Lent: replacing Jesus with your weak spots

Wednesday, February 17, 2010: The beginning season of Lent.

I've never practiced the sacrifice of Lent before. In some ways I never understood the concept of giving up something. I'll be completely honest: I'm selfish. Why should I give anything up? And really what's the point--I'll just start again after 40 days is up? Last year I remember trying to give up soda, but in one particular situation I had sat down to eat a meal with my family and halfway through dinner, and halfway through my can of pop being empty I realized I had made a commitment to not drink pop till Easter. Well, that promise obviously wasn't taken seriously. So I was pretty leery of trying anything this year.

BUT....

A nutrition plan was presented to the Ginghamsburg staff and also anyone that wanted to join for the Lenten season. I listened intently....pondered it for about a week, and then I thought: "I don't really like what I see in the mirror, I don't like the extra weight that I carry around my midsection" "I don't feel very energetic throughout the day and into the evening, why not give it a try." The new nutrition plan is called "The Paleo Diet". I particularly don't like calling it a diet, it's more of a change of eating patterns.

Basically the gist of Paleo is:
Meat, Nuts, Seeds, Green Vegetables, little fruit, No Starch, Sugar or Dairy.

One of my goals is to strive to eat in complete meals: protein, fat and green with a 20 oz bottle of water and one fish oil supplement. I should eat no less than 5 times per day, and not go longer than 3 hours in between meals. I also get a variety day, which will be for me MONDAYS, where I can eat the thing that I've been craving all week. For me, this will be a Boston Stoker ghirardelli caramel mocha...for Grounds for Pleasure this will be a chocolate monkey (banana and chocolate steamed with milk into pure loveliness!--only place in town that has it, besides Grounds for Thought in good ole' Bowling Green). I'm also going to add weight training to my normal routine. For me, my week will hopefully look like this--

Monday-fitness bootcamp at the Avenue for 60 minutes, then 10 minutes on the treadmill.
Tuesday--weight training on gym floor, 10 minutes treadmill
Wednesday--fitness bootcamp for 60 minutes, then in the afternoon during my long work day, hit the tennis ball around for 30 minutes.
Thursday--weight training on gym floor, 10 minutes treadmill
Friday--day off
Saturday--elliptical in basement and light weights in living room, unless over by Avenue
Sunday--day off

Each week Chastity, our fitness coordinator for this Ginghamsburg plan, will take all of our measurements, record them and then also take our individual picture. I'm just going to throw my measurements out there--I'm not going to be ashamed like I usually would be. I want to achieve weight loss and body fat loss, and this is who I am now. Hopefully by the end I'll have some different results. (but I'm not posting my pictures online! gasp!) And yes, you are reading those last few numbers correctly. I do weight 129 lbs and 37.5 % of my body is fat. (healthy for women is about 22%) I felt like having a barfing contest right then and there.

Yesterday evening, I had to run to Kroger to pick up a few items and unintentionally went down the candy aisle (I was trying to pick out a new flavored drink powder! I Swear!) Right when I got to the candy I LOVE, any gummy item with sugar ALL OVER IT, I wanted some so badly. I even hunted for some bags that said "sugar free". I found some....picked then up, flipped them over and read the contents: all I can say about that is BOLONEY! it contains sugar alcohol -still a form of sugar but handled in the body of a diabetic easier, and it contains Milk. ??? Not even going to go there on that one. But I wanted to purchase that candy so bad it hurt, but then I resorted back to why I was doing this in the first place. So I kept repeating " Jesus---I really want this one little piece of candy right now, but I need you MORE." .....and I walked away.

The other commitment I'm making for this Lenten season is to not log into facebook for a full 46 days. For the week before Ash Wednesday, I tried to count up in my head how many times I would get online to log into facebook. The one night alone I logged in 3 different times from the couch just looking at other people's pages. I realized that I was becoming disconnected to my husband and my little guy Moey. I wasn't paying any attention to them, during the time that I could. What was I doing? What kind of use is this with my time? So I've made the decision....soo long facebook. I'll catch back up with you in 46 days. I believe this will make a big change in my life. I'm going to trust Jesus that it will.

see ya'll back in a week with hopefully lighter calculations!

