I wish I could tell you that it’s usually the good days that make me feel like I want to put words to a page. But I would be lying to you.
It’s been a tough go-around, pals. I have found myself crumbling under the weight of monstrous insecurity, the kind that sits on your shoulders and makes your whole being ache with doubt. I have found myself leaning into fear and away from trust. I have found myself longing for a different life, a different self. A different number of breaths strung together. I’ve questioned my worth, wondered if the Wheeler that people see is the one I want them to see, or the one I’ve tried my best to keep tucked away. Worst of all, I’ve found myself looking at God and saying, “Why are you withholding things from me?” Pride, rearing its ugly head in the form of entitlement and ungratefulness. But this is not how I want to live. My roommate caught me in a pensive mood yesterday and asked what I was thinking about. The only reply I could adequately express: “I think I need to be more grateful.” And this is true. Gratefulness is one of the major themes we see in God’s word. Tired? Be grateful! Lonely? Be grateful! Sad? Be grateful! “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.” Proverbs 17:22. But what about when my spirit is already crushed? What about when I can only think of things like “coffee” and “this day” to thank God for? (Not bad things to be thankful for, by the way.) This is where I get stuck. I think many of you are there with me. There’s a song you may have heard me mention lately – “Doubting Doubts” by Citizens & Saints. This is the part that strikes me every listen: “I’m His kid no matter what I’m feeling. I’m doubting doubts. I just cannot help believing – I am loved no matter what.” Honestly, I do not believe this. I just don’t. I don’t know how to internalize unmerited love. And you know what? I think I need to stop trying so hard. I was sitting with the Lord today, just listening. And I heard a still small voice that said that He is sweet to us when we let Him be. I think I just need to let Him be sweet to me. So I’m re-learning the art of slowing down, of letting Him call me away, of quieting my little world to remember that it is much more important for me to be part of His. And He will slowly, gently, steadily, over the course of my entire time on this planet, knead me into the Wheeler He created me to be. I’m already righteous. I’m just maturing into that version of me. (Read The Cure, people.) Insecurity is ravaging, like an infection. If left untreated, it will slowly kill all your life and leave you devastated and raw. It can be soothed, though. It can be healed, closed up, smattered with ointment. It’s treatable. But the love of Jesus? It is a raging, scorching, fire during a shriveling drought. Nothing can stop it once it gets started. It will destroy every wrong thing you’ve ever thought. It cannot be quenched. The havoc it will wreak on everything you know is irreversible. It will hurt, so bad you’ll blister. (Google “Eustace and the Dragon.” Do it.) But you’ll never be the same. And you won’t wanna be. Just like you can’t stop this Fire, you can’t start it on your own. He’s got to do the prep work, too. He’s going to burn you up, alright, but in His timing. He has a way of doing that. It’s just like the fires that are set on the Konza each spring. There is more purpose in that scorching than we even know. And when He’s done, you’ll shoot up like the grass in early, early spring – still brown at first sight, but if you look close enough, you can see the green shoots at the bottom. Life. Now you’re living from and not for. You’ll be living, alright. From who He has made you to be. Not for the person you need to become. From the love He’s lavished out. Not for the approval of others. From the inside out – true joy springs forth. Not for the appearance of happiness. Another song I’ve been playing on repeat: “Mountain to Valley” by Housefires II. “Desires You have placed in me, faithfully You will complete.” I’m trying real hard to believe this, even on the tough days. Psalm 139 helps a bit. And I feel the truth of it deep down, in a place that’s hard to reach, on days like today – breathing in 75 degree Kansas air in February. The desires that matter are the ones that I have to really dig out sometimes. Many of my wants on the surface aren’t getting to the root of it. All of our true desires come from one massive, giant, core craving – to be with God. And we are promised that one without a doubt. He is the fullness, the all-consuming blaze. He is the satisfaction we have been waiting for. Don’t wait another second. You have all of God you’re ever gonna get, right here in this moment. Nothing else is enough – not even you, not even all the good things in the world you could think up about yourself. Not even your best effort to be better, to be more like He wants you to be. Let Him be sweet to you. Let Him burn you right up where you stand. Nothing else is enough.
