The Rewards of Sacrifice

Sacrifice--The surrender or destruction of something prized or desirable fore the sake of something considered as having a higher or more pressing claim.

I've never really considered the word sacrifice much until just recently. Who knows why, the strangest things just pop into my head and jotting them down (or blogging) seems to be the only way to get them out. Having grown up in church and being saved since I was 10, I don't have a lot of "wild" times behind me. I remember growing up and sitting through testimony service (which sometimes seemed to last for hours on end), I would hear people say how God rescued them from the miry clay and set their feet on solid ground. I always thought "Wow!! One of the worst things I had done was steal a diaper from my Aunt Sue for my baby doll.... Sorry Aunt Sue, I'm coming clean. But as an adult I have become painfully aware of the sacrifices required for living a Christ centered life. I haven't had to sacrifice my wild lifestyle but I have had to sacrifice my pride to come humbly before the cross and confess my sins. I've had to sacrifice desires that would undermine my spiritual walk or the walk of others. I've  sacrificed my time to ministry. I'm required to lay aside offenses that come my way, to forgive when forgiveness isn't what I want to do and to love my enemy or a better term would be to love someone I don't particularly "click" with. There is a lot of things that can be a "miry clay" for anyone who is trying to live a life that glorifies Christ. Sometimes I forget that it isn't necessarily the big things that are the problem, but a multitude of little things that can leave us in a shattered mess. I'll admit, some of these sacrifices may seems small at first glance, but getting  rid of them feels like ripping a hole in my chest because they have become so ingrained into my flesh that it's painful! Yes, being everything God created me to be is definitely a work in progress, but without a doubt the rewards will forever out weigh the sacrifices.... Regardless of how big, small, or painful they may seem.

 A Kiss

The physical equivalent of all of the feelings you cannot put into words.

Someone's Looking Out For Me

The weekend went well. With the help of several great friends we pulled the annual Senior Banquet together without a hitch.... or at least not much of one. I was calm, cool and collected after I vowed to myself and my husband that I would not be so stressed out I couldn't function. He came home that morning from attending a good friends graduation. I noticed he was very pensive but I couldn't figure out why. I asked him "Why are you so quiet?" to which he replied "I'm not sure why I am". Immediately I knew something was up because when I usually ask him that his reply is always... "I didn't think I was being quiet." So I sat on the bed and pondered what on earth could have him acting so strange. Later as we were getting ready to head to the church I simply said "I'm not going to stress today or freak out about every little detail, I'm just going to go with the flow and not worry about it." He kind of looked at me as he sat by me on the bed and he said "I hope so." I died laughing.... I said "That's it! That's what has you worried, you think I'm going to stress out over this!' He just kinda cocked his head and smiled.  It was so sweet! He's been worried that the stress of doing things I normally do without any problem will send me over the edge since I'm a little more tightly wound since the fall in January. Typically, I feel each emotion with the entirety of my being, or as my husband says.... I have a lot of passion.But since the fall I am completely irrevocably under an emotional spell with a passion that turns heaven and earth upside down leaving me dangling by a very thin thread. I'm working on rangling those feelings back in balance but so far haven't had much luck. I noticed that my guy kept a very close eye on me the whole evening... mentally calculating how I was doing without acting like he was keeping an eye on me. I found it very sweet, very comforting that he was looking out for me. Anyway, the banquet was great, the food was wonderful and I was happy to see the seniors get to enjoy a special evening with their family. I'm pretty sure I heard a sweet sigh of relief come from my husband's lips as we left the church.I just turned to him, patted his back and said "See, I did good, not even a hint of meltdown all day long."

The Sound of Silence

It validates your worst fears

Gives voice to your most anxious thoughts

Highlights your feared failures

Marginalizes your imagined success

Destroys your most treasured relationships

Threatens your peace of mind

Induces insecurities

Undermines stability

And keeps the light of truth from piercing the darkness

The sound of silence

Let your feelings be known

I'm Good, He Has My Back!

