Hindsight…
Reread through some previous posts. Found this one from April 2008:
We’re now realizing that what we’ve been doing has been perfect for the time we’ve been doing it, but the things that we want to do with the next several years of our life – well, work interferes with it. Be it scheduling, the physicality of it, logistics, etc. The things we care about – our church community, each other, friends and family, and eventually our own family – are all things we have to say “no” to, or at least put off more than we should, in order to “do our job”.
I was talking to someone at my church about this tonight, and he said something simple and profound, something about a time in life where you realize work has to revolve around your life, not your life around your work.
Wow. Afterwards, I thought, “yeah. so?” because it DID seem so simple. And the more I thought of it the more I got it. As we get older, our priorities shift, our goals change – or perhaps they don’t change so much as mold into something different than we thought they were. When we were in our 20s, it was all about being happy at work, making money, finding out who we were. We didn’t care that our scheduling was, essentially, shit, because we still saw each other at home, at least enough (at least we thought that then). We moved to a different city a few years ago after he got laid off and didn’t have many friends so we didn’t realize we weren’t seeing them. We were church-hopping so we didn’t have community. And we were far from being ready to have kids.
All that has changed in the past year. We chose a community to live in, bought a house, have decided what church community to invest in, have made several friends, have a small group, and are wanting kids. We’re in a VERY different place than a few years ago.
I wonder sometimes why we don’t listen to ourselves, our community, our friends, our mentors in the first place.
That second paragraph is where it’s at. Thanks, SM. This is why we consider you a spiritual mentor, is because of simple, profound things like that.
Resolution
I resolve to do better about sharing my thoughts rather than bottling them all up.
I resolve to be as authentically myself as possible, to be genuine and honest.
I resolve to care how God sees me, as valuable because I’m His creation and His daughter, and not through a cultural lens of how I do submitting to an arbitrary list of do’s and don’t’s that God doesn’t talk about.
I resolve to not give a shit what other people think.
Further, I resolve to not pay heed to people who may think I’ve “gone astray” or done something horribly wrong because I said “shit” instead of “shoot”, because honestly, what’s the difference?
I also resolve to be respectful of people whose opinions may differ than mine, and not say words like “shit” or drink alcohol or talk about “Family Guy” in their presence.
I resolve to listen to music and read books that challenge my creativity and make me think.
I resolve to be more thankful for what I have, keeping in mind how freaking lucky I am.
I resolve to question everything and not blindly accept anything. Only through this will my faith strengthen.
I resolve to not be spoon-fed doctrine, theology, philosophy, sociology, or any other ideal just because a certain person or position stated it (be they president, preacher, writer, musician, religious leader, journalist, family member, artist).
Also…
I resolve to listen to some music and watch some TV shows purely for their entertainment value, not because I’m establishing my life’s values or viewpoints from them.
I resolve to eat fun foods, say funny things, watch funny things, laugh a lot, and let loose because these things are good for the soul.
I resolve not to think my ways are better than someone else’s just because they’re different, and not to think that my calling is to change them to do things MY way.
I resolve to follow God’s will as best as I know it, which is to love Him and love others. Beyond that the details are extraneous, unless of course He tells us different.
I resolve to challenge people lovingly to get off their asses and do something for a person in need and BE the Church. And I resolve to try my best to do the same with more love, compassion, and consistency than in the past.
I resolve to still love you, whether you agree with me on any given thing or not. Because in the end, it doesn’t matter if we’re all the same, look the same, think the same, act the same, listen/watch the same, sing the same, say the same. What matters is that we worked out our faith the best way we knew how, and we worked to progress the Kingdom of God in our own way. (However, I will also resolve to delete your comments or emails if they are unnecessarily mean, disagreeable (please disagree agreeably, and if you don’t know how to do this I’d recommend refraining from saying anything at all), hateful, or offensive.)
These things I resolve. And I will most certainly fail.
Been a long time…
I need an outlet, so hopefully I’ll do better about this blogging thing. If no one reads it, I don’t care. I’ll have my outlet.
Feel free to plug in, if you wish. Apparently you can “bookmark” these sites nowadays.