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Stillness. Sometimes it makes me think of a quiet cup of steaming coffee by a foggy, late morning window. Sometimes it makes me think of standing at the crest of a golden Konza Hill just before sunset, nothing but the breeze to brush my eardrums. Sometimes it makes me think of the thick quiet that settles over a town before a snowstorm, or the drowning hum of an airplane flying east after midnight, full of sleepy passengers. We need this stillness. We crave it in the midst of our chaotic little worlds. Too much movement and we get worn out. Our bodies say "no" and we fall to sickness and fatigue. Too much noise and we lose our hearing too early. Too much stimulation and we crumble under the pressure of it all. Stillness is good. Stillness is peace. It is trusting we can somehow get by for five minutes or a day or a month without "doing." It is necessary. Sometimes, though, stillness makes me think of stagnancy. It makes me feel restless - itchy, almost. Like I can't sit still or stop wiggling my toes (a bad habit). It feels uncomfortable, confining, stifling. It feels like punishment. It's no new revelation that without movement, living beings cannot survive for long. We must move, of course, to sustain ourselves. We must move to gather and prepare food, to have the means to survive, to keep our bodies strong. But movement itself is a sign of life. Even the smallest tremors - the steady, slow throbbing of blood through the carotid artery, the shallow rising and falling of working lungs - are things that give our loved ones hope to whisper "she's alive!" when the rest of our bodies have seemingly ceased all activity. We need movement. But we need stillness. So how do we know which to choose, and when? Let me say it now: I am in this predicament in a more tangible way than I ever have been before. For me, it's developing into a question of staying or going. Graduation Day is approaching (May 13, mark your calendars!!!), and it feels like being late for a dentist appointment and your dental hygienist is always cranky to begin with but there's a train coming and there's no way you're going to make it before the bar lowers, so you just wait because that is quite literally all you are able to do. Maybe if you would have left your house seven minutes earlier like you were supposed to, this wouldn't be happening. Maybe if you would have just gone through the yellow light, or not stopped for coffee (who stops for coffee on the way to the dentist?), or not forgotten about your appointment until that morning, you'd be more on track. The metaphor's a stretch, but you get what I'm saying. When you're in a place where you feel uncertain you'll make it to your destination, or you don't even know where your destination is, or you feel like you're falling behind, it's incredibly easy to question every step you've made before and decide you need to take thirteen extra steps as soon as possible to make up for lost time. To get caught up in your head, your failed plans, your decisions. And as much as I would like to say that taking this predicament (stillness vs. movement) to the Lord has made all the fuzziness go away, it hasn't worked quite like that. Every day, I'm waiting for Him to flash a sign in front of me saying "Y-E-S" or "G-O" or something of the sort. A kind and honest friend reminded me recently that that's not usually how God chooses to do things. And I'm reminded of Moses. Moses asked to see God's glory, in all its flashing beauty. He wanted to know God's face and His fullness. He just wanted to know. He wanted to experience all of God he could get. So, God fulfilled that request and passed by - but only let Moses see his backside. Why? God knew Moses couldn't handle His face. He couldn't handle it. He would literally die. Mercy. Let's remember David. He made some wrong decisions while he was running for his life, he's discontent, he doesn't trust God to fight for Israel or to fight for his life. So, looking for purpose, he joins ranks with the Philistines, fighting against God's people (which he has been anointed to lead). He doesn't seem to even register that this is what going on. It doesn't phase him that he's on the side of Goliath's people - the Goliath that he defeated himself with a mere pebble years before. But God knows David's heart, and He has ordained David for a greater purpose. So He, in His mercy, doesn't let David fight alongside the Philistines. The lords of the Philistines don't trust David, and David's Philistine boss tells him to get out of there while he can. He doesn't understand at first. He's frustrated. He's been honest! Why wouldn't he be trustworthy? But he will not be trusted by these people. So he leaves. And there is undoubtedly more stinging hardship to come, more times that David screws up in even worse ways. But in the end, who is David? The greatest king of Israel, ancestor to Jesus. Coincidence? Absolutely not. God's provision. God's protection. God's understanding. David just doesn't know it yet. Mercy. Moses and David were just as human as you and I. We ask God to know things too, things that He knows we aren't ready to handle - future plans, complete understanding in the midst of hardship, a glimpse of our eternal destiny. We do things sometimes that go against God's basic will for our lives - to love Him above all and to love Him with our lives by loving others. And then we expect that we know exactly what we're doing and are perfectly capable of making wise decisions on our own, thank you very much. But God is merciful, and He gives us just enough information so that we could not possibly pretend