I have to let you in on a little secret. I'm currently sitting in my favorite coffee shop writing. This is literally something I've envisioned doing for the past...ohhh 5 years. I know that many of you bloggers do this every single day, but I've never been able to do it..for one reason. My laptop. Take out the fact that it's from 1987 and has to always be plugged in, but it also weighs more than my first born child. It was just never convenient! My husband got sick of hearing me complain about this, and bought me a cute little Samsung Chromebook. It's PERFECT for everything I need to do! I'm ERB-SESSED with it! (Thank you husband!)
So, here I am at the coffee shop (eeeeee!), computer open, coffee in hand (well, not exactly but you get it), and my Bible open. We spent some time in Romans last Sunday and the message is something I CANNOT get outta my mind. It's funny because as I opened up to Romans, I found page after page after page after page of old church bulletins, many of them with passages from Romans. So then I think "Self, you need to dive into Romans. What is there that you're not doing? What are you overlooking?" Wowza! There's a lot. Romans Chapter 12 is quite literally one of my favorite lessons in the Bible. (especially 12: 6-8) More on that later...
I can't help but reflect back to a quote in an email that hit me like a ton of bricks last week. It said "your beliefs don't make you a better person, your behavior does." It's interesting because when I read that I instantly felt like this person wrote it directed towards me. Ouch. It got me thinking...if this offends me so badly, it must be because I'm doing something wrong. When Charlie and I first started dating, we would have hour long conversations about our faith and what we wanted for each other and for our family. I remember driving to Ohio one afternoon on one of our impromptu diner road trips and telling him my vision for my blog. (I've written about this a hundred times on here and have done very little about it) He was encouraging, of course. Look, my life isn't easy. My life isn't hard. My life just IS. It's a lot like yours, I'm sure. I've tried a lot to be someone else- someone whose blog I read, someone who I work with, someone who I go to church with, someone who is a Pinterest queen, the perfect wife, the perfect mom, the perfect daughter, the perfect Christian...I'm none of those people. I'm just Me. I read a Rick Warren Daily Hope this weekend about being yourself. At the end it said "There's something liberating about just being yourself. The quickest way to an ulcer is to try to be somebody you're not. If you want to live an effective life, just relax and be yourself."
Back to Romans, (whew...stay with me folks!) Paul encourages us to use our spiritual gift. We each have a specific gift and we are to use that gift to the best of our ability. My gift is different than everyone else's. My spiritual gift was created just for me, and when I find myself trying to use my voice the way that someone else does, I feel deflated when I fall short. I'm not an eloquent speaker. I'm not a graceful writer. I'm not overly fabulous at anything (just ask my mom about the time my piano teacher told my mom to stop wasting money on my piano lessons!). My fear is that I'll go through life trying to mimic someone else's spiritual gift and I'll never truly find the way to use mine. Eeeek. That's scary. I think it just reminds me that I need to do what I do, and what I do, I need to do it intentionally.
I can't speak enough of what it means to go through life doing things intentionally. Imagine my excitement when I heard our pastor saying "use your gift intentionally. BE intentional." YES! Instantly I thought of my marriage and our promise to each other. It excites me to be married to someone who wants the same things for our marriage and who promises to love me intentionally. Just the same, I want to live intentionally so that if/when I "find" my spiritual gift, I'll be doing it to the best of my ability. I never want to get to Heaven and stand before God and say "I'm sorry that I failed you. I'm sorry that I didn't try harder to live my life for You. I'm sorry that I never gave it my ALL. I'm sorry that I tried so hard to be someone else that I never really got to be who You intended me to be. I'm sorry that I didn't do everything with YOU as my guide. I'm sorry that I didn't intentionally live my life for You." Ugh. Scary stuff ya'll.
No comments:
Post a Comment