No Rest For The Weary

Well, I don't know about anyone else but I am just exhausted! I am so tired of hearing of people being drawn away from God by religious people! If you are genuinely trying to follow Christ's example, I applaud you. I just don't understand why people allow bad teaching or a legalistic upbringing to turn them hardcore against "religion".  I put that word in quotes because it means different things to different people and it gets mixed up a lot when people use it in place of relationship. To me, religion is what I grew up learning - the dos and don'ts, the rules. Religion, in my view, is usually legalistic and oppressive. I don't remember anyone ever telling me when I was young that to be a Christian was to love and serve others. I learned that it meant instead to do THESE things and don't do THOSE things and to never, never talk (or even THINK) about any of THAT.  Since, I have come to prefer relationship over religion.  It saddens me that so many kids that grew up the way I did probably quit going to church as soon as they turned 18 (as I did) and never returned.  Some not really knowing if they believe in God at all anymore, or even caring.  I am tired of hearing about people who have been rejected and even ostercized by others who call themselves Christians. I am tired of people brandishing that title as a license to judge others. I am tired of being lumped in with a group that professes to know God and follow Christ but who's actions and even words habitually and willfully exemplify the exact opposite of what Christ modeled. We are all human. We mess up. We cannot be like Christ. I am not saying that we should expect perfection from ourselves and others, but we can strive to show the kind of unconditional love that He displayed. He loved the unloveable. He accepted the unacceptable. And He forgave the unforgivable. I read an article this week about a woman who lived in such an extreme state of "biblicalness" that the scripture she was following was twisted and out of context to the point of allowing herself to be manipulated and steamrolled as she had come to believe that was what it meant to be a submissive wife. She regularly hesitated to voice her opinion or disagree with anything her husband said for fear of sinning against him and against God. Who teaches this stuff!? Now she blames the church for the abuse she endured and the oppression she and her children lived under. To her, being the "good Christian wife" equates to near-slavery. Now she spreads a message of "Woman, be loosed", encouraging women to break away from the oppression of Christianity and the biblical family lifestyle. I don't understand why people like this fail to see that, although they may have been misinformed or even manipulated, it's people that have let them down. People that have purposefully or ignorantly misused the scripture and led them astray. It was not Christ who did that. It was fallable humans that failed them. Not God. Christian, if you are going to claim the title, you need to be willing to respect it and wear it well. Represent. Don't be a part of the reason people won't give God a chance.

Platoon 4018

I wrote this near the end of boot camp. I turned 22 at MCRD Parris Island and graduated as a United States Marine on July 4th.  Ooh-Rah!

Lying in my rack at night

crying secret tears

clutching to my chest The Book

that eases all my fears.

Knowing that I'll make it through

but hurting just the same.

Getting just a little tired

of playing the DIs' game.

I'd dream at night of bubble baths

and chocolate candy bars, 

of pepperoni pizza and

of gazing at the stars.

Rude awakenings, shouting cries -

"GET OUT OF THE RACK RIGHT NOW!"

I was sure that I'd survive

though not quite sure just how.

Swim qual; Rifle range;

Combat Town was a blast!

Inspection; Drill; (and

before we knew it)

Graduation Day at last!

Highly motivated, filled with pride -

Drill Instructor Sergeant LaChapelle

"You're high!  You're high!  You must be high!"

is what she liked to yell.

Drill Instructor Sergeant Shindledecker -

Now there's a dedicated DI.

She hung in there with these "nasty recruits"

until we were ready to die.

Senior Drill Instructor Sergeant Cruz -

On the Island no doubt she's the best.

She may not be our mother

but she outdoes all the rest.

She kept us motivated at "the beach"

in her own special way.

"Got to stay motivated '18!"

is what she'd always say.

For this platoon of "Bad News Bears"

training was the test

but we came out of it on top

'cause we were trained by the very best!

Remember now as we say goodbye

to Platoon Four Thousand Eighteen -

We stepped off the bus clueless recruits

but we leave here hardcore MARINES!

All In

It seems these days that we fill our lives so full that we don't have the time to pay attention to what is really important. We work. We have church and church activities. We have kids that need help with homework we don't understand. We cram our kids schedules so full of activities and sports and chores that they don't know what it's like to just be a kid. They think this is just how life should be - chasing after the wind. We are teaching them that to relax is lazy and that you have to always have somewhere to go or something to do or you aren't normal. God specifically set aside a day for rest. Not only do our body and mind need the downtime to recoup and refresh, but setting aside time to just be still and reflect, gives us a renewed perspective. It gives us time to look inward and explore if what we are in pursuit of is of any real value or if it is just a chasing after the wind. It gives us time to prioritize and decide what (or who) we want to spend our precious time on. If we do not give ourselves this decompression time, we are more stressed and irritable and can even become resentful. We are more likely in our state of over-involvement to allow the urgent to crowd out the important. We only have a limited amount of minutes in this life. Filling them up with meaningless junk leads to a deathbed full of regret and emptiness. To lead a truly full life, we must empty it of what is temporary and trivial. Strip away what is unnecessary clutter to make room for your life to really breathe. 

Life's Not Fair...But It's Worth It

For a long time I wondered why God would want us to stay together when it seemed that we no longer had anything in common. I speculated bitterly why I should have to suffer for someone else's selfish choices and bad decisions. Years before, I had believed God brought him into my life to help make me a more confident person - to teach me that I could be comfortable in my own skin - because that's what my husband has taught me.  That, and not to worry about things I have no control over.  He has helped me become a more confident, capable human being.  But, over the past five years, I began to wonder, "What now?  Why continue when we are so different, want different things and it seems we are only making each other miserable?".  Struggling through these thoughts, I have come to realize this:  for whatever reasons God brought him into my life, God brought me into his life as well.  Now it's my turn to help him become a better, more confident, capable human being.  Please hear me when I say I am not speaking from place of superiority or piousness.  What I am saying is that I have humbly chosen to accept my responsibility as a wife, my responsibility to support my husband and respect him as the authority God has placed over me and that I submitted to the day I married him, to pray for him daily, to remind him that no other person's expectations, including mine, matter but only God's.  Maybe God brought us together because He knew, as much as I needed him, my husband would need me.  Having to suffer through the consequences of his choices and actions is just a biproduct (albeit however uncomfortable) of my choice to stay and try to be the best wife I can be.  Is it fair? Hell, no!  But haven't we been warned, almost from infancy, that life is not fair?  Over the past few years I have learned a bit about sacrifice.  Being (or trying to be) selfless is hard!  It isn't usually fun.  And sometimes it's downright painful.  But in the end, it is worth it because it grows you into the person God created you to be while showing others Christ-like love and maybe helping them find the courage to become the person God created them to be too.  This is the hope I have for the future.