to have control. We have to take steps of faith in the dark in order to move forward at all. If we saw what was really ahead, we would either be paralyzed or rush on ahead and miss out on what's right in front of us. So we hit rock bottom and have to let Him correct our steps when we mess up, when we don't understand. Pretending we have it all figured out doesn't fly with God. He knows we don't. "We plan the way we want to live, but only God makes us able to live it." (Proverbs 16:9, MSG) Mercy. Friends, sisters, brothers: Let's embrace not knowing, not understanding. Let's remember that the only thing we need to know and understand is the grace of God, His Word, His capital-T Truth. When we know that deeply and find identity and security in it, we are freed up. When we are rooted in the truth, we are free to see decisions that are honoring to the Lord as right-left rather than right-wrong. We are free to be confident that He is crazy about us, thrilled to be with us each morning, ready to shower good gifts on His kids, ready to pull us back on to the sidewalk when we walk straight into traffic because we think He told us to. He is too good, His mercy is too consuming, His grace is too freeing . So be free to be still, be free to walk forward, be free to know deeply and to not know at all. Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me." (Psalm 139:7-10) XOXO, Wheels *If you're wondering where I got the title of this blog, shame on you. Go watch this video right now.*
I'm really bad at keeping up with this writing thing. But with the encouragement of a couple of friends, combined with a fluttering in my chest that says 'Wheeler, you can't not write anymore,' I am going to make this a regular thing. Weekly, even. Hopefully. So I don't know how it happened, but I'm in the midst of the last three weeks of the first half of my senior year of college. You guys, I still feel like I'm sixteen years old. People talk a lot about how time moves quickly, but it's not a cliché. It's a reality. I posted a life update on Facebook a few weeks back, so read that if you care to know what's up. That's not what this post is going to focus on. I'm gonna dive right in and let you in on something I have been wrestling with since I can remember: comparison. In my Instagram bio awhile back, I had a quote that is attributed to Theodore Roosevelt: "Comparison is the thief of joy." What a paradoxical thing to have on my Instagram page, since social media basically exists to allow ourselves to compare our highlight reels to other peoples'. I put it there to remind myself and whoever looks at my Instagram for more than two seconds that while we are still comparing our stories, lives, things, looks, dogs, whatever to each other's, we will be severely lacking in the kind of joy we were created for. So why do we still compare, when we know and experience that quote to be true? I found an article on CNN.com that said we do it to measure our own levels of happiness. But if Teddy was right, we are actually doing the opposite of what we set out to do in the first place. By setting our lives up against others' to see how much happier we are than they, we essentially take half a step forward and five steps back. How foolish. Let me talk about my own experience with comparison for a second. I have an immense amount of trouble making decisions. I think it has something to do with the fact that I'm an ENFJ or a 6 on the Enneagram chart or something. Anyways, I've always looked to others to validate my decisions, or even to make them for me. I am always afraid that by making a decision one way, I'm going to be missing out on something on the other side. The grass is always greener, or whatever. So I often think about what someone else will do, not what I want to do or what I feel is right. This happens in literally every situation you could think of: when I'm deciding what clothes to buy, how to spend an hour of free time, whether to go buy Chick-fil-A for dinner or eat leftovers, ev. very. thing. That way, I have something to blame if I make "the wrong decision." In other words, I don't have to accept responsibility for my own failures. Yikes. There it is. The root of the issue. I am terrified of failure. That is ultimately why I compare my _______ to others. Insert whatever noun you will. As you might expect, this constant comparison/indecisive game has caused me an immense amount of anxiety, because I am trying to reap solid guidance and truth and counsel from places that are inconsistent, flawed, constantly changing (people). The fact that these people are inconsistent, flawed, and constantly changing is not bad, it's just a fact of humanity. And I know that. So why do I continue to put my whole weight on something that could crumble at any moment? Oh, right. Because that option seems better than failure. There's that word again. Fun. The other day, I was driving home from work or walking or doing something and this phrase popped into my head, literally out of left field. I wrote it down because I thought, 'Hmm. Maybe I'm supposed to write about this later.' Here's the thought: "My identity is not in my successes or what I can 'do.' And guess what. It's not in my failures - what I can't do - either." Is that a breath of fresh air or what? So how come the sticky note version of that thought won't stick in my brain as well as all the other ones that say things like "You weren't as productive today as so-and-so. You should feel bad about that," or "That woman is more beautiful and fit and shiny-sparkly than you are. That's why she is getting married at 22 and you aren't," or things that are even darker and more