I'm not sure if it's my imagination... but the weirdest things seem to happen to me. Maybe weird things don't happen, maybe I just exaggerate things that happen to everyone else so it ends up sounding strange, or maybe my mind just bends the normal a little so my view is always somewhat different. Yea, I'm going with selection number 3.... my mind tends to bend things. Regardless, this morning I wake up to a typical morning after a typical sleepless night. I mosey to the living room to read my book (House Rules by Jodi Picoult). I'm having a hard time putting this book down so on my sleepless nights I reach over in the dark and fire up the blackberry kindle.... which, by the way, I LOVE!!!!  When I finally decide to get up, I head upstairs to start my morning ritual. While brushing my teeth my tongue feels... well, it feels kind of hard on one side. I just figured that I was tense during the night and probably clinched my jaw causing my tongue to, I don't know... be sore. Before I head out to work I mention to my husband that my tongue is a little swollen and that I figured it was probably something he should be blamed for. When I get to work I fix a cup of oatmeal and open up my email but you know.... my tongue is kind of getting in the way of things. So I pull out a mirror and sure enough, it is a lot bigger than it was when I got up. I decided I'm probably overreacting to a strange tongue muscle (can you even imagine how I would go about getting that type of injury).  A co-worker talks to me about the hail storm last night and even though I'm trying to listen I am really concentrating on the fact that it feels like my tongue is a balloon being filled with helium..... SERIOUSLY!!! I explain my problem to my co-worker who offers me a Benedryl because by now I am having a hard time forming my words. I give the Benedryl about 15 min. to work and decide maybe I'll run to the Urgent Med. Clinic just to have it checked out. All the way to the clinic I attempt to talk myself out of going because it just seems ridiculous to go to the dr. for a swollen tongue.... it just sounds..... weird. Totally out of keeping with my usual luck I hardly have to time sit down before the nurse, who I just happen to know, calls me back. I attempt to explain the problem with my best Elmer Fud impression but really it's a mute point because by this time she can clearly see that there is hardly enough room in my mouth for my tongue. Forming words is nearly impossible!!! When the Dr. comes in she questions me about how long I've been taking a particular medication and I tell her a couple of months. She says... "Well I am going to need you to hop onto the table so we can start an IV and get some medications in you because you have developed an allergic reaction to your medication." She gives me a list of stuff they will use to attempt to bring the swelling down and leaves the nurse to start the IV. I call my husband to tell him what's going on when the nurse takes the phone from me and tells him he is going to need to drive me home, because apparently it's going to feel like Happy Hour at 9:30 in the morning.... Hey! It's 5 o'clock somewhere. So my husband comes, they pump medicine, check the tongue.... maybe a little better but still really bad. The dr. tells the nurse to give me the adrenaline shot which I was really hoping went in my IV, but no luck. The best way to describe it is she sucker punched my thigh without pulling my dress up (went right through the material) and then kind of held the needle in there while applying as much pressure as possible. She practically knocked me off the table with the punch and the dr. had the nerve to ask if it hurt. What the heck? Yeah! I'll have a bruise for a year. Still, after that no change. They leave the door open so I can knock the metal tray off to get their attention in case I have trouble breathing. I hear the nurse ask the dr. if she can take out the IV since it is empty. You know, I find it's never comforting to hear the dr. say about you "No, don't remove the IV because she is nowhere near out of the woods yet." Now I am officially glad I came to the clinic. You have got to be kidding me, right?!? I have never been a country girl, never wanted to be a country girl and love high heels way more than I like fresh air!!! Who the heck put me in the woods and how do I get out?!? I thought I got all the crappy stuff out of the way after the fall in January. I thought my year was suppose to get better. Geeze!!! I want to know who is arranging my schedule of bad stuff so I can choke them to death! They push more meds, tongue stays the same and the dr. grapples with the decision to send me home or send me to the hospital. Personally I'm voting home. Finally she gets in touch with my regular dr. He wants to see me this afternoon. When I see him he wants to know if I ever get tired of satan trying to wipe me out? Well, at least it makes things interesting. What I really enjoy is feeling that regardless of how crappy satan tries to make things, I don't belong to him so he doesn't have the last say in how things go..... So, I'm good because I know who has my back!

Change The World

Something unusual happened last night. I went into a local convenience store, went and got a couple of cokes and was waiting in line to pay. An older man (70 somethingish) was just walking out of the store when he turned around and walked directly to me. It's one of those things you're just not expecting to happen. He said "I have lived most of my life thinking complimentary things about people yet keeping those things to myself. I'm just not going to live that way any more. I just want you to know that the blouse you have on is simply beautiful. It's a beautiful blouse on a beautiful woman". Then he turns around and walks off. After I picked my jaw off the floor I thought to myself...."I wonder if he uses that line on everyone?" Even if he does I swear that I walked out of that store 3 inches taller than I walked in. When I got in the car I told my husband what happened and he said "Oh! You HAVE to put that on sweetp tomorrow."  It made me realize that I too think complimentary things about people that I sometimes keep to myself. I've decided that we'd all walk a little taller and our smiles would be a little brighter if we could simply file the negative stuff we think and speak the complimentary stuff instead. I imagine something that simple could possibly change the world.

A full-time job!!

Last week my husband took me to one of my favorite restaurants for dinner. On the 30 minute drive to the restaurant I rattled on and on about something that had happened earlier in the day with a friend. It wasn't anything terribly important but I was pretty hopped up about it. Right before we got to the restaurant, and after I had finally gotten everything out of my system, I took a breath and asked him if it annoyed him when I got fired up about something. He said the sweetest thing.... He said "No. It just shows that you have a lot of passion and I like that about you." Awe... Now, how sweet is that? I know for a fact that I am annoying when I get riled.... I even annoy myself, but for him to substitute the word "passion" for my hysterics.... Well, it was just the sweetest thing he could have said. Most of the time I wish I had a little less passion and a lot more restraint, unfortunately that's just not how I roll. That's why God gave me a mate with a lot of restraint... To help balance me out. Trust me.... It's a full-time job!!