Deceiving Eyes

As I sit at my desk, knee deep in both Holy Week and VBS prep, I have been thinking a lot about Jesus and where I go to find him. I was reading about the women going to the tomb on that famous Sunday morning, fully expecting to find the body of Jesus. He had told them that he wouldn't be there yet they cried and wondered and fretted that his body had been stolen. They were so wrapped up in their own doubt that they didn't automatically recognize The Lord when he stood before them.
Then, this morning, as I was drinking coffee and perusing Yahoo News, I ran across this story of a snake that was found dead with a centipede hanging out of it's body. It has really awesome and gross pictures (You can read the whole story at this link.) and I couldn't help but think of how that snake thought it had just bagged a really good meal. It thought it knew exactly what it was seeing. It looked at that centipede and thought, "Yum! I've hit the jackpot!"and it ended up killing her.
How often do I think I'm looking at something good, something righteous, something holy, only to find out that it could've been the death of me? How often do I get wrapped up in my own thinking and my own actions and totally miss out on the beauty of the Savior standing beside me all along? How many times have I felt certain that I had hit the jackpot, found toxicity, and totally missed a blessing Jesus was holding out before me?
Today my prayer is that I would have eyes to see truth and that I will have wisdom to reach out to Jesus.

Prayers for Peace

Some days I think that I have problems. I think that my dilemma of beef or chicken for dinner is something to spend time pondering and that my place in the car line is a stress.

Then I get a text from a friend who is pregnant and her blood pressure is too high and she's been put on bed rest to protect her health and the health of the baby.

Some days life falls out of perspective and I see that my worries are not worries at all but instead inconveniences of a suburban mom.

I've placed a link below for a beautiful song. This has been my prayer for peace lately...whether I'm thinking about chicken or my friend.

See it here.

Poison Drink

Someone shared a special nugget of truth with me today that said, "Resentment is the poison we drink expecting someone else to die."

I've been mulling it over all day and can't find an ounce of untruth in it. I'd go so far as to add "unforgiving spirit" to the dose of resentment because I think they are toxic together. Do I have that mastered? No. Do I ever drink the poison? Almost every day.

I wish that I could say otherwise but it's true. So often in life we skip over conversations that could be awkward or painful because we don't want to go through the work of it all and then we end up hanging on to resentments for months or years.

There are so many areas of my life that I wish I'd set boundaries or had hard conversations years ago. There are people I've allowed to take up too much space in my head because I didn't have the courage or the maturity to take a stand either towards or against.

To put it on paper (or screen) makes the process seem so much simpler than it truly is. Forgiveness is tough and does not come naturally for mankind. It's a choice I have to make every single day and one that I can only do with the help of God. Some days I'm more open to his grace than others. Some days I fail miserable and I swallow a shot of poison willingly.

So how do I move forward with less poison? I think I need a lot of Jesus and good friends who will speak truth to me when I'm being hard. I need to surround myself with truth-speakers who will put their hands over my mouth when they see me raising a shot of resentment to my lips. I need to bow before God daily and beg to be reminded of the grace he has blanketed me with so that I can offer it to others. I also think I need to value myself as a precious creation made in the image of God and demand that I be treated accordingly. I can make a choice to not allow myself to be  a door mat. I can make a choice to be treated with respect. It all goes hand in hand in the walk towards health.