Happy Heart's Day!

I have never been much for celebrating Valentine's Day. I haven't liked what it's stood for, and I hate the commercialism of it. But in this current season of life, I am up for celebrating anything and everything, even silly holidays. Since today is a work day, I took to celebrating Valentine's Day with my love on Saturday, our date day. I themed the day with hearts, but with a twist, in that each time I gave my husband something heart-shaped, I tried to tell him something I appreciated about him. I almost forgot with the first one, though!

I started that day with a heart-shaped Hershey's chocolate chip caramel Kreme doughnut. (Thank you, Krispy Kreme for the Valentine's Day theme!) I had some heart shaped Cheerios on hand as a back-up, less sugary breakfast.

I attempted to make pizza with heart shapes for dinner (pan pepperoni pizza for him and thin crust radish pizza for me).

We did some date night questions from our heart jar.

Then we made a Valentine's Day cookie house (since we never got around to a gingerbread house this Christmas).

All in all, a fun day, and a day worth celebrating. I guess not every day can be that way, but maybe we can find ways to celebrate a little every day? Especially with/for those we love?

I Can Trust Him.

 

The refrigerator froze my fresh produce. Again. There is nothing I can do about it, at least nothing right now, and it really rankles me. I like fresh produce. I work hard to try to keep it around. I spend our hard earned money on it. I've been trying to arrange the fridge so that my produce won't freeze, and despite all my efforts, the food froze anyway.

I recognize that frozen produce is a first-world problem. Some people don't have food. I know this. But the refrigerator freezing food that it shouldn't bothers me. That's okay. What's not okay is my perseveration about it. God knows! God made the produce. God gave humans the creativity to make machines like refrigerators. He provides the resources to have a home, to have a refrigerator, to have electricity to run it, to have money to pay the electricity bills, to have money to buy the food that the refrigerator freezes. The refrigerator freezing fresh produce upset is indeed a "small" thing, but it shows the bent of my heart.

I tend, far too often, far too much, to rely on myself for my own provision. I get bent out of shape when my provision fails. And who am I to even think I can provide for myself? But yet somehow I do. And as I stood there at the refrigerator, I felt the Spirit prick my conscience, and I had to say to myself, "I can trust Him."

Yes, I can trust God. With my frozen produce. With my refrigerator. With my life! I think I trust God, but little things like this show me just how much I don't. It's okay to be upset. It's not okay to act like I control the world.

God controls the world. God is my provider. God is good. I can trust Him! I need to trust Him more. Hopefully I remember that the next time I encounter a challenge, whether it is with the food in the refrigerator drawer or in a larger arena. The issue is not really the problem at hand. The issue is my heart.

When My Heart Doesn't Believe

Do I admit that I've felt hopeless? Do I confess that my heart is not in what I preach right now?  I normally don't write when I'm in the middle, when I have no resolution to a situation, but here I am, feeling compelled to write....now. Why? I don't know. Maybe someone else feels the same as I do.

I feel hopeless. In my head, I know that God exists, that the Bible's promises are true, that God can do anything. I don't feel it it my heart, though. I feel dead, numb, sad, sorrowful, pained. The waves of emotion vary day by day, but they beat the shore of my life with the same dull message: "It's impossible." It's impossible that the stress will end. It's impossible that life will get better. It's impossible that my health will improve. It's impossible that I will overcome my selfish habits and be a better wife. It's impossible that we will have the type of marriage I want. The list goes on and on. The roar is deafening. And amidst the roar, I still hear more: the emptiness of God's promises when I recite them to family, friends, coworkers, and clients; the messages of guilt. The cacophony is intense.

Even with all this, another message has been tapping against my heart lately, squeezing in between the larger waves and gently lapping at my shores: "Hope that is seen is no hope at all" (Romans 8:24, New International Version [NIV]). "Hope that is seen is no hope at all." What is hope? Waiting for something to happen? Expectation? A heart thing? Or is it a head thing? Is it faith, even against all odds? I'm starting to lean towards that last one.

