Tag: Christian

Undeserved Blessings

God is good, and I am grateful.

Thinking about my life, I realize how fortunate I am. I have done nothing to merit my great marriage, sweet daughter, lovely home, or artistic life. God has blessed me beyond measure.

This is what God does. He gifts us beautiful things. He holds our hands when things get difficult, and he showers us with blessings. We wade through the rain, but one way or another we are given a rainbow.

As a sinner, I deserve condemnation. Yet God has extended His hand to me. Through His Son, He has given me the gift of eternal life.

Sometimes I need to be still and count the precious blessings I have received from the Lord.

“Be still and know that I am God.”

Headcovering as an Offering to God

Headcovering can be controversial. In my family I have come across the stigma against submission, and the contemporary horror of headcovering. A woman covering anything is becoming more and more controversial in an age where women are supposed to be liberated by the ability to bare their flesh without shame. Maybe the baring of flesh makes some women feel liberated, but I feel liberated when I can cover. My husband, although he shows me every day that he thinks I’m beautiful, values me for so much more than my breasts or my legs. I have no desire to draw attention from other men.

Lately I have begun to wear simple, long, flowing maxi dresses. Craig loves maxi dresses, and I like to wear things he likes. I also like how comfortable the dresses are, and that they are modest. I am not against dressing a little sexier maybe for a special event, but for daily life I actually like being covered.

Gentleness of God

God is gentle with me. This devotional has a quote which says, “The closer we draw to God, the more we will treat others as He’s treated us.”

I think this is true. I am a sweeter person with God. But how much better could I be if I drew closer to Him? God wants us to love Him and try to be like Him. The more I feel the soft lavender of God on my face, the gentler I am.

Overwhelmed

I took Angelica to speech this morning. Now we are at tutoring. I cannot take one more thing. I almost cried in front of Angelica’s speech therapist and the office ladies because they said I might need to take Angelica back to a primary care doctor to get her OT referral to go through. The idea of one more place to go and more people to deal with is just so much right now.

On top of that the UMW newsletter needs to get run today. I couldn’t even finish the document myself. I had a panic attack. Craig is taking me to church to run all the copies today when he gets home from work. I feel a huge weight on my chest just thinking of the machines and all the reams of paper and the noise.

To make matters worse, J, the nice lady who takes care of the mailing, wants to show up to meet me. We still haven’t met. I really want to meet her. We have spoken on the phone before and she sounded lovely. I have been meaning to ask her out to lunch to get to know her. But the idea of socializing with a stranger, of having to see yet another person…more pressure. I thought I would maybe be well enough today to make it work, but when I started crying at the speech therapy office because I was told I would have to get in touch with a doctor’s office I began to question that.

I don’t want to be rude but I cannot handle anything else right now.

It is so important to be involved at church. We should all commit ourselves and our time. But when I volunteered to be editor I was in a medication combination that worked (for the first time in my life) and I had the hope it would keep working. Yet here I am with the February issue due and it makes me cry. Craig is helping me, but in a few months his work schedule changes and I won’t have help. I am panicking. This is the worst I have ever been when the Torch is due, but this is not the first time I have struggled with depression or mania or anxiety and I have needed to put an issue out.

It is a sign of inner strength to do the work and get a good issue out regardless of how I feel or if my meds are working. I need to rise to the occasion. I am just so afraid I will be without Craig’s help and they won’t get an issue out because I won’t be functional. There is no one to help me. No one at church does this but me. Sometimes it is hard to take one more thing – another responsibility, another place to be. I have all I can handle to get Angelica to her appointments and last week I couldn’t do that. Thank God Craig had some days off last week.

I need to visit my lady who is homebound.

I want to go home and curl up. I can’t. My day is nowhere near done. I want to serve God. I need to be reliable. But I am as a building that has been demolished, and all these responsibilities are taking away whatever bricks and glass I was salvaging.

Developing a Gentle and Quiet Spirit

My spirit is much gentler and much quieter than it used to be. A gentle and quiet spirit in a woman is precious to God. But although I try to be gentle, sometimes I lose my temper. I don’t even try to be quiet at home. I am not even sure I am capable of being quiet!

