Well,
it is that time of the…year, day, moment…again. Time to blog. While I munch on these two delicious foods Trader Joe’s has ever sold. And listen to the awesome worship songs on Spotify. 🙂
Now that you know what I am eating, time to get to the real stuff. Something that has been tugging on my heart and that has finally epic-ally exploded today like a glorious firework…
I must warn you, there may be a lot of grammar mistakes or sentences that don’t make much sense. I am purdy tired from work. I worked an unusual shift, THE THIRD SHIFT. Man oh man. I used to work those all the time at my other job but now my body is so used to waking up early and getting done early… Not going to work late, staying up till the morning light shines through (usually when I am at work on a normal day). But I agreed to pick up the shift. It wasn’t bad. Not busy. Got everything done plus more. The sleeping deprivation is still at me though… so bare with me if you must :). I got some sleep before church this morning and with a whole whopping two minutes before having to leave, I woke up to my roommates bright eyed and bushy tailed for the day to come. Me…not so much. As much as I wanting to sleep in my comfortable bed, dog by my side, pillows suffocating my body and a glorious fan blowing cool air on to my face, I woke up with no problem. I am still in shock myself! As I was a teacher assistant at Sunday School, I made sure I asked for the willingness and strength to wake up after my two hour nap. And sure… thing… He answered my mumbled prayer. 🙂 My eyes were blood shot, hair in a good amount of a mess, in the same clothes as last night, I rummaged myself down to our Sunday School room. Only about five kiddos pile in. As I hear the agenda from the other teacher, my heart smiled.
We would be going upstairs for the sermon and communion (children are going through First Communion soon and our Pastor and his wife would like if the children would come upstairs every month or so to participate) ; it was perfect for the lesson. The section of The Serenity Prayer: To Accept The Things I Cannot Change And The Courage To Change The Things I Can. As we discussed about accepting things we literally cannot change- situations, people, animals, God; and having courage to change the things we literally can, speaking the truth, and seeing our fears as something we can change into love, truth, and life. When the time came to go upstairs for part of church, it became a different story. Three of girls were pleased and accepted the “challenge” of going upstairs, as the other two boys were not havin’ it. Who wouldn’t? To fear the unknown makes sense…we fear what we don’t know. They were unsure what church was going to be like today. One child stayed downstairs and his fear turn into tears… the other kiddo took the courage and came upstairs with us all. He accepted that he couldn’t change the different Sunday School dynamics today.
We all sat together, in the first two pews… As God was working in all of our hears, I can only speak from my heart and how it was changed today because of those kiddos in Sunday School today. The other kiddo who had tears through out the whole sermon, stayed upstairs the ENTIRE time, got blessed during communion and quickly went downstairs to enjoy an Italian ice for snack. As the other teacher came down and talked with the kiddos how it took courage to go upstairs and to stay upstairs and we were given a gift of accepting something we couldn’t change today; she bluntly told the tear filled eyed child who was upstairs for church that HE was the ROCKSTAR of the group today. As much as he didn’t want to be upstairs this morning for his grandpa’s sermon… He stayed and that took so much courage! To overcome his fear and to be out of his comfort zone of not being surrounded by the silliness of crafts, loud games, and running around activities like what usually happens downstairs every Sunday. To see his face expression changed from fear of the unknown to knowing that his courageous decision to buckle up his baby straps and participate was amazing to see!
As I have seen in the past in other situations and my own, we as humans would most likely want to condemn this child for crying throughout the whole church service. And mind you, this wasn’t forced on the children… the decision of going upstairs was implied but ultimately the decision was to each individual child in that Sunday School room today. As each child decided on courage and acceptance today, I was amazed by other teacher’s reaction to this little kiddo during the service. She didn’t condemn him for his reaction of fear but she welcomed his courage to follow through!
It brings me to the “adult” world and that it is not much different at all. There is so much I don’t want to do and I make a huge fuss out of it by complaining, or doing a half-ass job at whatever the situation is… What good does that do me? None. Other than harden my heart. This morning reminded me of how I like to stay in comfort zone too much and that I don’t like to take the courage to step out. I like to try to change, manipulate something or someone when something isn’t going my way- I don’t like to accept things I cannot change… But I like the change the things I “think” I can!
As for me, the most difficult thing for me to do is… share my feelings, opinions, beliefs, all in all: talk.