I see nothing at times. I feel nothing at times. I believe only because my belief is all I have left. If God does not exist and His promises are not true, I am of all people the most miserable (1 Corinthians 15:19, King James Version [KJV]). I truly have nothing to live for. But if hope is not hope until it is in the unseen, maybe I am on the right track. Maybe the hope I thought I had in the past truly was not hope. It was in tangible things, things I could see. Now those are not there. All I can do is hope the unseen, have faith that God can do the impossible. It's all I can do. All I can wrap my head around. Maybe my heart will follow in due time.

Fix Your Heart.

I wrote earlier about times when the Spirit has convicted me to stop praying about something, to let go and let God. But the last time this happened, something else happened. I heard the still small voice say, "Pray for your heart." I was so convicted that my heart wasn't in the right place. I was praying for circumstances to change when what God really wanted to change was my heart.

So I changed the direction of my prayers. I prayed that I would be faithful and trustworthy in my actions. I prayed that I would rest in God's peace. I prayed that I would be sensitive to the Spirit's leading. I prayed that I would be brave and obedient. I prayed that I would be okay however the issue turned out. And my heart began to change.

I still don't have answers. And maybe that's the point. Prayer doesn't change God, because He is changeless. Prayer changes me. Prayer allows God to fix my heart.

Filling My Heart

I told someone recently that it's been a rough several years. It is not that my life is bad. In fact, I am very blessed. I have a job and a home and family and friends. But emotionally, life been tough. There have been a lot of highs and lows and everything in between. Sometimes I just feel emotionally beat up and bruised and don't know how to recover.

I've been telling myself lately that I need to find a life. It's not that I don't have a life, but that I need to be more diligent in trying to things to do other than sleep, eat, work, and repeat. And the things I choose to do need to be sustainable and attainable. They need to help fill my heart so that I have energy and life to live and give. These past few weekends, God has given me the following activities to fill my heart:

1) Hiking: This requires some planning and exertion, but the sun and the effort and the stillness of nature calm my spirits and promote rest in my body.

2) Quality conversation: I don't have a lot of friends here, but when I actually make time for the few I have, it's worth it. Sometimes quality conversation looks getting creative with time differences to schedule a phone date over the distance, too. I don't really need a lot of friends, just quality ones who will be iron sharpening iron and speak truth into my life.

3) Cooking: It's a simple thing, but therapeutic in its own right. It's so fulfilling to chop or knead or stir or bake something into existence. And the eating of the food is enjoyable, too.

Self-care isn't all about activities. Sometimes it's about rest and alone time and quite frankly, plain old isolation or hibernation. But for me, I'm realizing that I need to balance effortless activities with some efforted activities. May God continue to show me the way....

Clean it Up!

"Again Jesus called the crowd to him. He said, 'Listen to me, everyone. Understand this. Nothing outside of a person can make them "unclean" by going into them. It is what comes out of them that makes them "unclean."'"

~Mark 7:14-16, New International Reader's Version

Watch what you eat. Watch what you breathe. Watch what's in your mattress. Mandates to clean up our diets, environment, and homes are everywhere. We have websites devoted to clean eating, expensive air purifiers to keep smog out of our homes, and lots of people tout the benefits of organic, chemical-free bedding. These things aren't bad, per se, but I think we can hyper focus on these things.

As I've bopped in and out of the news scene these past few weeks (I purposely try not to consume much news because it all seems biased), I've seen a lot of hate. We hate because of race. We hate because of ethnicity. We hate because of sexual orientation. We hate because of mental illness. We hate because of stigma. We hate because of religion. There's a lot of ugly, yucky, unclean stuff.

So what if we put as much focus on cleaning up outflow as we put on cleaning up our intake? What if we listened more and spoke less? What if we gave more freely and took more sparingly? What if we empathized instead of criticizing? What if we did more perspective-taking instead of perspective-making? What if we loved more? 

I think love would do more to clean up our society than any amount of "clean" living could.

This post was inspired by my friends at Joni Perry, PLPC and A Reasonable Adventurer.