On expectations and disappointments

God has really been dealing with me over this last month. Lent has ended, and I really was hoping to catch a break, but I feel like my learning and changing moves forward faster than it did during that time of reflection. Like perhaps my Lenten time was preparing me for the real changes about to take place.

The list of themes for my morning devotions grows longer, and yet they're all related if you really take a good look at them.

• Idolatry*
• Fear
• Forgiveness
• Pride*
• God's Perfect Love
• Boundaries

I starred idolatry and pride because I really had no idea why those were even on the list, but time has proven a good teacher as I continue to peel back the layers of my boundary-less life to discover enough idolatry and pride for a small town full of people.

Recently I have had a few disappointments of which I was unable to really pinpoint the source. I understood the physical world source (people being human), but for the life of me, I was unable to understand why I was so emotionally distraught by the situations. Because of the level of disappointment, instead of heading into prayer and fasting as I probably should have, I ate half a pizza, drank Coke, and stopped counting points - my old "go to" idol to pacify myself for a while. What was I afraid of? Why was I too proud to accept God's Perfect Love and just let Him deal with it? Why couldn't I just let it go?

I had pointed out a few things to a close friend last week - on her high expectations for others and her my perception of her lack of trust, but last Friday when I was driving to my counseling appointment (this couldn't have come at a better time) I realized I was pointing these things out to MYSELF. This always happens! Recognizing others' character flaws before understanding the reason I can recognize them so easily is because I know them so well! UGH!

I really had thought that I had let go a lot of my high expectations for others. To be fair, I think I have. I don't let a lot of what others do bother me like I used to. I used to just rant like a lunatic when somebody lacked common sense to do something they should clearly be able to do. Even those who constantly chip away at my sanity have a significantly smaller effect on me than they had in the past. But apparently there are some underlying expectations I had for others I didn't even know I had until last week.

I'm still a people pleaser, although I definitely monitor myself a lot more than I ever have. Last week I hurt my friend - a sister in Christ, and the remorse I felt was so deep, I wanted to suck back a lot of what I had said, but I know that's not how life works. I apologized in front of the group - to the group and to her. And although some of the group sort of acknowledged my apology, I had a tough time for days afterwards because not one person accepted my apology or forgave me outwardly. Not one.

For some reason this hurt me to the core, and I was sucked into several days of self-loathing, which I know is not from God but from the enemy himself. I can identify the attacks from Satan now pretty easily, and I knew what was coming, but for some reason I just couldn't muster up the energy to take up my Shield of Faith and Sword of the Spirit and meet him head on. I was already drained and exhausted.

So I let the devil beat up on me for a few days. Until yesterday when I actually had a day where I wasn't running all over creation. When my prayer timer went off (yes, I set a timer to go off throughout the day so I can stop and pray) I actually sat down and prayed out loud two or three times during the afternoon while I was doing laundry and vacuuming. No reading. No music. Just an honest and raw conversation with the Lord to ask Him to bless those whose behavior was hurtful to me and, more importantly, for me to be able to openly and honestly communicate what I need to others.

I practiced this with my boyfriend this weekend. I told him that I'm going to try and be more conscious about apologizing, but when I do apologize, I'd like to hear him acknowledge it and accept it. For some reason I need that right now. And guess what??? I did. And he did, and it made a difference! But now how do I communicate that to others? Or do I? It seems like a big request and a high expectation.

Back to prayerfully contemplating this one. I am thankful to the Lord for filling my heart and soul with His word, and at times when I accept it, His perfect love.

Today's graven images

For lent I gave up Facebook and sugar. It's going well, but part of that Lenten process was for me to pick up some different, better habits, and I feel like it has drawn me closer to God. I pray more often during the day, and I'm more focused. But one thing I know God told me at the beginning of Lent was that He wanted me to write more often. And then my computer broke...