sinister than that? This semester has been riddled with circumstances that have caused me to reflect on my actions and label myself a failure - being overwhelmed by leadership responsibilities and at the same time feeling like I'm not doing anything, ending a relationship after less than a month of 'official' dating and six months of trying to get to a place of being 'ready' (whatever that means), having to say "no" to a lot of people because senior year is like the craziest, dealing with old family issues that I thought should have been resolved by now - the list goes on. It feels like 'FAILURE' has been tattooed on my damn forehead. Okay. Let's remember real quick that we have an Enemy. And his name means "accuser and deceiver." PEOPLE. Satan's name literally (essentially) means "I am going to lie to you all the damn time." And just because we have the Holy Spirit inside of our little hearts doesn't mean Satan just stops being Satan. If anything, it means the opposite. The devil freaking hates that we know and pursue God, so he'll do anything to get us to stop. Also, we are human. By nature, we are imperfect. We don't do things the way God would have us even most of the time. But we have weapons. They are called "the Word of the living God," and, "the Holy Spirit." All we have to do is consistently surrender ourselves to the truth about who God is and who He says we are. Oh boy, here Wheeler goes again, talking about God stuff. I thought I was going to read about ways that I can stop doing the things I do and do them better. I want to have control of my life. What is 'surrender,' anyways? Boo. I know, friends. I'm with you on that one. Because those are the same thoughts I have when I do things like search Google or desiringgod.org for advice that will make me feel better immediately. (We all do it. Don't pretend to laugh at me without laughing at yourself, okay?) But trust me, the surrender is worth it. We reap immensely from it. Here's just one example from scripture to prove it. I was reading Ephesians 1 this morning - a wonderful chapter to dive into if you need to remember how outrageous the Father's gifts to us are. Verses seven through ten say this: "In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of His will, according to His purpose, which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth" (ESV). In other words, part of God's gift to us is His wisdom and insight, and understanding the mystery of His will. Obviously we will not have full understanding of His purposes until we are with Him in heaven (Isaiah 55:8-9), but He gives us access to His counsel and understanding through His word and His Holy Spirit. The only person we should be comparing ourselves to is the person God says we are. Am I living as He intended, with joy overflowing and peace surpassing all circumstances? Am I finding satisfaction in who He is, not what others can do for me? Am I living as one deeply beloved, sins covered with the blood of Christ? Or am I letting Satan's accusations and lies and shame overshadow these things? Listen, we are human. We are imperfect. We will forget these truths time and time again and return to our own filth. We are weak and vulnerable. And that is okay. That is why Jesus lived His perfect life and died His complete death and rose again in fullness of life. That is why His grace is immeasurable and enough, because we cannot be and we were never meant to be immeasurable or enough. We are finite and limited. But we have been given access by faith into this grace in which we now stand (Romans 5:2). We are meant to be childlike and dependent on our all-powerful Savior. My challenge to you and to myself today is to let go. Stop striving and working to receive grace. Stop living your life as though God depends on you. News flash: That's not how it works. The next time you find yourself caught in a comparison cycle, stop and gently direct your thoughts to the One who already knows them fully. Know the Word so that you can replace those self-deprecating thoughts with truer ones. Don't buy into the lie that you need to worry or that you should compare yourself to others so that you can be 'better.' Remember the words of the great theologian A.W. Tozer: "How completely satisfying to turn from our limitations to a God who has none." Authors' note: I had no friggin' fraggin' clue what to title this one, so I named it after one of my favorite songs on an album that has literally been speaking to my soul for the past three months. So go check out Low by Andrea Marie (Will Reagan's wife/my current girl crush). Please just do it. You'll have #allthefeels (lol get it???) #sorrynotsorry
This is a long time coming. The last months can best be described as hasty, moving much too quickly for my liking. But finally summer is come and I sit, away from Manhattan and back in Overland Park in a little townhouse, sliding back door open so that the quiet, consistent whoosh of the rain and the crisp scent of Mother Nature's spring cleaning drift in through the screen panel. My only companions are this third cup of coffee and the two little mutts at my feet; I'm dog-sitting while pops is out of town on business. Today is precisely what I have needed for months. It is inescapably peaceful and quiet and lonely, but in a sweet way. My extroversion is taking a break and I am grateful that the normal echoes of lonesomeness that accompany Sabbath-time have quieted themselves. And then I got that undeniable itch to write. Thus, the words you are reading. For those of you who know me, you are wondering why and how this stillness and isolation is hitting me so gently. You know that I am always on