Jesus for President

So I've been reading this new book called "Jesus for President" by Shaine Claiborne and Chris Haw. I've been trying to take the book slow, reading only a couple of pages at a time. Some things are just worth sharing.....if you're interested check it out at your local library.....

"Remember when old John the Baptizer sent his disciples to ask Jesus whether he was the one they were expecting and he didn't answer with a simple yes? Jesus instead told them to go tell John what they saw him doing. He knew that John could read the trail of crumbs. John knew that when lepers were healed, the blind saw, the dead rose, and the good news was preached to the poor, the one they were awaiting was indeed here.

What does our trail of crumbs look like? If someone asks if we are Christ followers, can we say, 'Tell me what you see'? Is there enough evidence to prove that we are taking after the slaughtered Lamb? What if they ask the poor around us? What if they ask our enemies? Would they say that we love them? Christians haven't always looked like Jesus. Perhaps the greatest barrier to Christ has been Christians who pronounce Jesus so loudly with their lips and deny him so loudly with their lives. ---(A recent survey of young adults who are 'familiar outsiders' to Christianity showed that the three most common perceptions of Christians by onlookers are that we are anti-homosexual (an image held by 91% of the folks surveyed), judgements (87 percent), and hypocritical (85) percent. How sad that the very things that Jesus scolded the religious elites around him for are the very things for which Christians are now know. We have a major image problem. To hear more about this study by the Barna research team, check out the book Unchurched (Baker, 2007) by our friends David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons.)

In the South, we have a saying: 'You are the spittin' image' of someone. Folks still speculate over how exactly the phrase originated, but I've heard it put like this. It's shorthand for "spirit and image." Spittin' image. (Go ahead and try it out: it won't hurt.) For us, it meant more than just that you look like that person. It goes beyond just appearance to include character and temperament. It means that you remind people of that person. You have their charisma. You do the same things they did. In the truest sense, Christians are to be the spittin' image of Jesus in the world. We are to be the things he was. We are to preach the things he preached and live the way he lived. We are to follow in the footsteps of our rabbi so closely that we get his dust on us. We are to remind the world of Jesus. The criterion for whether something is a manifestation of the kingdom of God is the person of Jesus. Does it look like him? "Be imitators of God" (Eph 5:1)--that word imitate derives from the same word as mimic, like a mime. "
pages 230-231

on page 232 is a quote by Aristides and the Emperor Julian--very contrasting!

"It is the Christians, O Emperor, who have sought and found the truth, for they acknowledge God. They do not keep for themselves the goods entrusted to them. They do not covet what belongs to others. They show love to their neighbors. They do not do to another what they would not wish to have done to themselves. They speak gently to those who oppress them, and in this way they make them their friends. It has become their passion to do good to their enemies. They live in the awareness of their smallness. Every one of them who has anything gives ungrudgingly to the one who has nothing. If they see a traveling stranger, they bring him under their roof. They rejoice over him as over a real brother, for they do not call one another brothers after the flesh, but they know they are brothers in the Spirit and in God. If they hear that one of them is imprisoned or oppressed for the sake of Christ, they take care of all his needs. If possible they set him free. If anyone among them is poor or comes into want while they themselves have nothing to spare, they fast two or three days for him. In this way they can supply any poor man with the food he needs. This, O Emperor, is the rule of life of the Christians, and this is their manner of life."
--Aristides 137 AD

"Those godless Galileans feed our poor in addition to their own."
--Emperor Julian

an airplane moving at 500 miles an hour

How do you know if you're serving and loving Jesus with your whole heart?

I've been struggling with this issue since the beginning of 2010. I slept a lot over Christmas break. I didn't set my alarm on my cell phone and I let the sunrise and my internal clock tell me what time was appropriate for me to awaken for the day. I figured that my body knows better than my mind does sometimes as to when I will be fully rested. So I slept in usually till about 9am. (some of you are probably gasping--9am--that's not late---but for me, trust me, it is).

