Rocks In My Socks

At the prompting of my good friend Al, I've decided it's time to sit down and begin this thing. I've had an empty blog page for quite a few weeks now. Abbey is much better at putting thoughts into words, while I just aimlessly ramble through thoughts as they come out without any form of filter. It'll be easier to "plan" what I say in this, but I'm going to try and not backspace if I can help it.

Today:

Sometimes, I feel like life couldn't get any better. And then there are those times when I think that life just sucks, like a rock stuck in my shoe that I'm not sure how it got there and I can't just finger swipe it out. It's uncomfortable and annoying. So what's the difference between loving life and hating it? To me, it's just a little bit of perspective, a dash of circumstances, and a heaping helping of pride. If I'm really honest, how good I feel about my life is based mostly on how well I'm convinced that others perceive me as living it...right. Too often, my "closeness" to the Lord is based on my living right (works). Harsh, but honest, and no doubt true. How wrong is that?
My life is filled with so many blessings: Abbey, the boys, a good job that provides money to keep a roof over our heads (built in the '40s, but Abbey has a way of making any house feel like home), a wife that can somehow always find enough money to keep food in the cupboards and on the table, a loving family, great friends, a wonderful church...oh, and my health (not counting my 256 cholesterol level). Why is this not enough? Is the answer in that I don't appreciate all of these things enough? Well, I don't appreciate all these things enough, but that's still not the answer to me. I think that if I am willing to search deep enough into the underground sewers of my heart, my old-man wants to say that it's because I haven't gotten "more", and that I just need to keep accumulating to add into that list. However, even further down inside of me, even deeper than the sewage, there is a spring that is telling me that 'more is less'. Why is that so hard to believe?

Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 6:7 (the Message, of course. Sorry)
"We work to feed our appetites; Meanwhile our souls go hungry."

The first time I read that verse, it was like a thump on the back of my head and refreshment in my heart - both at the same time. Hmmm. My appetite...what is that? It's that drive in me to accumulate enough to be happy. It's that feeling that I deserve something. It's that urge to overcome, at all costs, the feeling of weakness. It's that desperation that fights admitting that I feel like an imposter in this life. I work daily, every minute, to feed that appetite. My soul is hungry...what does that mean? My soul (the domain of the Spirit) is what is writing this now. It IS hungry. It's not hungry for a "better" life. It's hungry for LIFE!
Am I willing to admit that: 1) I am hungry 2) that I can't feed myself and 3) that I will always be hungry for more? We are a needy people, we know that. That's why I strive to satisfy myself at every turn. What's so hard to accept is that the Lord doesn't want me to NOT be needy, He just wants me to completely adandon the hunger to Him. Sound easy? Try living it out in your own strength. I can't. I love the Lord for giving me grace, I just hate that I need it.
"I wish I were better." That's really a profoundly deep yet simple question in life isn't it? You can do a lot with that statement. Some people would say, "Well, just DO better." Makes sense, I guess. I'll just need a little help...maybe a list or something to keep myself in check would do. Others would try to convince me that I AM better than I feel about myself. So I just need to trick myself into being convinced that's true until I can actually believe it. Or maybe, I could lower my standards because I'm being too legalistic.
The truth is this, I do wish I were better. Better at a lot of things. A better husband, a better father, a better friend, a better employee, a better boss, a better blogger, a better exerciser, a better looking man, a better sense of humor, a better prayer, a better Scripture reader, a better lover of people that annoy me, a better fix-it man around the house, a better Christian...a better me. This list could go on and on, and my desire to be "better" will never stop. There are not enough years in my life, energy in my body, nor capacity in my brain to ever be all of these...much less the best at any of these. So, I guess, the best response to the "I wish I were better" statement is not what do I want to be better at, but why do I wish I were better? So I can prove something to myself? So I can prove something to you? So I can prove something to the Lord? All of these answers have one thing in common: they all have something to do with me not wanting to be embarrased or exposed as being weak and incapable. So that's it. That's life as I live it in a nutshell, a very compartmentalized nut.
Fortunately, the Lord is not willing to accept this for me. He wants more relationship from me than that. He wants me to see glory in the fact that I need Him. I am not His prodigy, I'm His child. That love for me is what I need to be reminded of when He allows things (life' rocks) to be hard. He lovingly weakens my defenses so I will learn to hear His voice and run to Him. There is joy in that reunion. I've always liked the story of the prodigal son b/c there are so many truths in there about who we are and who Christ is. When the son returns, his father is absolutely overcome with happiness, but the sinful deeds of the son must have been addressed later on after the party. Or were they? (Now, I know it was a parable, and that it didn't really happen, but just humor me while I'm thinking this through.) I don't think so. The older son wouldn't have gotten so upset if he knew that after the party was over, his brother was going to get what was coming to him. Justice was pushed aside by mercy. That's so hard to even type, because to my mind (and probably yours) it almost seems...ungodly. But to my shoulders, it's a light yoke replacing an unbearable one. And to my soul, it tastes like soup..mmm mmm good.
That's the kingdom life. I'm tired of the hypocritic self-sustaining life as a Pharisee. Praise the Lord that He gives us eyes to see, and even shows us where to look...so we can watch Him remove the rocks from our shoes (and sometimes lovingly leave a different pebble in there.)