Not Me! Monday...

If you read MckMama's blog My Charming Kids, then I'm sure you're aware of the fun of Not Me! Mondays. It's been a wild couple of weeks... and here's a list of things that I did not do...

It was not me who came up with a lame excuse so I could leave work 3 hours early and go to Hobby Lobby and browse the Christmas ornament aisles. Not me! I would never do something so deceitful... especially when Christmas is still almost 4 months away.

It was also not me who went by Full Moon BBQ last night and ordered a half dozen cookies (and nothing else) for dinner last night because I was too lazy to cook anything else. Nope. Not me! I always find something healthy and nutritious to make myself for dinner. Besides, my mother taught me that you can't eat only cookies for dinner... and I always do what mother says.

And it was not me who sat behind her desk with her pants unbuttoned all day because they were too tight (...probably from not eating the aforementioned half dozen cookies). No way! Not me! I would never stoop so low just to squeeze into a pair of last year's pants that should still fit.

And since we're not confessing, it was certainly not me who took an entire day off work on Friday to prepare for a party that was cancelled. Not me! If I cancelled a party, I would be responsible and go to work instead of wasting an entire day eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch and watching HGTV.

Anyone want to share your Not Me! moments??

Disturb Us, Lord

Can you believe it's September?? With every passing month, I become more and more aware of all the things I meant to do or be or become. It seems like every time I post again, I'm filling the first paragraph with apologies for not writing like I should and with excuses about how busy I am. This week I have finally! realized that everyone's busy. No one's life is any less important than mine, even though sometimes my actions (and my driving) may prove otherwise. So, onward and upward...

I came across this unbelieveable poem this week and fell on my face with conviction. Read it first. I'll explain afterwards...

Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.
[Sir Francis Drake]

If you read that and felt nothing, then I pity you. How many times a day, a week, a month... a lifetime?... do we sail too closely to the shore, never once leaving our comfy, warm life to meet with Jesus on the raging sea? How many times have I fallen in love with my own life and neglected to remember the very reason for life itself? How many times have I been satisfied with what I have, never once believing that there was anything better to dare to dream for? How many of us are working diligently to create a new, better world to live in but forget that this earth is merely a temporary tent of a home? Oh the things we could accomplish if we could only remember!!

I can't remember a day when I wasn't at least kind of afraid. Looking back at so many of my posts over the course of the past year, fear seems to be an underlying theme. And the funny part is that I don't have an overwhelming volume of conscious fear. But I could speak volumes about my unconscious fears. It's small fear... fear that I don't always know I possess. It's the small fear that keeps holding me back, day after precious day.

I don't have many regrets in life. I think that most people say that they don't have regrets because mistakes only make you stronger, build character, or bring you to where you are today. And while I think I belive that, I can't honestly say that I don't have any regrets. Anyone who says they don't have any regrets suffers from one of two things: 1) denial or 2) miracles. Anyone who has no regrets has never been faced with the fact that someone's very life might have been in your hands and you blew it because you were afraid.

I suffer from a particularly terrifying fear of not being liked. It is closely linked to my struggle with fear of failure. I have convinced myself that being well-liked is in direct correlation to being successful. In other words, the more liked I am by people, the more I will succeed. If you really think that statement through, it's not entirely untrue. Or uncommon. These fears were particularly successful in the winter of 2006. I very well might have held someone's life in my hands, and I didn't follow-up, I didn't check in, I didn't encourage. And all because I was afraid. I was afraid that a group of teenagers might think I was (gasp!) uncool and that if I was (gasp!) uncool that I would be unsuccessful. I have never let that experience leave me for fear that history might repeat itself. All I can hope is that a seed was planted and that God handled the things that I so royally messed up. I won't know this side of heaven.

I know that I am usually writing about Godly singleness, and I won't leave out that part because it all works together. My fears of failure and of not being liked have affected me there too. I shut people out, shut them down before I can fail, before I discover that they may not like me. But what I have realized in all my rants about why God has left me single for so long is this: It doesn't really matter.

That's right. It doesn't really matter why I'm single. It wouldn't really matter if I wasn't. My goal here would be the same. God picked me and created me with a voice, with a purpose. Sometimes it doesn't seem as evident as it does right now... but today I will choose to follow through. I can't tell you why me... why I was picked to live this life and why you were picked to live yours. But we all have something Godly to offer, and every life is connected to every other. What I do or don't do affects people in ways that I can't fully understand. But Jesus understood. He understood the consequences of the cross long before I could have even questioned his decision. My life is connected to His, just as my life is now connected to yours through this blog.

So my prayer today is just that He will disturb me. I want Him to disturb me in my comfort. I want Him to disturb me in my nonchalance. I want Him to disturb me in my complacency. I want Him to disturb me in my spiritual piety. I want Him to disturb me to dream bigger... to leave the safety of shore to meet Him on the raging sea. Because you can't walk on water if you never leave the boat...