So I started writing by hand, journaling a lot, and processing my reading each morning through hand written pages. It was frustrating for a number of reasons. My handwriting is hard to read, first off. Also my brain has gone into overdrive since I've started typing so much, and I seem to be able to process much faster, but my hand doesn't move that fast with a pencil. I had to really slow down.

At the end of February I began to notice a pattern in my reading, messages I was receiving through church or podcasts, books that I had been reading. Idolatry. Specifically I was reading a novel about Hezekiah's childhood up through his reign as king. At one point, Hezekiah and his grandfather Ezekiel were in conversation about idolatry. Hezekiah refused to worship any God. He was trained by an Egyptian scholar who also worshiped nothing. Or so they thought . . . but as the conversation went, Ezekiel was able to explain to Hezekiah that what you worship doesn't have to be an idol or another thing proclaiming itself as a deity. If you put anything in front of your relationship with God, it is your idol. Your graven image. For Hezekiah it was his knowledge and his education.

Whoa.

I went back to the book study that I had done with church on the book Breathing Underwater by Richard Rohr. And immediately I felt compelled to make a list of things that I tended to put in front of my relationship with God. I found that food (my number one nemesis), relationships with certain people including my children, time, money, knowledge, the future, and my physical body seemed to consume me at times. I wasn't expecting this list to be so long, honestly, because at the time I read that book, I had focused so much on food. I had no idea that I am actually more consumed by other things than I had imagined.

The very next day, God told me to start going through the Bible and looking up scriptures on those things. Food was first, and so I did. This took me over a week because once I started reading one verse, I realized how pertinent the entire chapter or few chapters were. And do you know what I found??? Every scripture I found on this segment of my life had nothing to do with food and how I should deal with it. They all told me the same thing. Give. Give openly, freely, and with love. Not give food. Just give. Give and it will fill you with love. I realized that the perfect love that I'd been seeking had been stifled because I was keeping things to myself.

God was telling me that sharing (with boundaries, of course) is of Him, and I'll be filled with his love as I do it. I feel like my issues with food stem from selfishness. That was my first idol.

Well this morning I was reading and writing again, and I was led to Proverbs 9 - a chapter on wisdom and foolishness. I conversation I had with a very dear friend this morning made me look up foolishness because of the wild behavior of her neighbor. In Proverbs, Solomon writes that a wise person will teach wise people. That attempting to correct wicked or foolish people will only cause us insult and hurt.

I was immediately brought back to my days as a teacher in the public ed system, and the number of kids who did not want to be there, could have cared less if they got an A or an F, and really had better things to do. Hear me when I say that I do not believe that the public ed system teaches wisdom, because I most certainly do not. But what I am saying is that if you were to go to any of those kids in my classroom and offer to release them, at least eighty percent of them would go home and stay there. They'd pull out their phones, computers, game systems, and they'd plug in. They saw no value in what they were learning and they had better things to do.

My own children drive me nuts with the phones, computers, WiiU, PlayStation, etc. When the WiFi goes down, it is a national disaster, and Jesus himself could be sitting at my piano bench - they WILL interrupt me to tell me and ask me to fix it.

We wonder why we can't engage our children in conversation? We wonder why they choose to skip homework? We wonder why they're not curious. We wonder why church is not enticing to them. Take a look at what they hold in their hands for hours. I was convicted by this thought. There lies their idol, friends. Today's technology is the answer to everything - and it is the piece that will destroy us as well. Millions of human beings already exhibit physiological symptoms of addiction to their tech. Try it. Try unplugging for 24 hours.

Even giving up Facebook for lent for me threw me for a loop. My email box is cleaner now, as I still reach for my phone unconsciously to look at it. Is that really what I want? Is that what God wants? It is unlikely we are going to find him in that little hunk of circuits and bright screen. God is not in YouTube and he's not in Candy Crush. He's not on Facebook, and he's not on Instagram.

He is all around us. His Word contains life's wisdom. Open it up, friends. Put down the phone. Face your idols and ask His Spirit to take control of that aspect of your life and the lives of your children.