the run. You know that I have a coffee mug that was gifted to me that reads "I AM REALLY BUSY." You know that I love being with others and I don't care much for being with myself for longer than an hour or two. If you've talked to me recently, you also know that I have been in desperate need of a break from the reality of this past nine months. The other day I explicitly asked the Lord for Him to bless me with good gifts over these summer months. I am absolutely positive that today is the first nugget of His tender answer to that request. There are many details concerning the past several months that I will spare you. Many of you have walked with me through the trials that have ensued. You have been the most faithful of friends and my heart throbs fondly towards your loyalty and graciousness. For you less-informed readers: No tangible tragedy has befallen. Rather, there have been a multitude of internal battles - between legalism and grace, contentment and restlessness, joy and pity, hope and despair, loneliness and fellowship. I almost feel as though I have been taught more since March than I have in the last three years combined. I think that points to how small-minded our concept of time is next to God's. Here are some lessons I've been learning boiled down into semi-readable prose. Lesson #1: The Father loves us. Desperately. It's the simplest of all truths, and yet the most intricate and complex. I'm not sure exactly when this lesson plan began, but around March I began to realize that nearly all my perceptions about God were completely incorrect. Of course, this means I had been living based on these false ideas. I had been living out of legalism and fear for years. I had been living as though God was a constantly disappointed Father who only tolerated me out of "love" but didn't actually like or enjoy me. I imagined He was irritated by my sin and stood at a distance shaking His head and asking me to do better next time. Several things brought these lies into the limelight, the most poignant of those being a book called The Cure. I won't spoil it for you, but it will wreck all of your false perceptions of God in the kindest, most refreshing way. So finally, beautifully, the truth about the God Jesus loves is beginning to sink in and affect the way I live. I've been trying to practice seeing Jesus as He really is - standing with His strong arm around me, chuckling at the pile of crap in front of us: "'That is a lot of sin. A whole lot of sin. Don't you ever sleep?' He starts laughing. I start laughing." (The Cure, p. 22) This is an accurate view of Jesus' character. Lesson #2: His ways are higher than our ways...seriously. I never really got Isaiah 55:8-9. It made God seem like some aloof puppeteer. But what I've come to understand is that although God is never-changing and always faithful, He is not predictable. He remains the same in the goodness of His character and the outpouring of His grace, but He uses different mediums to show us those things about Himself. He used a trip to California to teach me that He is crazy about me and therefore He wants me to actually enjoy this life He's set out before me. He is using the unexpected move of a dear friend to teach me that He is the only constant and that "anything which drives us to God is a blessing, and anything which weans us from leaning on the arm of the flesh, and especially that weans us from trying to stand alone, is a boon to us" (Spurgeon). He is using my shifting desires and changing plans to show me that "the heart of a man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps" (Proverbs 16:9). These lessons are not ones which can be listened to or read over once every few months; they must be learned bone-deep. Oftentimes, in order for Him to reach deep enough, there may be lasting scars that remind us of those lessons learned. Otherwise, our lives will show no evidence of the Truth. Lesson #3: Life is messy. We are messy. We need to be our messy selves in front of other people. In other words, vulnerability. I truly thought I was good at this stuff, people. I've been dead wrong. Through the process of learning these other lessons, I withheld so much of what was really happening inside of me from the people who wanted to help. I, along with many others, hate feeling like a burden. I thought maybe it's because I'm a leader in my Christian community, or because I'm a highly sensitive and emotional being and people have given me smack for that in the past. But I listened to a podcasted sermon recently that talked about how we are bad at receiving freely (and, therefore, giving freely) because, at our core, we believe everything we have received has been earned by us. I can't freely receive anything because I've had to work for it. Again, this comes from a misunderstanding of the truth about God and His good news. When understand properly that everything we have been given comes from the Lord and then flows through us to others, we are freed up to love and be loved. I could keep going. Really, I could. For a long time. But these are the most fundamental truths that are sinking in of late. And along with these, I thought it might be appropriate to update you all on the tangible events of my life that have emerged as I've been learning all this. BIG FAT LIFE UPDATE: I have just finished my junior year at Kansas State, which was the most difficult and most wonderful year so far. I moved out of "The Sandlot," a house on Leavenworth Street full of eight other girls whom I already miss desperately. They have become my sweetest friends over the past nine months. The fall will bring me back to MHK to the same house, with six