The Trouble With Afternoons

This week began a new phase:  all day school. 

Because we live in a place that is very close to the sun, our schools start earlier.  So Zoe started school this week. 

We officially have a 1^st grader!

Some anxieties about 1^st grade:

* it’s all day long

* will I know any kids

* will I have more homework

* what exactly do we do after lunch

* how can there be that much to learn to need to go all afternoon

* how soon after lunch will grandma pick me up

* why do I need three folders, what is going in them

* is there math, like lots of math

Some things we were totally excited about 1^st grade:

* 3 recesses

* lunch at school

As you can imagine, recess and lunch wasn’t really enough to tame the fears of the unknown.  We had a meet the teacher day, where Zoe got to find her desk, put all her supplies away and meet her teacher.  That helped some of the anxiety, but the all-day concept was still troubling. 

On day one, she had more excitement than nerves.

Until…third recess.

She slid off the play equipment she was sitting on and broke the fall with her nose.  Ever since the dreaded Stairs of Doom incident of 2012, Zoe has been prone to nose bleeds.  She is also notorious for breaking falls with her nose.  It’s is nothing short of a miracle that she has not yet broken her nose. 

On her first full day, we had a nose bleed, fat lip and marks to her face, her parents were called to school, she met the school nurse and her first day outfit had blood on it.

On her second full day, we had hugs, friends showing concern and many people who prayed for her recovery.  I’m happy to report, we only have a little bruise on her lip that you can’t see unless she opens her mouth.  She assured me that she would NOT be doing that at all today.

Some things we’re totally excited about 1^st grade:  lunch, recess and all her best friends in the whole wide world who make her day extra special.

We still aren’t too excited about being there all afternoon, but maybe after 3^rd recess, where she will “not be playing on those bars anymore” we will have a change of heart.

Gonna Be Startin' Somethin'

The one of you who reads this blog is probably completely and utterly shocked that I am actually posting.  To be honest, I thought I was done blogging.  Then something happened.  Something so big, so earth shattering that my desire to write things down came back with a huge force.  Do you wanna know what that big thing is? 

God 

I know that may sound cliché or even a little ridiculous, but there is no other way to say it.  In the last year God has been bringing me to a place where I’m broken and completely without a thought as to what to do. 

With the move from Spokane in the winter, I was brought into a situation where I completely had to rely on Him for answers to my 612 questions and anxieties about moving to the unknown.  It was through that experience I learned that God is in control of every detail, even before I realize it’s a detail.  His answers to those details far outperform my expectations. 

Then the new routine happened.  While I was prepared to trust Him for the answers to the unknown, I was unprepared to trust Him with life in the unknown.  If you can talk about things that stress a marriage, things like moving, finances, and new jobs top the list.  We had all of those in one month.  The stress of all that brought health issues, which brought our marriage into the eye of the storm.  For the first time since Zoe was born, N and I were in the storm together, trying to determine what the plan was.  You know what we did? 

We tried to control

We worshipped idols that put things in our lives ahead of God

We became critical, negative and irritable

We lashed out and blamed each other

We wallowed in self-pity

We began our cycle:  trust God, go in His path, get stressed, put God in a small corner of your life, wreck havoc….

Here’s the best part of this cycle.  Instead of continuing to try to do this on our own, we became part of a community that isn’t afraid to hold you accountable, isn’t afraid to show you your faults and isn’t afraid to guide you back to God.

For the first time in our marriage, N and I broke.  We both lay there completely and utterly broken.  We were shattered without any kind of idea what this meant.  We both had to acknowledge the things we were doing that were sin in our lives.  We had to get real and intimate and because we were broken, we didn’t have the energy to continue to hide. 

For me, I struggle with feeling unlovable.  I sometimes feel that if I don’t do something absolutely perfect, people will see the real me and they’ll find me lacking. 

I also struggle with being submissive.  I’m not good at it.  It contradicts me being able to prove that I’m lovable. 

Do you know what God tells me to do?  Submit to Him.  Submit to N. 

Do you know what else He tells me?  His love is sufficient.

I’ve been a Christian since I was 8.  I’ve been in church, Sunday School, Bible studies, theology classes at my Christian college and I own 3 Bibles, I’ve read the Bible cover to cover.  Yet Satan had such a hold on my thoughts that I felt unworthy, unlovable and was driven to control so that I could prove people wrong. 

I was allowing sin to have a stronghold in my life and I was totally unaware I was doing it.  I had a fear that if I didn’t continue doing it, life would crumble, people would leave me and I would be alone.

That is how incredibly talented Satan is.  How incredibly manipulative he is.  We can sin and not even be aware we’re doing it.  The world tells us the same thing.  Because of our insecurities or struggles, we believe the lie. 

For the first time in my life, those feelings of needing to control, of needing to prove my worth are dying.  Our marriage is on a level that it has never been.  We have an intimacy that I’ve longed for.  We had to break in order for God to come in. 

This is the beginning of my personal revival. 

This is God.