Saturday, June 27, 2015

The Joy of the Lord is my Strength

That's the JOY of the LORD. Not the joy of Jenna. And not the joy of the world.

Things have been good. Not because of me or because life has suddenly stopped having problems. But because I have had so much truth spoken to me by loved ones and more importantly God here recently. As we walk this path, this road of life, there will be scary things on the way. There will be hard things. There will be times when you will want to just quit.

BUT the joy of the Lord is our strength.

This last year has been one of the hardest of my life for so many different reasons. Including but not limited to ... moving out of my parent's house, going it alone in a brand new city especially one as big as NOLA, financial hardships, work stress, extra jobs, health/weight issues, personal struggles, and all the other regular stressors in my life. 

Throw on top of that my mom called me on April 22 to tell me that her annual mammogram came back with abnormal results aka cancer. I already know Jan is going to read this, so I might as well just specifically address her while I'm at it. Jan, you scared the crap out of me. You are my best friend. Imagining life without you was unbearable. I know that was extreme, and I know that nothing had been confirmed whatsoever. But in that moment, the world stopped spinning. It was like everything froze. I wanted to be strong for you and allow you to not have to be strong for all of us, but I was dying on the inside.

I know what you're all thinking.Where was my joy then? Where was my strength then? Being a Christian is not a get-out-of-hard-times-free card. It was an immediate get on my knees and pray moment. I'm not saying that I felt like jumping for joy, because I didn't, but amidst the million other stressors in my head, life went on. Some may have read my post about one day and while it wasn't directly pertaining to this, it was part of my thoughts when writing it. Everything changed in that moment. The way I looked at the world and my surroundings were different. Nothing took my mind off of our new potential reality. And nothing seemed as important as it did in light of the news. Although my world had changed, God had not.

It was in the following weeks that I had to completely surrender the fear, the unknown, the anxiety, the everything. Was it easy? Absolutely not. Did it get me through those insanely hard moments? Most definitely. With each hard conversation or day of waiting for another test/result, God showed me what it looked like to find my joy in him. If it had been up to me, I would've crawled in my bed, pulled the covers over my head, and hidden from the world.

Realizing my joy could only come from the Lord gave me the strength I needed to keep going. To wake up the next day. Oh the comfort and peace I found in Nehemiah 8:10b. "And do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength" {NIV}. You may call it irony, but I call it divine planning ... each year as I pick out my planner for the next year, I prayerfully choose a verse to put on my cover as a type of goal/year/encouragement verse. No surprise what it was:

To conclude the story: Despite the indicators and the signs pointing to it being cancer, all ending results/tests came back all clear. Praise the Lord. But can I also say that had it been cancer like so many other families face on a daily basis, do you know what my response would have been? Praise the Lord. I can tell you that Jan dittos those feelings as well. We trust in a God who is bigger than cancer, so I say again, Praise the Lord.

Thursday, June 25, 2015

I Make Me Crazy

It's easy to put the blame elsewhere, isn't it? She makes me crazy. He makes me crazy. They make me crazy. You are making me crazy. It's always about someone else. That's a cop-out. I make me crazy.

I've caught myself making these exact statements a lot, and it has been eye-opening to see the truth of the matter and the proper pronoun usage is I.

We girls especially have a tendency to pretend that we have no control over our thoughts, emotions, & feelings, but the hard truth is that if we don't control them, who will? No overly spiritual answers here. God controls all things, but there is also a thing called free will and sin which allows us the choice to dwell in all those feelings {etc} or not. That's the point I'm at. What will I choose to do today?

I can blame whoever I want, but the the only blame I can truly find is on myself. I can't control what other people say, do, think, or whatever; however, I am the only one who can control those things in myself.

I say all of this because lately I've felt like the champion of losing all control of my emotions. More times than I can count, God has convicted me with 2 Corinthians 10:5b. "We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ" {NIV}.

Am I going to take captive those thoughts? Or am I going to allow them to run rampant as they wish? Not taking those thoughts captive is a very dangerous thing. At least I know it is for me. It becomes all I can think about. And don't we all know that what we think about affects out attitude, our mood, our service. Yep, basically everything. I'm so guilty of this. But I'm so tired of allowing my circumstances and thoughts to have control. God has too great of plans for my life for me to waste even a second of it. God has equipped me with His Word to prepare me for this battle. I have to fight back. I will "take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."
No super profound thoughts here tonight. I just look back on my "single" years {which I technically only count from 21 to present considering I've always been single}, and I wonder how things might have been different had I learned this lesson earlier.

Better now than never. I'll never stop thanking God for the lessons He is teaching me during this season no matter how long it lasts.