new gal pals moving in. I have one semester of classes and then a semester-long internship left in my degree program (Family Studies and Human Services - or #famstuds as I often refer to it - with a minor in Conflict Analysis and Trauma Studies, which I love with a passion). Through a class I took over winter break in the CATS program, I made a connection with a fantastic woman who works for an organization in Manhattan which provides holistic care for women who have exited the trafficking industry. I am beginning to do research with her about what these women need when they leave their former lives and continuing to build a connection with this incredible organization. I am looking ahead to volunteering there in the fall, potentially interning with them next spring, and maybe even working for them post-graduation. I have also been working on another research team in FSHS with two dear friends of mine and a stellar faculty member. We have submitted our findings (concerning resiliency between adolescents and non-residential parents following divorce) to the National Council on Family Relations and are waiting to see if we will have a chance to present at their annual conference in Minneapolis in November. I applied for and received a generous travel grant to attend that conference should our work get accepted (nerdy academia stuff, woop woop). I am still leading a house church in Manhattan (we meet in KC over the summer) and I am once again going to be an apprentice in the Midwest Fellowship/Ichthus summer program (Midwest Summer Institute) after returning back from a couple of weeks of weddings and travel that I'm gearing up for now. I'm also gonna be working at The Upper Crust in downtown Overland Park, the cutest pie shop imaginable. Come see me on Saturday mornings at the farmers' market starting May 28! Thanks for hangin' in there, assuming you've made it this far. I hope to write more regularly from now on so that I am exercising my writing muscles (and externally processing) in a healthier way. I believe writing is one of those things the Lord has been nudging me about for years, but I'm only just now figuring out how to respond to those sweet nudges. Isn't He just too good to us? xoxo, Wheels I love hugs. I love what they communicate between two human beings. I love how it feels to hug someone you haven’t seen in months or years, someone who you missed with every fiber of your being. It’s almost unbelievable how deeply comforting it can be to have someone hold you while your tears flow freely onto their shirt. To hug someone is to fully accept all that they are in that very moment and to communicate unconditional love and care regardless of what the circumstances are that led up to that hug.
Another word for a hug is an embrace. There’s one definition of this word that means to hug, but in case you’ve forgotten, the word embrace is a homonym. The other definition for embrace is as follows: “to accept or support (a belief, theory, or change) willingly and enthusiastically.” I’m learning to embrace and even to engage with some of the God-given things about myself, like unruly hair and a strange affinity for chilly weather and the ability to put words together on a page and make them sound nice. Also, I have just decided to make the word embrace my word for 2016. I’ve never done this before, honestly in part because I think it’s kind of full of corny poop. But it hit me differently today – that’s exactly how I want to spend this year: embracing it. I want to learn how to fully embrace people and things and opportunities my sweet One sets in front of me. I’m tired of being tired. I’m tired of wasting time. I’m tired of getting to the end of the day and feeling frustrated and depressed because I don’t feel that I’ve stewarded the things the Lord has given me very well. I’m tired of settling: for mediocrity, for apathy, for un-creativity, for lackadaisical relationships and a lethargic prayer life, for half-assing instead of whole-assing things (thanks Ron Swanson). I’m tired of waking up and failing to realize how wonderful it is to be alive and active in Manhattan, Kansas on any given Tuesday. I’m tired of living as though things could be better. I’m tired of waiting around for joy to come to me through material things or other people or a relationship or a comfortable, happy life instead of embracing the One who promises to provide the only real kind of joy, no questions asked and no hesitancy involved and no need to try to earn it. Romans 8:28 reminds us that everything – every moment, every life event, any flavor of circumstance – is God-breathed and purpose-filled. I think some of what Paul is saying to the believers in Rome here as he’s talking about the power of the Spirit and God’s plan for humanity is that they need to stop being so dang fearful. And I also think that the opposite of being fearful or anxious about something is to embrace it. If you’re able to really wrap your arms around something – even something or someone that might have at one time seemed like a threat to you – you’ve realized that it’s not worth running away from anymore. It’s not worth the bitterness and resentment and anger and sadness and even depression that comes with fearfulness. So, instead of settling for anything less, this year I’m embracing a faithful and loving Jesus and everything that He offers me with outstretched arms. We’ll see how it goes. |
Meet the writer.Hiya. Wheels, here. I enjoy all forms of espresso & days spent in the mountains of Colorado or the prairies of Kansas or the beaches of SoCal. Also, Royals baseball. Archives
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