{lately, i feel like we're raising our children to be ungrateful. accidentally. because we're not intentionally doing anything that would teach them otherwise. when a child has so much, there is nothing left to want. and i think when a child or anyone doesn't understand that feeling of want, it does something weird to their heart.
it's doing something weird to my heart.
my heart has been ungrateful. you wouldn't know it. no, i hide it.
i feel a whisper saying, why do you want more and more when we you have all that you need in Christ? and i have the audacity to say with my actions and thoughts, i'm bored with what you offer me, Jesus.
no more. i repent. this year will be a process of getting back to what really matters. with being intentional about my friendships and intentional about the way we raise our children. intentional about our spending and intentional about finding those things we love more than Christ and getting rid of them.}
http://thenatos.blogspot.com/2011/12/something-has-to-change.html
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{I have felt all week God pressing into my heart about being more intentional in my parenting. I know i am patient and sweet and snuggly...but am I intentional?
I want to be intentional about these little one's hearts.}
http://www.thewiegands.com/2012/01/intentional.html
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When the kids and the washing machine sleep, I wash my real dirt down with words and The Word.
I weep wonder when I read how God’s changing lives through those humble pages and it’s just proof that God really does use broken, messed up, and fallible lives anyways.
… but honestly? the only words that really matter?
Are the ones I live.
This convicts me.
I keep writing it out here everyday, the words I am seeking to live — about this wondrously messy, everyday-holy life….
about finding the beauty and quiet,
about slowing to see the sacred in the chaos,
the Cross in the clothespin,
the flame in the bush…
Just listening – laundry, liturgy, life, — holy ground.
A holy experience — because all of life flames with God.
Ann Voskamp
http://www.aholyexperience.com/ann-voskamp/
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Communion with God. Community with God’s people.
What else is there?
Relationship is the essence of all reality. What else is eternal but love — to God and His people, relationship with God and God’s people? What can be shaken when we’re holding onto this?
http://www.aholyexperience.com/2012/01/a-creed-for-the-new-year/
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How to bite my tongue more and eat sugar less and read His Word daily and never fear ever and lead these half a dozen kids higher up and deeper into God and not slip in my own sin? A woman can know faith in her head and fear in her heart.
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Sometimes you don’t know you’re taking the first step through a door — until you’re already inside. And no matter what room you step into — every space holds the possibility of this profound joy and deep pain and the two always mingle together. There is no other place to arrive at.
There’s only one address anyone lives at and it’s always a duplex: Joy and pain always co-habit every season of life.
Accept them both and keep company with the joy while the pain does it’s necessary renovations.
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Sharing — breaking of oneself and giving oneself away. We only have what we hand away.
It means sharing out of brokenness to bring healing to community. We only are broken and this is beautiful: in brokenness, we are instruments in the hands of the Wounded Healer.
It means in our brokenness, we share in the sufferings of Christ, and this is communion. God, He calls His people to share – not out out any sense of perfection – but out of brokenness, patterning life after the God who broke Himself and gave. Would koinonia let me accept my brokenness instead of being terrified by it?
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We pass the cup. I swallow down this grace I never get over and never want to get over and I close my eyes and Christ alone washes clean. Christ alone washes clean. We begin the new year the only way we can begin anything — with Communion with God. With brokenness.
Maybe in communion, in koinonia, I could embrace the broken parts of my life:
Embrace every scar as surgery — to make me more like His Son.
Embrace every pain as a peeling away of something — to make me know it in new ways, that He is enough.
Embrace every moment as a miracle — that it might never have been. That makes me wake to all as grace.
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I try to breathe slow and smile and remember what is the thing:
Contentment isn’t a state of organization, a weight on the scale, a state of better: better kids, better marriage, better health, better house. Contentment is never a matter of circumstances; contentment is always a state of communion — a daily embracing of God. A thankfulness for all the gifts – and moments and life, just as He gives it. Trying harder may only bring harder trials and contentment, it won’t be be found in the resolutions, but in the revolutions – in the turning round to God.
http://www.aholyexperience.com/2012/01/what-the-new-year-needs-most/
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