" So here's what I want you to do.."

i've been blogging for 4.5 years.

when i began i was 33 {you're shocked, you thought i was younger, right?}. i was a stay at home wife and home schooling mommy of 3.  i was living the life here i'd always hoped would someday be mine, BUT i was so discontent.  people said {as they always do}, "enjoy it, it goes by fast."  i knew they were right, but what i really needed was for Someone to lead me by the hand and show me how to enjoy it.

i was also coming out of another string of physical illness as well as another season of depression {just weeks before my first post i'd had a hysterectomy}.  i was really sad.  sad that i was sick all. the. time. from my perspective i was a hindrance to my family.  i was sad that i could not physically be all the wife and mommy and human being that i wanted to be.  i was also mad.  mad that God kept allowing me to be weak while everyone around me seemed so strong. 

in the privacy of my home i sulked and asked "why?" a lot. 

it's really hard to live in joy when you're so consumed with "why." 

 

finally i was a newly recovering pharisee.  as a pharisee i had mastered the black & white, self-righteous, graceless, look-like-and-act-like-a-christian life.  my haughty attitude lead me to speak the most nauseating words, "God calls us to 'be perfect as He is perfect.' well,  i'm just about perfect, God might as well take me home." {GAG!}   thankfully God in His mercy showed me just how "perfect" i was NOT, and served me a Marie Callander's restaurant worth of humble-pies!  the Father made it crystal clear that He was not as rigid as i'd created Him to be.  as a recovering pharisee i was stumbling a lot as i learned to walk for the first time in humility and grace.  hindsight being 20/20 i see that the stumbling offered me ample opportunity to learn to live in humility and grace. i needed to live in both before i could extend them {life would be so much simpler if it could be lived presently with hindsight's perspective}. 

i had no idea the impact blogging would have on my life.  

no idea.

my s.i.l. lindsey was new to blogville.  she knew i was a journaler.  i recall her telling me that i should blog, that i would love it.  i honestly didn't know what a blog was. i snooped around and stalked a few bloggers for a little over a week, and then on good friday 2007 i posted my first post {i look back and think it is a sweet detail that i began blogging on a good friday. good things happen on good fridays that have changed the entire course of my life}.

a strange thing happened when i began blogging, i started searching high and low in my stay-at-home life, in my story, in my weakness, in my recovering pharisee, for "blog-worthy moments" to share on my little piece of the internet world {it was strange to me then, but is the norm now}.

 i didn't realize then that those "blog-worthy moments" were actually "praise worthy moments."   those moments were causing me to take my eyes off my "woe is me,"

and instead to 

"enter His gates with thanksgiving in my heart, to enter His courts with praise!"  

and boy, did i NEED in there. 

the result was that this once joyless, taking up residence in defeat {instead of victory} me, was wrapping my arms around the life that God had given me!!

blogging had become a form of worship!
with my eyes no longer on me, but on His goodness, i decreased and God increased.
 
God increased in my relationship with my husband and children.
God increased in my weakness as he became my strength. 
God increased as things in me were put to death so real-Jesus could be born in me.

"So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life - your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life - and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him."

  Romans 12:1

The Message


How do you wrap your arms around the life God has given you?

Have you ever considered that blogging is a form of worship?