God or even half or one quarter God.  At that time and all the way 'til his death, He chose to be 100% Human.  Just like me and everybody else is human. 

Jesus was susceptible to flaunts.

He could have said look what I can do! I AM SPECIAL...more so than the likes of you.  But he didn't. He didn't jump the cliff to prove Satan. I do that.  Sometimes I play the piano louder than need be on purpose so that someone would say, wow.    Jesus didn't and he was wholly man, not some alien mix of the supernatural and mortality.  He was human. 

I had heard from a Pastor that the church needs to think as if they were unbelievers in order to reach unbelievers.  You know, get rid of all the churchy habits that make no sense to someone new to the congregation.  We need to put the bottom rung back on the ladder so new believers can reach Jesus too.   It never occurred to me that, that was what Jesus did. Jesus came down from the unattainable, 'you have to be perfect to get in heaven', heaven and said, see I'm just like you, no gimmicks, no tricks and not only will I get you a ticket into heaven, but I will show you how to live for me on earth.

Jesus said it was possible

He gave us hope.

Because Jesus, God was wholly man.

Night Scene

The sun makes it a habit of setting quickly in the winter. the worst of the season has passed.  Only a cool breeze floats by every now and then.  Trees are still barren of their leaves.  Their naked limbs leave a silhouetted impression against the setting sun and lingering city lights. In the hard wind of dead winter they give the impression of an ominous haunting.  They leave one with the feeling of loneliness and depression, but not now. 

 Now the trees have found beauty in their nakedness. The simplicity of creation is upheld in God's most unfeeling season.  Stripped bare of all lavishness there lies the true beauty and greatness beneath the foliage: endurance and strength.  They form the outline of the setting sun. Images of a hot burning sahara and umbrella trees reinforce the scene before my eyes.  Leafless trees mimick the umbrella trees burned into my cerebellum from years of National Geographic.  Underneath it all, the British man's heavy accent slowly narrates the african scene and even the one before me.  

Barely a minute, yellow becomes gold and orange until the sky's canvas is cloaked in hues of purple and finally night sky. From my window tree limbs shake with the wind. Like a tortured soul they point to the one lone star that appears in the sky.  Knowlege tells me the star is a planet, not too far from our own. However the trees disagree.  "Here, here," They whisper, "Here is our hope above the sky."

Creative Drainage

I believe that I am creatively drained.

Or maybe it's my sore throat.

I think one of my students gave it to me.