Being a stay at home mom with three young children allows you to dig yourself quite the cozy little hole. You snuggle on in and can be quite content for many years. If you want to maintain any sort of sanity you streamline your life. Things fit into two categories - what is absolutely necessary and what is not. You realize that most things fit into the second category. So many things become not so important when there are three in three years and you are just trying to get everyone fed, the clothes laundered, everyone sleeping (at the same time :), the house clean and maintaining a generally happy mood about the place.
Then one day you look around and people have started to dress themselves, wipe themselves, feed themselves, occupy themselves and your world opens up a bit. You begin to experience a taste of freedom as the diaper bag transforms into one diaper shoved into your purse. The double stroller makes way for bikes and scooters and a wagon for the zoo. Half of the trunk space is freed up when you go on vacation because you don't need a pack and play, high chair, bottles, diapers for two, baby toys, etc. Everyone gets a little suitcase and you are good to go..............ahhhhh, the freedom!
All good things. Very good things.
But what you have forgotten while you have been stuck in your hole is that other people inhabit this world. People you now have to deal with. Huh.
I am ok, more than ok with probably 99% of people I meet and see. I love people. I love talking to them. I love hearing about their lives. It's totally fascinating to me. I have become the lady who talks to cashiers, to people in line, to moms in the park, etc. I love hearing that the cashier at the Dollar Tree works two jobs, being a cashier is her second job. She is a human resource manager in Akron somewhere. She loves coming to work at Dollar Tree because she can clock in and out and it's a stress free job for her. I love to hear from one of my favorite librarians that when she was at home with her kids some days her husband would come home and she would grab a beer and go outside. She would drink it on the hood of her car because she just needed to get out of the house and take a break. Once I was getting my hair cut and the girl doing my hair talked about her boyfriend and trying to figure out whether or not she wanted to stay with him or get married or what.. She told me all about her job and what she wanted to do once she was done with school - she was such a cool person.
Then there is the other 1%
I am not so good about that percentage of people.
I was better at being in the hole.
In fact this post was suppose to be about something TOTALLY different. One of those conversations women have when they want to talk about someone but not in an obvious way because, well, good Christian ladies don't talk about people or create drama (right Pastor Lantz? Oh the phone calls you have stopped with your words last Sunday...........don't want to let down the pastor by creating drama in anyone's life :) Although, I did call Kentucky once to speak to the other pastor's wife but it's 5 1/2 hours away and I just needed to vent and I am, as always, a work in progress........) So I wanted to write a post about stuff and I realized the stuff I needed to write about wasn't other people's stuff but my own stuff.
God is good in that He writes wisdom like.............
"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?
- Matthew 7:3
Besides, they get into the habit of being idle and going about from house to house. And not only do they become idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying things they ought not to.
- 1 Timothy 5:13
Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?
- James 4:11-12
Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.
- 1 Thess. 5:11
So............hmmmm. Maybe dealing with people again, living in community is not about me growing other people to be how I want them to be but it's God growing me into who He wants ME to be. I rather liked being the person who chose who I got to talk to and be with and influence and be influenced by . Now it seems God is choosing and He is challenging me not to love who I love but who HE loves (which is every darn person on the planet!). And He is asking me to love not how I love but to love how HE loves (which is UNCONDITIONALLY and without requirements, not how I usually operate outside of my family).
Whine, whine, whine, grumble, grumble, grumble...............
This is so not easy.
It is easier to complain and blame and point out that seemingly HUGE speck of sawdust that, AMAZINGLY, I can see so clearly through the BIG OLD plank in my eye.
But I am working on it.............today, this moment, actually. Because up until God began to move my hands on the keyboard and force me to look up those verses this was just going to be a WHOLE BIG post about the something else entirely.
But God is good.......better than me, thank goodness. He who knows my heart can change my heart and He is.......little by little, person by person - changing me into looking more like Him.
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