I am constantly reminded of how incapable I am to do anything apart from Christ. Like I have mentioned before I have had the opportunity to go back through the Discipleship Focus study. God is so funny how he makes everything work out perfectly and speak to your heart in so many ways at a specific time.
This next chapter is about dealing with hard circumstances in life. Everyone has them. And we all have to deal with them but we can choose to have a good attitude or a bad one about it. In the chapter it talks about how our emotions (or reactions) about a situation/circumstance is filtered through our attitude. I need to have a better attitude and respond to things in a different way. And so I set out to do so...Just to fall on my face. Its funny since we just talked about how we need to present our stuff to God because we cannot do anything on our own and here I am trying to do so.
Another aspect of this weeks study on hard situations was a challenge to be thankful in every situation. Thanksgiving is coming up folks (this word was chosen for all my Texas friends) thus we are more intentional about thinking about what we are thankful for in our lives. All good things. Yet the study, if you didn't catch what I said, challenges you to be thankful in every situation. One of the passages in this chapter is Job 1:20 and after looking at the story of Job I began to weep. I am no longer angry about my mom's death and sadness comes when it feels like it but I am not sure I can be thankful for that just yet and if ever. It seems like such a foreign concept and I see no way of me being thankful. I also have to not be so hard on myself since its only coming up on 10months. We are still experiencing all the first without her; our Birthday's, her Birthday, Holidays and anniversaries of her death. I can definitely say "Blessed be your name Jesus" but I don't know if I can say thank you for this just yet.
Kind of going along with this attitude theme this last weekend I may or may not have earned my "Grumps" nick name. To say the least I was grumpy and yet I had nothing to be grumpy about. I got to sleep in and had time for myself to work out and Brian and I would be hanging out enjoying the rest of the day doing whatever we felt like. It was supposed to be a good day. and yet I allowed myself to have a bad attitude. God is good because he never stops working in our lives and he always keeps speaking to my heart (even on days when I dont know why he would bother).
I was challenged and reminded about my attitude when we went to church Saturday night......each day is a choice, so choose life Deut 30:19. God came to give us life and life to the full John 10:10. We choose if we are happy and more so joyful in the Lord. I forgot that it was a choice and have been allowing my moods and attitude to be defined by my situation and not by who I am in Christ. My identity is in him. My security and hope is in him. I am so loved and so provided for and he never changes. And so I can trust him. I can choose the life he wants for me. Each day. One day at a time. For that is all we have been given. We may not be given tomorrow so we cant worry and stress.. I ended the day okay once I was shown that I get to choose. I am not going to allow peoples thoughts about me define me or circumstances that are out of my control decide my attitude.
To finish up this week long speaking into my life over and over again (God is so patient by the way) Sunday morning as I was looking at stuff for Children's Church for the following week I was in Ecclesiastes 3 and it explains that there is a time for everything. This spoke to my impatient heart and my challenged heart to be thankful in each situation. This was followed by a Facebook message from a dear friend that shared a verse from Ecclesiastes 3 with me to encourage me. Which it did.
So I leave you with this: "He makes everything beautiful in its time." Ecclesiastes 3:11 That means you, my mom's death, and me.
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