What are your idols? What does the Bible say about them? How can you ask God to help you to set them aside and put Him first again?

Namaste.

Beauty from Messes by way of David

More and more often, I'm being led to Old Testament scriptures, and I know exactly why. I had been refusing to read the Old Testament because I was afraid of the God of that time. He seems so wrathful and scary, but with my new devotions and some discussions I've had with others, I am finding myself digging into the books of Daniel and the Samuels. I'm being taught how to read and apply, and today I want to share some things about David and the way that God worked in his life.

I am drawn to scripture that discusses sins of the flesh for the simple reason that I have been there, and I want to know more about how God heals us from the pain of those sins we commit. Today I was led to David's seduction of Bathsheba. David, a man of God, sees this beautiful woman whose hubby is off at war fighting HIS war and he seduces her and gets her pregnant. And THEN . . . then he tries to cover it up by bringing her husband home and encouraging him to go sleep with her so that her husband would think the baby was his. Adultery, betrayal, lying, manipulation. None of them worked, and the man went back to war. As if that wasn't enough, David had her husband put on the front lines so that he would be killed and David could marry Bathsheba. I wasn't sure, at this point, whether he married her because he wanted her, he loved her, or because he wanted to cover up his sin. Maybe a little bit of all three . . .

But the baby was born, and God was not happy with David. There seemed to be no remorse.

Ohhhhhhh I've been there too.

And things got worse.

After being led to his errors by Nathan, David repented in front of the Lord, and the Lord forgave him. Sadly for David, the child born out of adultery became ill, and after David fasted and prayed for seven days, died.

After the death of the child, David went to comfort Bathsheba for the loss of her child, picked himself up by his bootstraps, and moved on - clearly more focused on his walk with the Lord. And soon after the Lord gave him another child by Bathsheba. And God was pleased.

At first glance, this is a story about adultery, something I am versed in quite clearly. But this story is so much more than a "shame on you" story. I learned several things from the word of God here . . .

1. David was a man of God. He sinned. Multiple times. Everybody sins. Even men of God.
2. Trying to cover up a sin leads to more sin. Kind of like trying to cover up a lie leads to more lies. Stop while you're ahead, or you're going to make it so much worse.
3. Eventually, doing things according to our will and not His will reap disaster and pain for more than just you. David lost a child due to his attempting to handle things on his own.
4. For healing to begin, repentance must take place.
5. Accept our faults, heal, and move on. Do not dwell.
6. God will make beauty from messes if we ask.

Each of these six points can be easily applied to my life. I sinned. I keep sinning - even though I try not to. I tried to cover up my infidelity for months which led to lies and more sin. I tried doing things according to my will - yeah, that didn't work out so well. It drove me down a very dark path that, honestly, I wasn't sure if I was going to come back from . . . it was dark down there, and the hands that held me down were strong. I hurt myself and wounded my husband, my children, our families, even the other man I loved. I lost my entire life as I knew it, and at several points, I thought I was going to die. And finally I heard Jesus calling me . . . felt his forgiveness. I repented and began to work on me - to figure out why I'd been unhappy and lonely for so long.

The hardest part was accepting my faults and not dwelling on the hurt that I had caused everybody. Even now, over a year later, I have to bounce my thoughts away from it or I will end up back in that dark place of self-loathing.

But today God has made beauty from the mess that I made. Do I hurt? Yes. I miss my children something fierce when they go to their dad's house. That is my permanent consequence for my actions, but I am accepting it and even asking God to help me to use that time to honor him. I've lost my best friend in my sister-in-law and a friend in my ex-husband. I've lost relationships that I cherished.

But I've gained a strong relationship with Christ, a desire to become a healthy woman - both inside and out, bonds with healthy women who keep me accountable, a stronger relationship with my parents and siblings, control of my own life for the first time, love for myself, and a Christ-centered relationship with a man who is now a man of God himself.