I have a horrid time figuring out my thoughts to complete a semi-decent sentence. I’ve never like talking all too well. I was asked the question today if I was shy. I was stunned by this question. Not only because I was being “accused” of being shy, but I have never been asked that. I have been called “quiet” before. And I really despise that. Not because I take it as a character “default” of mine per say but because it runs a lot deeper than just a characteristic of myself.
Currently…and I have a feeling that I will be learning this the rest of my life… that I do have a voice. In my preteen/teen/high school years, I kept to myself dramatically for many reasons… some of my own perceptive and some of the dysfunction that was going on. And yes, there was/is dysfunction in my family and I took that differently when I was younger then I do now. I don’t want pity or anything and I am not saying I had this horrible child hood… because I had food, shelter, and education. A lot more than some children in this world. At the same time, we must not compare pain to pain. We all see things differently at different seasons in our lives and when I was younger, I came to the belief that I didn’t have a “voice” for anything…my self esteem, my opinions at school or elsewhere, my depression, my everything due to many things that I am in continuous recovery and healing from [thank The Lord, literally :)].
Anyhoozlebees! I had to think of the real reasons why I tend to take the more quiet route other than the lame excuse of, “I’m just tired today” … and here is what I came up for myself: I generally don’t like talking all too much-in a sense of my personality that I’d rather listen and process in writing, art, rather than speaking out my aggression’s; I still have the belief that creeps up on me every now and than that my voice is useless and I’d rather not express what I am thinking; I am talking to God and taking in the beautiful breathes of His creation; I love listening to people; I dislike being center of attention and tend to reach on the other spectrum of wanting to be in the background, my self esteem isn’t the best, and I have some anxiety talking in groups or one on one cause I have a difficult time letting people in and letting my guard down.
I guess the whole point of this is that I used to take being quiet as one of my character defaults and used to cry a lot at night when someone made a comment about my calm personality, when in reality it is just a part of who I am and how God made me. I must accept that. Don’t get me wrong, I can be silly, loud, and anything opposite of quiet. At the same time, I can use my quietness as an excuse to not step out of comfort zone, express myself, or do something God has asked/told me to do. Lemmetellchu, when I do, I feel a whole lot better when something I know I am supposed to say or do, and I actually do it other than just sitting back and pondering all the different ways I could approach the situation, when I could ask for the willingness to be courageous enough and STEP OUT OF MY COMFORT ZONE AND FACE MY FEARS. I am not talking about my fear of spiders and weird multiplies, but I am talking about heart fears. Ones that ache at your heart. The fears that tell you to stuff yourself with food, sex, men, internet, alcoholic, drugs, anything… Those fears are scary. No pun intended. My fear of spiders is nothing like my fear of talking in front of a crowd or having one of those heart to heart, deep conversations that bring out healing and redemption.
I am scared of spiders.
I am scared of weird multiplies; example: 76 grocery bags surrounding me.
I am scared of expressing myself and worrying what people might think if/when I say something that makes no sense at all.
I am scared of rejection.
I am scared of death.
All these fears are lies. Lies that we create from the unknown.
And sometimes those fears are what can drive or be apart of our eating disorders, addictions, alcoholism, _____ (fill in the blank).
Ok. Well, my fears are what drives a lot of dysfunctional mindful thoughts- my eating disorder- my codependency- my anger- my hurt…
I have been so encouraged by the little boy in the Sunday School today; to continue on the road of courage and to push aside fear. To accept that I am created new in God. Remember the truth. Remember I have freedom to be who I am. Remember to not condemn myself when I do mess up. To remind myself, I need my Savior named Jesus. I need His love constantly. I need His Agape love. To help me have the courage to carry on…through the agony, through the pain, and doing things I simply do not want to do. It is okay that I step out and take up God’s truth… NOTHING BAD CAN HAPPEN TO ME. Rather than bringing a smile to my face, knowing in my heart, all this work has been done by Him and not by my own strength. Encouragement is powerful to the soul. I lack that severely to others and myself. The encouragement of have acceptance and courage. Woah.
All these beautiful experiences are used to bring me back to Him and be reminded that HE is in control… my life is to bring Him glory to His Kingdom.
Accept The Things I Cannot Change and The Courage To Change The Things I Can. . .
What can you change?
What can you not change?
Much love…
Erika. 🙂
My life be like... 