Encouraging one another, all the more
November is my favorite month because for me it is the beginning of a two-month celebration! It begins with celebrating cooler weather and pumpkin-everything, then my birthday, Thanksgiving, the time it becomes truly acceptable to listen to Christmas music, Christmas (which is not just a day, but a season), and New Year’s. I just love holidays! And I probably overwhelm everyone I know with my crazy love for them.
This past year has been nothing short of traumatic for me emotionally, academically, spiritually, and relationally. Of all things that could have gone wrong, a solid 90% of it did. I struggled in my classes like I had never before and marked a historical event in my life: my lowest gpa to date. I started liking a guy friend of mine, which is always a mess in and of itself. I had an emotional break down about my future career plans because of a slight potential that it might not go as I had planned. An awful and ridiculous rumor was started by none other than my own church friend. I destroyed my eating disciplines. Lastly, I lost my church community due to this series of unfortunate events. Everything really did go wrong.
Since May 20th, 2017, I’ve haven’t been able to fully swallow or breathe. I’ve been in and out of the ER and getting procedures done that until only very recently yielded conclusive results for a rare esophagus disease. Long story short: it’s really sucked and God is really good.
My husband and I are seminary students, working our way through graduate school with a myriad of side jobs with odd hours to fit around our class schedules. This past March, we became parents and joined the community of crazy people attempting to juggle seminary, work, marriage, parenthood, friendships, individual interests, and sanity.
American’s consume a lot of fast food. In fact, 20% of all American meals are eaten in the car. Why? Because we are busy! Recently, my pastor told us: “culturally if we don’t have somewhere to be, we don’t know how to function. The reality is that we cannot function without the chaos in our lives”. How does this impact our relationship with Jesus? Personally, I find myself giving myself “fast food grace”: it’s the little moments here and there where I seek Christ. While God loves all these little moments, it’s not as spiritually nourishing to our bodies, much like fast food is considerably less nourishing to our physical ones.
How discipleship relationships help us cease from striving
If you’re a mom, you know that pregnancy brain and mommy brain are real. If you’re not a mom, please know to give your mommy friends some extra grace if they forget things. I now have three little girls, the youngest of which was born in July. The mommy brain haze is very much my current reality. I forget people’s names that I know I know, I’m not always very coherent in my thoughts, and Bible verses I once had committed to memory I now butcher. I find myself forgetting all sorts of things that I had once known.
Have you ever received an extra bit of cash that you did not expect to receive and spent all of it right away without a blink of your eye? Or do you spend all your earnings each month because you can’t help to buy the things you want?
PART 2 from Friday’s post, The Power of Your Prayers (Part 1) “Same list as always for [name] — please do a miracle in her life!” This prayer was written in my prayer journal earlier this year…
“You have no idea the power of your prayers.” – Toriano “Tory” Mayo