I am broken, but I am glued together with the gold that only God can provide. I am kintsugi. I am not lonely. I am happy. I am gaining health. I am accountable. I am a provider. I am healing. I am still a sinner, but I work hard at being a woman of whom God would be proud. I am a healer now. I am called to share my story so that others can be drawn to Him and his healing and forgiving power. Never. Ever. In my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined I'd be in this place today. This is the beauty that He has created from my mess.

Our responsibility to society and to our children

Romans 12 is my favorite scripture currently. Yesterday morning I spent some time processing through it and making connections because I felt that the message in it is so powerful. It speaks to me because of my current career situation, but I also believe that it has a bigger, more powerful message to speak to the people of every developed country.

The chapter speaks specifically about responsibility toward society. Paul is giving God's command as to how our society should piece together and operate. How no member of any society is any better and how we should all be working together for the common good. 

God has given each person a gift, or maybe a few gifts. Because this is a God given gift, he expects us to use the gift to glorify him. 

So right away I see a HUGE problem with the way I experience life. If I'm reading this scripture correctly, some people will be born to be teachers. Some protectors. Some givers. Some people will be born with a talent to lead or write or sing or create beautiful works of art. Some will be born with an innate ability to build or calculate or discover. God has created just enough people to do the right amount of work according to their God-given talent, and once a person discovers what that ability or talent is and can begin using it to glorify him - alignment and ultimate bliss becomes the norm.

If this is the case, how did our education system get so screwed up? How are we not looking into the Bible to realize that even two thousand years ago Paul was telling us that all men are not necessarily created "equal". We are created equal in God's eyes and are all loved unconditionally - but we are all vastly different, and therefore we need to experience life differently - including how we are educated. What we need to have is a system that helps us to discover our God-given talents and abilities and then helps us to develop them.

Instead what we have is a system that is broken and has been broken for hundreds of years. A system where we make an attempt to fit billions of square pegs into round holes for the sake of "equality", "opportunity", and "citizenry". I call Bull.

We have broken billions of people because we have tried to undo God's plan for them.

Years ago I read Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsh. I cannot, for the life of me, find my copy of that book, but I recall a question that God answered about humanity and his plan for how we should live, and God specifically speaks about how he envisions life to be. He, again, speaks of people's true talents and abilities as the way they should be living life. That if each of us used what God gave us first, the puzzle would piece together, and there would be enough people doing each and every job that we would never be without.

But instead we start teaching our 3-year-olds how to read by memorizing words and pictures so that they can "get a head start" on the others. We reward those who excel at reading, writing, and math with art, music, recess, and social time while those square pegs get their talent areas taken away so they can develop in areas they have no business developing because they are not cognitively ready like their peers are.

All children are not created equal. They are all beautiful and important in the eyes of God, but listen to me when I tell you that we have created a society that has destroyed itself because we have forgotten that we have claimed to have been created by the grace of God. If God's grace gave us this promised land, then why have we used man's will, greed, and need for power to destroy it and the people who populate it? Every. Single. One.

As an adult I chose my livelihood partly on what I wanted to do, but when it came down to it - money, benefits, outlook, and chance of advancement were my ultimate goals. And I began to crash about fifteen years into it. 

What did you love as a child? What passions did you have? What were you really good at? How do those things weave into your life today? If they don't, think again about where you should be. Is this really your place, or does God have a different plan for you? I know I've been praying for guidance and will continue to pray as the beauty of my life finally begins to unfold. 

Perhaps you should too. For what better model for your children than to allow them to see you be what God has created you to be! Namaste.

The search for heaven . . .

I was in hell.

I have found heaven.

Heaven.

Where exactly is that place?

Several days ago I was reading in my devotional book Jesus Calling about heaven. At one point, Sarah Young, the author, writes:

"Your longing for heaven is good because it is an extension of your yearning for Me. The hope of heaven is meant to strengthen and encourage you, filling you with wondrous joy."