I headed back to work January 05 with a spirit of frustration. My husband was not called in for a sub job that day, and it took all the energy that I could muster to continue getting in the shower, continue blow drying my hair...etc.... just continuing my morning routine. I even woke up a bit earlier than I normally would so that I could spend some time with Jesus to hopefully prevent this terrible attitude that was forming in my brain and affecting how I treated Matt. I asked for a transformed heart and to have the attitude of Jesus instead of the attitude of the world. Needless to say, I think I even looked at Matt once and snarled at him.....it just wasn't fair.

I figured I just didn't want to get back into the routine of going to work. I loved being in my pjs till 1pm and doing things on my own agenda. But then one week continued into two weeks, and two weeks went into three......

Have you ever woke up one morning out of the blue and wondered----How in the world did I end up in this place?

The past couple of weeks I have been reevaluating my life and what I spend my time on most--work. Do I feel passionate about what I put my time and energy into? I've been reading more and more about boundary lines in your life, the boundaries that God asks each of us to set in place in our lives to promote healthy relationships. And I've realized that I have allowed many boundary lines to be crossed with my relationship with God, my relationship with my husband, relationships with friends, and relationships with work and the coworkers that are associated with work. I've been praying through what that looks like as I move forward in placing new boundaries in my life--and putting then in place in a healthy way.

I've also noticed that my lack of energy is related to feelings of burnout. I was reading another blog and the topic was written about finding yourself feeling burned out by everyday tasks. He defined burnout for himself as: "Burnout happened when I became increasingly unable to inject my unique blend of passion and personality into an environment that could meet a legitimate need in the world."

Once of the things that I have noticed is my lack of energy to be creative in my surroundings. To my own fault. I think as humans, sometimes we find ourselves doing things of habit, and before we know it we realize that all forms of uniqueness have been stolen from our lives. We do things to get things done...and we wind up at the end of the day feeling spent and having not much of a viewpoint that differs from a robot.

Another thing that I have noticed (which Matthew and I have spoken about this and he doesn't mind me sharing) is that when I look back over these past 5 years, I have had many different jobs that have had me doing many different tasks. But one thing remains, they haven't been things that create more creativeness in me. With the struggle of Matt trying to find a full time, permanent teaching job, I feel I have found myself having the life sucked right out of me. I work because I have to. If I don't work, we can't pay the bills. I've realized that I have been feeling trapped. Feelings of having a lack of freedom to be who I really think God has made me, because if I don't work, we won't survive. I've noticed that I've been feeling a bit resentful because I don't have the freedom to go back to school, or take art classes at a local center, because we either don't have the money for tuition, or because my work schedule doesn't allow me to pursue those dreams. Sometimes I feel like a caged animal that is being backed into a corner of the room. I find myself not breathing and holding my breath. Sometimes I feel so suffocated.

Have you ever been out in an open field, or taking a walk through a set of trees and you see an airplane flying overhead waiting to land soon? You look up as it flies directly overhead-- you see all the parts of the plane clearly. You wonder if the people in the plane are looking down at you, as you are looking up at them. You see the logos on the side, you hear the rumble in your heart from the engines. And then, like a ton of bricks falling on your head you realize that this plane is probably flying at 500 miles an hour, but it looks as if it is going so.....slow....

That is how I feel like my life is happening....each event is so slow....but literally the years are flying by and I don't know how I landed at this place.

So what am I to do?

"Burn leavened bread as a thank offering and brag about your freewill offerings--boast about them, you Israelites, for this is what you love to do," declared the Sovereign Lord. "I gave you empty stomachs in every city and lack of bread in every town, yet you have not returned to me, declares the Lord." Amos 3:6-7

I feel like we have went from town to town, trying to find work for Matt. The Lord has given us plentiful times and given us times of need.

I fully believe that when I go to Jesus each morning and I ask him to open my eyes, heart and mind to the things of his Word that I need to hear, I believe that He will do so. This morning I read this. And it has left me with many many questions. Lord when have I not returned to you with my whole heart? When during these 5 years have I not sought your guidance, asked for your provision in lean times, asked for your comfort in times of grief, thanked you Lord for all you've done for us, and asked how we could serve you more?

I'm feeling at a loss for words. I don't know what more I can do to overcome this...Lord what more can I do with my time? Is it all just a matter of having the right attitude with a response full of reverence? I just don't know anymore....