What does it mean to have a gentle and quiet spirit? How does this pair with being a strong person, with having a strong personality, with being opinionated? Can they go together? It is such a hard issue to understand. What is wrong with a spirit that wants to do more and be more? There is a fine line between gratitude and complacency.

So far, although I am reading about it and searching scripture, the conclusions I have come to are this: do not be contentious, control your temper, and use soft words for the people around you. Perhaps being gentle and quiet has nothing to do with whether you are weak or strong, opinionated or not, or the color of your personality.

I have made so much progress on having a gentle and quiet spirit, but I have a long way to go to be pleasing to God. I focus too much on my own needs and not enough on my husband’s. I am short tempered and rash. I am too easily stressed out, instead of taking serenity from the knowledge that God is in control. My tongue is too sharp at times.

Biblical Gender Roles

As a firm believer in gender roles, the God-designed differences between men and women, and submission, I found this book to be one that really hit home. It spelled out cogent arguments for what I already believed, and it brought to my attention fresh ideas about the roles of the sexes in light of scripture. I have found that living out God’s designed role for me makes my life and my marriage better for me. I highly recommend this book, especially for Christian feminists.  It presents clear rebuttals to that ideology.

Self Esteem from God

We live in a culture of comparison. Sometimes that can be a bad thing. Women get on Instagram and see how immaculate another woman’s house is and feel bad. But not all of us are equally gifted in all areas, and what matters is that your home is clean and homey – not stock photo material. And besides, you don’t know how many piles of junk have been pushed just out of the frame.

We compare weight, wealth, and style. It starts young. Yesterday our family was in the car and our daughter said that someday she wanted an expensive house so people would know her house is expensive. Where does a 5 year old get that idea? At a young age we feel compelled to outdo one another, and not in kindness. I asked her why she would care if other people think her house is expensive. She said she wants to be pretty.

Of course my husband and I had a corrective talk with her. If she does end up with wealth, and we hope she marries well, she should not flaunt it. Furthermore, having an expensive house won’t make her prettier than anyone else.

From very early on in life we figure out what the world values and we try to be and acquire those things. I honestly think that although much of it stems from pride and competitiveness, which I am guilty of, some of it grows from fear. We believe people will be nicer to us if we have an impressive house, designer clothing, trim waists, and big vacations. Honestly, we are right. The world at large is kinder and kinder, even idolizing, those who are most extreme in these trappings of societal gold. There will always be a certain percentage of people, especially women I think, that will treat you differently if you are slim and rich. Some hope the cache of these things will rub off on them by association. Still others may be riven with jealousy, but interested to watch a life they perceive as better than theirs. We revere what we value.

Some of it is plain insecurity. We want people to at bare minimum not be mean to us. I think my daughter perceives, young as she is, that people will have a better initial impression of her if she has a big house – and that therefore people will be kinder.

I have found this to be true in my own life. In middle school, living in apartments and with few outfits and no handbags, I was an outsider to the girls around me. I was treated differently. Yet I don’t want my daughter to grow up fearing that. I want her to draw her self esteem from God, and rest secure in His love. She has nothing to prove to other people, no one to impress. She needs to please her savior. Friends can help get us through this life, but the right ones will genuinely like you. Your house will not need a marble foyer for them to want to come over.

I hope my daughter has a gorgeous home. I want her to be well traveled. But I do not want these things to be what she derives her self worth from. These things are also not a guarantee in life, and I want her to have a firmer foundation on which to rest her identity.

Our worth is derived from God. Enjoy your blessings, but never be prideful. Even if they are hard earned, they are undeserved gifts. I want my daughter to remember that

Merry Christmas!

Angelica enjoying her Light Bright for the first time.

Merry Christmas to all of you. I hope you are having a beautiful day with family and friends. I hope your fellowship is warm. Enjoy this special day celebrate the Son of God come to Earth in the flesh. I love you all.

If you are alone this Christmas and want to talk, whether you celebrate Christmas or not, send me an email at McLemores0903@gmail.com

I would be glad to talk.