Not five minutes after reading that passage, my eight-year-old son came stumbling into the room, rubbing his eyes, and croaking a cute "Good morning, Mama" to me.  Our morning routine, be it when he gets up or when his daddy drops him off in the morning on his way to work, is for my "little" monkey to come into my room, grab a snuggly blanket, and climb into my lap so we can pray together and snuggle afterward. Once he tires of snuggling, he then starts saying the typical eight-year-old boy things like poop and fart and can I please please please watch a YouTube video about how to turn copper pennies into pure gold, but for a few minutes anyway - I'm in heaven.

It was at this moment a few days ago - after heaven faded and the bathroom words began - when I felt a stab of guilt as I realized that I really didn't want to go to heaven. That I kind of like my new life - the new me. For the first time IN my life I actually love ME, and I intend to do this for many more years. I'm sure heaven is completely awesome, but my snuggle time in the morning feels very close to what I believe heaven could be. And that's when I started to wonder . . .

Can we create heaven for ourselves right here on earth before our spirit and body separate? Did God say you HAVE to die before you can go to heaven? Maybe this death could be metaphoric - more like the death of the old self and birth of a brand new. So what did I do? I went online and researched what others believed. This is where things got really complicated...

Being a well-educated woman and a logical, most things that are brought to me need to be brought to me with a "how this works" label, clear directions, and black and white lines. I need proof of pretty much everything - including whether my children actually did brush their teeth this morning. Digging into other people's beliefs in heaven was a HUGE mistake.

Nothing was backed by providential evidence, in my opinion, but there's where my faith lags. The absolute need for solid, tangible proof. And yet, my faith in The Almighty is solid. Let me explain that part of my faith comes from the fact that I have experienced, first hand, the glory of God. I have wept in his presence, cold and alone, and felt the comfort that could only come from the Holy Spirit. Because of this, I will never veer from the path of the Lord again. No human could even come close to the compassion, forgiveness, love, and comfort that I have been gifted by the Divine. That evidence is tangible, in my opinion. He knew it is what I needed to come back to Him, and so he allowed me to wallow in my misery until I turned to him and felt that peace wash over me. Then, and only then, could I logically understand that God truly does exist AND that he loves me unconditionally - another strange phenomenon of which I was unfamiliar. Unconditional love.

Ironically last week I received my daily devotion email from the Center for Action and Contemplation - a Richard Rohr meditation. What was the subject? Heaven, of course. Rohr believes that heaven begins here on earth with our own connection to Christ. That we create our own capacity to give and receive love through our own God-given free will, and that that capacity is the doorway to heaven here on earth. That death is a mere extension of what we have created through the love of Christ here on earth.

In a conversation I had yesterday with my own sister-in-Christ and long-term friend, she listened to me talk about my thoughts on heaven, and she, too, expressed the need to believe that there was something more after death - that we can, indeed, begin to create heaven here for ourselves here, but that after death, that continues.

Rohr agrees with her. His view is that we will continue to live and grow, even after death. That our souls, if we permit, will grow infinitely closer to God, even after death. But it must start here on earth.

I'd been considering a second blog about prayer until this morning when I realized that my blog topics actually parallel. Debbie Macomber, fiction writer, wrote a book called Angels at the Table. In this book, the angels Surely, Goodness, Mercy, and Will were sent down to earth by Gabriel as prayer ambassadors to work on answering a prayer that had gone unanswered for about ten months. As they were working on divine guidance, Will, the apprentice angel, saw an unrelated incident that he wanted to fix because he saw another human suffering. His mentor angels stopped him. In confusion Will asked why he couldn't help the woman in distress.

Their response is that, as prayer ambassadors, they were only allowed to guide in answering prayers. This woman had clearly not asked for intervention. Will contemplated for a moment before asking his next question. "What if she asks too late?"

