Thankful and Still Going Strong

This has been a busy week for me, and some how one I managed to enjoy even when I was at work. See work and I have a love/hate relationship. I love books but sometimes I'm not so good with people.

I have been working at my current job for nearly 11 months now and I'm finally taking a break. Two weeks holiday it's going to be great. We are taking the girls to Bali for a week and then I will be home for a week. I am looking forward to it so very much.

I'm trying to work on my frustrations, for me it's a constant task, related in many ways to my impatience with circumstances and yes people. I have set myself some goals and I have to believe that these things that consume me, my passions will pay off one day.

My family are awesome, I wouldn't have it any other way. I look at the young guys I work with and don't at all miss the dating and club scene. Sure it would be nice to be able to make spontaneous decisions like going out with my hubby but it's a small sacrifice in the grand scheme of things. Besides at least when I'm stuck at home I can get my butt into gear and get some work done. (Except when I don't)

Sure I still daydream about being in the movies or at least one movie, and it's not a dead dream because I'm not dead yet. I will get there one day, especially if passion and perseverance have anything to do with it.

You may knock me down but the only one who can stop me getting up and trying again is myself.

Thank you to those who have blessed me with kind words. Thank you to my family who put up with all my eccentricities and moods. Thank you God for allowing me to create. And thank you that I have the ability to get back up again after being slapped down.

Some times I think we need to step back and evaluate ourselves, some times we need to take a moment to look closely at ourselves and say, 'you know what I believe in me.'

Do yourself a favour, you allowed me to indulge and I suggest you now do the same. Today is a good day to be thankful and it is a good day to believe in yourself.

You can do it.

Words of Encouragement

If you read my blog on a regular basis you will know I have certain hang-ups and one is my struggle with church.

Someone who has known me for a while and has been involved in ministry said to my hubby that they understand why I struggle to fit in. I cannot tell you how much of a relief hearing those words was. Those simple words gave me the gift of realising that maybe I'm not losing it. Maybe my frustrations are valid and maybe just maybe I do still hear from God.

Of course I realise this doesn't make everything alright, I still have the same character flaws that I had yesterday but it gives me the strength to keep questioning and pushing and not giving up. Somehow that feels like a good thing.

Easter and Communion

I finally got around to doing something I’d been meaning to for a while. I watched The Passion of The Christ. I figured it was a good time to do so being as it’s the Easter weekend.

Also given my increasing dissatisfaction with organised religion – it was interesting to watch it through my somewhat jaded eyes.

Was it emotional – Yes. How could you watch someone, even in a movie, go through so much and not be moved?

Yes there were things I didn’t necessarily like or agree with, but then no-one this side of heaven knows exactly what happened that day. Anything else is in some form conjecture.

As it stands the film did for me what I suspect it did for many; it reminded me of the sheer bloody magnitude of the cost Christ paid for my life. Some may never really have been aware of it and others of us just do well to be reminded of it.

All this ties in well with thoughts I have been having about communion. I don’t feel we give it the gravitas that it should have. Jesus set communion in place to remind us of his sacrifice and for me recently, it has felt just part of the service, something we do every other week fitted in between the worship service and church news.

If necessary watch the film again. See the bloody pulp his body was made into – injuries it would be incredibly unlikely someone would survive from. Leather or rods snapping against and into the skin, metal digging in and tearing. This is the body we are commissioned to remember; that blood dripping and pooling on the ground is the blood that was shed for us, sprayed over and soaking into the earth.

We take communion like it was at the last supper, not as we should, remembering the events of the dark day that followed where Jesus stepped up and put himself in my place. From the comfort of the upper room hearing the words but not really understanding rather than the foot of the cross as the torn and bloody flesh was secured to the wood and the blood dripped it’s way to the ground.

I have become so shallow, despite my declaration that I’ll still love God even if He does nothing else for me. I still believe but my faith has become something of a side note. I don’t mean that I no longer put it in people’s faces, I never did that, it’s more that it is there when I can be bothered. It is tied too much to what I have problems with and not enough to the man whose death tore the temple of organised religion in two.

Christ rose from His tomb and that is what we remember on this day, so likewise as I face a new day I will bend my knee and life my eyes to the throne, acknowledging my unworthiness and my gratefulness.