Musings of a Muddled Mess

Honesty is hard. Mostly it's hard because not everyone is trust worthy. Not everyone we open ourselves up to will be understanding, non-judgemental, helpful, kind, or loving. What's the most difficult part of your life, right now? How many people really know the depth of that situation? The struggles? The fear? The anxiety? One of the hardest things I have ever dealt with only about 7 people in my life know the full depth of. I really struggled with it for a while, it broke me. Which in turn wasn't making the situation any better. The more it hurt, the harder I struggled with it. Till one day I opened up and told someone. Now I will admit, my choice while trustworthy wasn't my best choice for my emotional state at the time. I quickly realized that and within days let someone else in on the situation. Someone I knew would keep me grounded. With each person I chose to open up to I found something really important, support. Sometimes the things that are the hardest in our ...

On several instances lately I sat listening to someone talking about stories in the bible and belittle the people for the way they acted. For instance, the Israelites, straight out of Egypt, just crossed the red sea and now they have been traveling for days, putting distance between themselves and the Egyptians, no water for 3 days and they are concerned(Exodus 15:22-). They find bitter water but not suitable to drink. So they run to Moses. In listening to a discussion on this the conclusion was almost overwhelmingly that they were complaining. I sat there wondering though, is it complaining or simply voicing that human concern. I mean, think about it. God built in us the ability to thrive under various circumstances by using our ability to think, reason and problem solve. Part of that is to see problems as they arise. Now some of us are much more adept at seeing problems coming than others. Something about mothers, they know what trouble you're going to cause long before you do it...

Too many thoughts today. I was going back looking at past conversations where I had really started to think about Gideon. What I saw in the conversations was interesting. 3 months ago, I had zero confidence that God could ever use me in a big way. 3 months! granted at this point God's been working on me in this particular area for almost a year, but the last 3 months there has been some serious progress. I have reached a point where I am trusting God. Now, don't misunderstand, that doesn't mean life has gotten magically easier or that I am not struggling my way through this, but I have made a choice to trust God. We always talk about how love is a choice, we have to choose to love people even when we don't like them very much, especially your spouse. Trust can be very similar. There are many instances of broken trust in my life, and they can either lead to me not trusting(that person, situation, or anyone in general) or I can learn from it, but still choose to trust. I ...

Today as I was folding a mountain of laundry(reality check, it was probably a mole hill) I was thinking about someone I hadn't seen in 3 or 4 years that I may see in the near future. I am one that tends to run "what if" scenarios. I started thinking about catching up, what life is happening now that is different from the last time I saw them. All normal catching up stuff, family, jobs, etc. Then I realized that not only is it likely that the church we are involved in is different but my involvement within the church has changed. All of a sudden I found myself mentally telling them "I'm loving most minutes of it." After coming back from my musical interlude that thought triggered, I realized that as a parent and christian it seems that the general expectation of life is to be in a good place constantly. A few years ago I realized my kids were learning the old church song "happy all the time" in our kids program. This bugged me... a lot! If you...

Last week, late one evening I got a text from a friend I go to church with. As I opened it I wasn't surprised to see that they were letting me know they had just finished watching The Greatest Showman, and they loved it. What was surprising was the part that asked if I would help teach a lesson to the youth at an upcoming lock-in. Ok, I'm trying to push myself to do more teaching, it's not my comfort zone, but I feel God telling me it's a skill I need to work on, plus it was "help" how bad can that be right?! I agreed and asked when, not realizing it was less than a week away. Shortly after sending my response I saw a text from that infamous friend who told me they had thrown me under the bus and them self with me. Ok, now it all makes more sense, some days I really have to stop and think, "with friends like these, who needs enemies?" The next day I started freaking out. I have never in my life lead any sort of lesson, discussion, bible study, et...

Some people are natural dreamers and go getters. They see a goal and they tackle it. That is NOT me. As I have stated before I do not dream well. I plan. I am practical. I am a "what if" person. I have contingencies on contingencies.  We're taking a trip to the zoo? ok who's going, what kind of accidents are likely to happen(medical or potty), does it come at a time people tend to be hungry, what is the potential weather, how long will we be there? Practical problems can be prepared for, I will take a bag of things we might need and plan the time and route according to the predictable needs of those in the group. The biggest difference with dreams is there are too many unknowns to either answer the what ifs or even know which what ifs might come into play. Dreams are ambiguous. You don't know what the true outcome will be. All that said I am allowing/forcing myself to be more comfortable with the concept of the unknown. This is incredibly hard. I like control. W...

The greatest showman hit DVD yesterday, so of course by 24 hours of owning it I have watched it twice, once on my own and once distracted with kids. Now I promise, I will not constantly be posting about it, but I really have such a love for this movie. There are so many deep thoughts here. Of course one of my biggest questions is how close to P.T. Barnum's life do they stick. I have never really heard anything redemptive about this ruthless business man and conman beside the fact that he created the modern circus. In spite of that curiosity I love the characters of this movie, real or fictitious. The dreamers, the faithful companions, the reluctant adventurers, the jaded, the bruised, the manipulators, and so many more. When I first watched this movie I instinctively hated never enough, from the first listen. The character singing it has a drive and a passion that is reckless, and her sights are set on Barnum, who has a wife and children. He doesn't see it though. Her song is...