The angels' answer made so much sense to me. God delights in answering prayers of necessity. He wants us to ask - "Ask and you shall receive." I think it's kind of his way of making us responsible for ourselves and creating humans who don't just expect provision. But those who stay close to Him and ask for daily guidance will likely be veered off in a direction that remains close to Him. We realize early enough that we need to begin asking for guidance for things that may turn into potential disasters, and he can guide us in how to begin dealing with them. If things become too intense, He picks us up and holds us. Those who choose human-will on a daily basis may walk a path that gets further and further from Him. A last minute effort to save a situation with a prayer may be too late for Him to guide anyone through a tough situation. God creates miracles, but his first promise is to teach us and allow us free will. And, like a good parent, he allows us to suffer consequences so that we can learn.

Once the learning process begins, we begin to create our own heaven right here on earth. I created hell for myself and wallowed in that torment for years. Currently I believe I am in my own heaven, and I believe that it's okay to feel this way. My minute-by-minute "check in" with Jesus helps me to stay clearly attached and know that I will be provided with the guidance I need to complete tasks that I would have considered uncomfortable, awkward, painful, and just downright icky - all while maintaining my close walk with Him.

The day of my divorce I anticipated to be one of the most difficult days of my life. Did I cry? Yeah. The night before I slept horribly, but every time I woke up I prayed that God would hold me again, and He did. That morning I prayed nonstop throughout the entire proceeding. I prayed for wisdom to speak to the judge - and even though lies were spoken and my ex-husband's lawyer was mean, I maintained composure. I cried before it. I cried after it. And then I allowed the Holy Spirit to wash over me and allow me to feel Its presence. It took me a few days to shake myself off, but this had been a long time coming, and I feel better now. Believe it or not - I was still in heaven. My heaven. The one that I asked Jesus to create for me here on Earth. I grew. I learned. And healing has begun.

Namaste.

Who is God?

Something has been troubling me deeply about my walk with God, and I just need to get it out so I can process through. Currently I’m reading A Case for Faith, which is a great read if you haven’t read it. I haven’t finished it, and it’s taking me a long time to finish because I haven’t really made the time to sit down and read, but I’m asking Santa for a few more hours in the day and some time management advice, so maybe in January I’ll get that book finished up.

My faith is stronger than it has ever been. There is no doubt in my mind that there is a God and that Jesus died on the cross to save us all from an eternity in hell (whatever your definition of hell is). I can attest to the fact that once I confessed my brokenness and my need for the trinity to come hang with me, a peace has settled over me that I never thought I could ever be worthy of having. God is there. Real. I feel him every day.

But something has really been bugging me. I'm struggling with my logical side because logic tells me that there is no "man upstairs". That faith in God means that there is faith in a being that I can't even comprehend. That my definition of God today is not what my definition of who he was when I walked with him twenty-five years ago. Him . . . her  . . . ? 

I practiced mindfulness for ten years without totally comprehending what it meant to self-love. And nobody noticed. Of course I believed in God without a true comprehension of who God really was. Isn't that what faith is all about? Not for us logicals it's not. It's hard to have faith . . . and yet I watch my eight-year-old logical talk about evidence that does, indeed, prove over and over again that God, does in fact, exist. The faith of a child is a beautiful and wonderous thing. I wish I had it.

Who is God? It wasn't until recently, honestly, that I finally had a true understanding of how the Holy Spirit works. Why am I forty-two and just now understanding that my internal guide is the Holy Spirit speaking to me - that that Spirit lives inside of me  and speaks to me the way God does? I'm just now understanding that God sends his Holy Spirit to walk with me day and night and to take over my mind, my mouth, and my actions when I give my will over to it. 

I know who Jesus is. He is God's son, sent to earth to help God learn how being human can really suck sometimes and also to shed his blood and clean us up after we make a mess of our lives because we can't seem to give in to the Holy Spirit all the time. 

Well, this morning I was reading in Jesus Calling like I do every morning. Often, my devotion will remind me that I need to need God. That I cannot adult on my own - that I'm needy for the Lord to use his Holy Spirit to guide me. It's like God is the dispatcher, and the Holy Spirit is the policeman running to call after call in my head. But only if I call upon God first. Otherwise, he sits quietly.

