mullings

"I pray, not for my problems to go away, or even for them to be made easy for me. I pray so that I may have the strength to handle them."

-paraphrased from Irwin Lutzer

Sometimes God slides little eye openers between my eyelids. This last Sunday, Palm Sunday, was one of those times. It truly shocks me how often I can start sliding into an attitude of speeding through life at my own hard headed, all-knowing pace--assuming that I have all the answers, that I don't need anyones help, that no one else's words will ever be new and refreshing to me.

The quotation at the top of the page was just one of the intriuging points Lutzer made in his Palm Sunday sermon. I mean, y'know, it's not like I didn't know that that was a strong point to make about prayer. It's just, other people sometimes (most times) have a more tangible way of saying it.

"Thy will be done"

my spirit is willing, but my flesh is oh so weak.

Realized in the space between two seconds, that I need to accept His cup.

Not the cup the cup my Bishop offers, not the cup my friend offers, not any other cup but His.

In all honesty, Forgiveness itself is not complicated. Though people, most definitely, are.

I'm not asking for it to be easy. I've never prayed that it be easy. My constant, continuous, ever grasping, ever growing prayer is for strength and for bendability. Pride and hatred can build up and seep in so quickly and unoticed. So quickly that really soul slicing tear wrenching things happen (i.e. losing speech powers during phone call with a brother, due to grinding out words that I never would've dreamt crying over. I never would have because I'd also have never dreamt I'd be a person uttering them).

And yet, I rest in the knowledge that He will never give me something I cannot handle...through Him. I am held. I am loved. I am cherished.

"this is hard"

Break me. Bend me. Mold me. Shape me.

"...but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is - his good, pleasing and perfect will." Romans 1:2b

"He gives power to the weak. He increases the strength of him who has no might." Isaiah 40:29

"Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you." Epeshians 4:31-32

..:proof that I really do get confused:..

..:what Lydia thinks is adoption proof:..