January 5 2015

January 5 2015 Greetings My Friend I remember going on retreats with the teens, singles and after Junior and I married marriage retreats. Retreats take you out of the rush of day to day living, they teach you skills and the religious retreats taught me how to line my life up with God. For a weekend generally I found myself slowing down, listening to speakers and learning how to do whatever the retreat was about. As a group we got to know each other more so. We shared some of our life’s struggles and new ways to handle life today. By the time the retreat ended we were filled with a longing to start doing life in this new way. Monday came along and those special moments quickly got put aside so we could deal with the current events happening. Once in awhile a nugget of information came to mind again and at least for a short time we worked on that piece of the retreat experience. Within a few days to a week all was filed way back in our memory. I see much the same process as I start contemplating the New Year’s resolutions. Even in my review of “Am I closer to God at the end of the year and where do I think God is leading me this year” thoughts it is easy to move back into the comfortable routines of life. It is hard to make changes even if they will help me a whole lot. I had the same struggle moving out of dysfunction into a functional way of handling life. As I look back though I see that one tiny step in changing was what led to more self assured steps to healing my dysfunction. Counseling was my first step. Through the years I needed help to handle a struggle. I would go until that piece of the pain settled down only to find I was not completely healed and back into counseling I went. Just as with an addict I found myself going back to the “known” time and again. One day I hit bottom which is when I got serious about moving from dysfunction to being functional. Along with counseling I found that I needed to take my faith to my heart and not just to my mind. The more I continued on with counseling and learned to talk to God, read my Bible the more I was growing away from a lifetime of dysfunction. Today many of those first steps have become my new comfort level. I do them automatically like read my Bible, pray more than at meals and popcorn prayers in times of distress. I have learned to talk to God intimately. In this fertile environment I learned what love looked like, what acceptable behaviors were and what was unacceptable. Later I learned that God was seeking my highest good. It felt real nice to know I mattered and I had value. Soon I started imitating the love I was receiving. As I learned to seek another person’s highest good that meant I could no longer allow a person to justify their dysfunction. I had to say “no” more than I liked because that “no” was the best for the person. Sometimes I felt other people thought that I was harsh and I waffled. I learned to keep asking God how to deal with situations and slowly I felt that God’s way is always the best even if other people don’t agree. I learned that God will never go against His Word so if what I was hearing did not match then I needed to let it go. Right now I feel very strongly that our nation, the world is walking away from God majorly. I find things that line up with God’s Word and share this information. I hurt because I am perceived as an alarmist. I am saddened and I take this to God also. He reminds me that many choose not to “hear”. It is their choice and at the end of the day I have done what I can. We will answer for the choices we make. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet