Just Write

It is 6:05.  In the evening.  Prime time.  

And I am holed up in the guest room--Oh, look at my guest room!  In the last-published post it was the "office-guest-craft-stash it room".  We have turned a new leaf, and now I come in here sometimes just to stand in a quiet, pretty place:

Progress in the right direction.  My brain has been in a different place in the past couple of months, but I haven't really told you anything about it because, although I have had time, I haven't spent any of it on finishing and sharing my polished thoughts with you.  

So I'm holed up in the guest room, because tonight my husband came home from his day of teaching with a plan for me to write this evening, and to also write regularly.  It basically involves setting aside an evening a week to write while he takes on 3-kid duty.  To just write.  To write.

So, let me back up and tell you the earlier part of the story, because to dive right in to today's thoughts without their context is to miss the process, miss the richness.  For me it is rich.  It's okay if it isn't anything much to you.    

Through the autumn up until Christmas, I was accelerating along from about 72 to 120 miles per hour.  At one point Lincoln told me, "Mama, you're in charge of too many things."  You present a good case, kid.  His comment sank in deep, and I realized that it isn't simply a case of my not liking the pace; it is a true statement, and the pace is unsustainable and damaging to myself and the people I hold most dear.   

Andy and I called up a babysitter and walked down the road for a Reevaluation Date at our local diner. 

We came up with some changes, some redirection, and I began to sense light at the end of the tunnel.  

At New Year's, my sister-in-law gave me words for a concept, the ideas of which had already been brewing in my heart.  You've probably already heard of it: discovering your One Word.  It's enough of a concept now to generate books on a variety of contexts: your one word for the year, for life, for your business, for your lasting legacy, etc.  (I haven't read any of the books; I can't tell you whether they're any good.)  But I knew my word right away.

I painted it, because that's what I do.  I have begun applying it to all sorts of things: what I read, how many bottles of shampoo are in my shower, the ingredients in my food and how I cook it, how the laundry is sorted, how I think about social issues, how I'm pursuing Jesus, etc.  I don't think I am especially good at simplicity, but I am getting better, and that is the important thing.  

Life weaves together in wonderful ways, don't you think?  A year and a half ago, before I was thinking particularly about simplifying life, I sang a song for my Grandaddy's memorial service:

'Tis a gift to be simple.  

So 'tis.  

Good Thinking

I just read a Facebook post listing a handful of "so-called Christian" books and all the ways they are heretical and New Age-y, including the bulleted false teachings promoted in the individual books.  

I haven't read all of them.  

But I have read two of the five, and at least one person whose faith I deeply respect has read another and 

Here's the thing: God formed our MINDS.  He made us SENTIENT BEINGS, after His own image.  We are the most complex, the most creative, the highest of all His creations, BECAUSE WE CAN THINK philosophically and morally, and BECAUSE WE HAVE THE EXERCISE OF FREE WILL, and BECAUSE WE ARE MADE IN HIS OWN IMAGE.  

God is not conventional.  We are conventional.  

God has all of the masculine qualities, and He has all of the feminine qualities, because He is Whole.  Following the reasoning of imago dei, we couldn't be male and female if all those qualities were not in God.  We choose to refer to Him in the masculine not because it is the fullness of Him, but because we need to be able to understand things.  Also because Jesus was a man, not a woman, and He is God.  

Because I read a book does not make me a full subscriber to its message.  Dare I say that revolutionary spiritual growth has been sparked in me as a result of books that not everybody agrees are good?  The Shack, for example.  Some people take deep offense to gender roles in the book.  The character of the Holy Spirit is a woman, and a very feminine woman at that.  (So is the character of Father God, and the character of Wisdom, maybe others, I don't remember--but the revolutionary-spiritual-growth bits are mostly in the Holy Spirit category for me.)  

I don't exactly know how to describe how I grew up thinking about the Holy Spirit.  In my traditional-church background, we spoke of the Holy Spirit...I think the best of my understanding of the Holy Spirit was as the Infallible Conscience.  The Holy Spirit (talked ABOUT (by Name and not pronoun) but never TO) was the Helper for making the right choice.  

But a Holy Spirit who is personal, creative, fearfully powerful, and Who asks us to do uncomfortable things sometimes that allow Christ to have the preeminence--that was dangerous, out of control, not allowed.