June 20, 2009

Greetings My Friend,

Well, another country lesson has been playing out in my heart. Sometimes, God seems to teach me lessons from nature, from life around me. It has been raining a whole lot on and off for a couple of weeks now. Today, I looked at the sky and thought that they sky looked clear in the direction of my walk. Well, I got rained on. So it goes.

One of the things I have noticed with all the rain is that the river turns brown when it rains a whole lot. It looks muddy and not pretty blue. A day or so after it stops raining; well the river turns blue again. We see it changing back to the pretty blue/gray slowly. Sometimes we see that it is muddy looking in one place and blue in another as it works its way back to the pretty river we first fell in love with. I also notice that bank of the river seems to change as well. Sometimes the bank is covered in water and we watch the water move closer and closer to the vegetation.

The more I looked out at the river, the more I thought about my life in Christ. When I began my serious walk with the Lord, well, the more I wanted to please Him. I learned that my thought life was not pretty. I had a lot of “dirty” thoughts, I had a lot of anger hanging around, I had a whole bunch of unkind thoughts and allowed unkind words – gossip, you name it to come out of my thoughts and turn into words I spoke frequently.

I remember telling my co-workers that I was not all nicey nice in my “other” life. When my daughter was very little I had a major “potty” mouth. I even made up songs which rhymed with a certain four letter word. I have always been a small woman. When my daughter was a baby we lived in a flat. At night I could hear mice scratching on the walls. I worried that they would come out in the open and harm my child. Next to our home was a field – the owner often planted a vegetable garden. The owner did not take great care of the garden, thus mice loved it. Soon, they discovered ways to get into our home. I called the city. A man came out to talk to me about the garden. He was not taking me seriously. He thought I looked too young to be a mother. He focused on me, my age, my child more than the field, the problem with mice I had called about. I got so angry that I started using very bad language. Amazingly, the man started to listen to me then. He contacted the owner of the field and soon the garden was gone. Well, when he responded to my I thought “grown-up” language; I began to use it more often.

As I said earlier, I felt that I needed to clean myself up more. I also remember after a while I wanted to be pure. I had regretted giving my body away so freely. I struggled with knowing if my first husband loved me or my body. It seems like I gave myself to unwholesome things rather rashly and later, I regretted my decisions.

The more my walk with God developed, I again found myself wanting to clean up my act. As the years have passed, I found that God gave me prayers. I can’t thank Him enough, because as I started to pray them, well, I found myself making changes I could not have done on my own.

One of the things that I noticed as I began life with Junior, was that he didn’t seem to live in a constant state of guilt. By Junior’s own admission, he was not a very “clean” guy his whole life. For some reason, I love those “bad” boys. Junior was teaching me without saying a word. The more I watched him, the more I realized that through confession and then in God’s power and strength, I could truly give up my bad habits. I could also not live in a constant state of guilt. I had always thought that when I admitted I was wrong, well then I would have to feel guilty as penitence for my awful act of ugliness.

I found as I walked more and more with Jesus that my life was like that river in the back of our house. It is muddy, un-clean etc. As the river keeps flowing though, the junk soon goes away and a cleaner river will come back. At work, I would “fall of the wagon” from time to time. I’d give into gossip; tell an “off color” story etc. I would find myself confessing it to God and then I found that I was giving in less and less often.

Through the years, I had developed a “dirty” thought life. That was extremely hard for me to let go of. Once my mind entered into that path – well…. I started saying a prayer as soon as I noticed that I was “having” those thoughts. I asked God to take the thought away. To this day, well I am amazed because within a few seconds, those thoughts now disappear.

Am I always perfect now? No! In Jesus though, I find that I choose more wisely now. When I goof up, I find that confession – admitting my wrong and then asking God to help me works wonders for my attitude, my life in general.

What baggage are you holding onto? What sin from the past is haunting you? Is it time to, Let Go, Let God?

May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you.

Love

Janet