This is circular, I know, but stay with me. God. Who is he? His spirit dwells within all of us, and yet he is all around us. The air we breathe, the sound of the birds, the breeze. He's here. Not sitting up in a throne in the sky. That's why we only have to whisper the name Yahweh and His spirit responds immediately with relief and eventually guidance.

I fell short of this today. How easily it can happen, honestly. I lost it on somebody I do not even know who was just trying to do her job at the cell phone company. I refused to stop and ask Got to dispatch. I can do this on my own, right? I ended up in tears after trying to reason with this woman who obviously wasn't budging on her stance, and I am still paying for a cell phone that I can't use. Nothing was accomplished except now I have a headache, my eyes are puffy, and I'm in a foul mood. 

But you know what? The Spirit told me to sit down and write. So that is what I am doing. I'm in tuned with His will now. I can feel it. It's no longer my will. It's His. His will for me is to step outside of my logical self and have faith that he truly exists. And tonight, faith is what I have. Namaste.

On leadership and boundaries

So there's a story in the book of Exodus about Moses. Moses was a pretty important guy, as we all probably know. He was given lots of responsibility by God to lead his people out of Egypt to a promised land, but he was so busy leading that he didn't have time to contemplate what good leaders should do.

I've had a lot of experience with different leaders - bosses per se. Some of these people gained my wholehearted respect, but most of them fell short of what I would expect a leader to be. Part of this, mind you, was my total lack of boundaries and backwards thinking on what my responsibilities are, but part of this was just a lack of knowledge of what it means to lead.

Leadership is not equivalent to micromanaging and/or taking responsibility for everything. In this respect, I even screwed up when I was working as a reading specialist. I felt like I had to have my hands in everything when it came to reading - partly because I was actually being evaluated on how well it went, but partly because I didn't trust anybody to do it the way I wanted it done. This is how a lot of leaders view things - in fact, this is the reason why many people go into leadership roles. They're unhappy with the way things are being run, and they think they can do a better job. OR they hate where they are so they look to supervise those roles, which makes NO sense, in my opinion. You don't like you're job because the leaders make you miserable so you're going to become a leader so you can make others miserable . . . ?

In Exodus, Jethro (Moses's father-in-law) noticed Moses growing weary because he was directing and helping so many of the Israelites. Jethro approached Moses with wisdom, telling Moses that he needed to choose leaders under him to be responsible for some of the lesser serious cases where direction was needed.  Moses would then be free to judge in only the most serious and severe cases, allowing him time to do other things or to rest when he needed it. Moses immediately organized and chose a hierarchy of men to provide this leadership. He trusted God to help him choose able men. And guess what... It worked!

 This can be applied to so many facets of my life. Yesterday a small group of my own little tribe and I started talking about ways to empower women. Sorry, men, you're important, but my calling has been to do things that will impact women in such a way that they no longer feel dependent on any one person. As I started talking to this small group, one woman who is an expert in the field of couponing said that her ultimate goal is to teach others how to use coupons to such an extent that others would notice and ask to learn. She wanted to spread the wealth, but she didn't necessarily want to be the one and only teacher. She wanted to teach us so that we could teach others and the skill would spread. This is her mission. Her ministry is to help others make the most of their money using coupons, and to do it for free. She didn't write a book or blog about it asking for a membership. She is trusting Jesus to provide her with time and money so that she would have time to help others.

I love this. It reminds me of the Alcoholics Anonymous program. These are leaders. Those who spread the word through others. Those who trust that the Lord will provide them with followers who will do their teaching justice.

I want to be this way. I want to trust in God so much that I can spend my time helping others but to teach others to help each other. This is my dream. To empower people to be good people. People that God would be proud to say This is my child. I'm absolutely positive that God was proud of Moses, but I'm sure that God didn't want Moses to work his fingers to the bone. And so he sent Jethro to speak to Moses about boundaries. Thankfully Moses had the sense to listen to his father-in-law. Because of this, his people grew stronger. Namaste.