My New Year’s Resolution. . .

. . .is to love God with all of my mind in 2012.  This one seems to be a struggle for me (since I’m already being vulnerable in my blogs this week, I will confess that).  This resolution has actually been on my list for a year or two, and although I know I won’t reach perfection until I pass through heaven’s gate, as a self-professed worry-wart, I would love to trade my “what-if” thinking for a more disciplined mind.

The Bible tells me that I have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16), that I received it when I accepted Christ as my Savior, as the only One who could free me from my enslavement to sin (including the sin of worry).  However, I do not claim that promise often enough and instead of thinking of “whatever is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, of good repute, excellent and worthy of praise” (Philippians 4:8), I am often tempted to think of whatever is scary, worrisome, uncertain, out of my control, unlikely to happen, and harmful to my body and spirit.

Pastor John MacArthur has said, “Worry is needless because of God’s bounty, senseless because of God’s promise, useless because of its impotence to do anything productive, and faithless because it is characteristic of unbelievers.”

Ouch!  But true.  Does this mean that, along with engaging in something needless, senseless, and useless, I’m also weakening my witness to unbelievers because of my worry?  I believe so!  Are they drawn to the awesomeness of God when they see me exhibiting such a lack of trust in my Creator, Provider, and Heavenly Father?  I’m showing (contrary to what I actually believe) that I don’t rest in God’s promises to love and not condemn (Romans 8:1), to work everything for my good (Romans 8:28), and to take care of me even more than He cares for the birds of the air (Matthew 6:25-34).  Will He “supply all my needs according to His riches in glory” (Philippians 4:19)?  Will His grace be sufficient for anything I need and His power “perfected in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9)?   Is He “able to guard what I have entrusted to Him” (2 Timothy 1:12)?  Will I take care of my body which is the “temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:19)?

I’d really like to just get over myself already (isn’t worry just a whole lot of self-focus?), stop excusing it with “well, worry is just what mother’s do,” and put my mind’s focus solely on loving and worshipping God. . .because He is worthy of my whole mind and the list of praiseworthy things about God that I could think on, instead of the endless list of earthly things that I concern myself with, is eternally long.  And I know He’s already given me enough grace to get there–but as many before me have pointed out, we are in a battle for our mind and the arsenal we need to take our mind back from the Enemy in this battleground is found in reading, memorizing and meditating on the Word of God and hiding it in our heart (Psalm 119:11) and MIND.  Hopefully, by God’s grace and enablement, I can chip away at my undisciplined mind a little bit more and more so that my life will draw unbelievers to the God that saves, provides, and is fully and completely trustworthy.

The Broken Commandment

“You shall not make for yourself an idol” (Exodus 20:4).

Many of us think of idols as those bronze statues that we bow down to, but if only that were the only kinds of idols we make.  A definition for idolatry from my Webster’s Dictionary says it is “excessive admiration or devotion” and calls an idol “a person or thing devotedly or excessively admired; a false notion.”  The way that I understand it, this includes the material (money, gold, people) and the non-material (fame, love, comfort) idols that we can create; the people, things or ideals that we place in direct competition to God for our focus and attention.

For myself, I have made an idol–a false god–out of my health. . .and my god will fail me.

It began innocently enough.  I developed an interest in health in my early 20’s and decided that before starting a family, I would become as knowledgeable as possible on how to take care of myself and my family from a nutritional standpoint.  I went back to school and ate up those textbooks on enzymatic therapy and power food antioxidants!  I finished a master’s program in holistic nutrition and began implementing many of the principles that I read about and studied into my family’s diet and routine.  Sometime after this, good health changed from a passion to something I felt that I needed in order to feel in control.  Health became my god.

And then I started to feel tired all the time and I developed food sensitivities that left me often guessing what was wrong.  That’s the thing about being overly focused on your health–you then start to notice each and every sign of your body being out of balance, and if that is your measure of security, your mind and body can be your worst enemy.  Yes, I have a gluten-free and dairy-free diet that I am supposed to follow in order to feel at my best.  And yes, I can get incredibly cranky with too much sugar.  But the more my need for perfect health took over (and who has perfect health?!), the more I began to obsess about it.  And the more that I began to need my health more than I needed my God, the more God lovingly showed me that any god we put in place of Him will fail us.  My health can never comfort me and love me and protect me like my Savior can.  All gods will fail except the One True God that has proven Himself over and over again to be trustworthy, capable, and personally interested in each one of us.

So I gave up my idol–with my words of surrender which I often have to repeat daily and in the way I try to live “by faith and not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7); living by what I know to be true about God and His love and protection over me rather than what signs of health or lack thereof I see in my body.  Health is a great blessing from God.  It is something for which I continue to strive and always will as my body is a “temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).  But my motivation is different, my intensity is different, and my need to have control over it is different–because any control I try to obtain is just an illusion anyway.

I remember well what Pastor Jack Graham said one time as he battled prostate cancer, and this may be a paraphrase of what he said, “My power in this life is not in my strong constitution–it’s by God’s Spirit.”  It is this truth from Zechariah 4:6 that I remind myself of often.

Blame the Rich

This morning’s newsletter from the American Civil Rights Union is excellent and helps to educate those who are on President Obama’s “blame the rich” and “spread the wealth” bandwagon.  It was especially interesting to read in light of the fact that I just finished watching Part One of Atlas Shrugged, the classic 1957 novel by Ayn Rand turned movie, which illustrates a fictitious time (although not fictitious enough as it reminded me of today in some ways) in 2016 when an intrusive government that doesn’t know it’s constitutional boundaries meddles in nearly every productive business, limiting it’s productivity with law after law and regulation after regulation, thereby crippling capitalism and bringing in socialism.  I would recommend the movie, as well as reading this American Civil Rights Union article, in part below and in its entirety by clicking their link.

Should the Rich Be Condemned?

This column by ACRU Policy Board Member and Professor of Economics Dr. Walter E. Williams was published November 23, 2011 on Townhall.com.

Thomas Edison invented the incandescent bulb, the phonograph, the DC motor and other items in everyday use and became wealthy by doing so. Thomas Watson founded IBM and became rich through his company’s contribution to the computation revolution. Lloyd Conover, while in the employ of Pfizer, created the antibiotic tetracycline. Though Edison, Watson, Conover and Pfizer became wealthy, whatever wealth they received pales in comparison with the extraordinary benefits received by ordinary people. Billions of people benefited from safe and efficient lighting. Billions more were the ultimate beneficiaries of the computer, and untold billions benefited from healthier lives gained from access to tetracycline.

President Barack Obama, in stoking up class warfare, said, “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.” This is lunacy.

Read the rest of the article here.

Cesarean Heartache

My sister-in-law just gave birth to a beautiful, seven pound baby boy last week.  He is the newest joy to all of our lives, even my six year old son who is thrilled with his new cousin.  As I sat with Mary (names have been changed) during her labor and heard her fears and uncertainties, and then again a few days later, after the circumstances of her c-section hit her full force, I was brought back to my own induced 18 hour labor and eventual c-section.  My physical recovery from that major abdominal surgery was far easier than the emotional recovery.  I was plagued with “what ifs” and regrets–doubts about the legitimacy of having needed a c-section in the first place.  In some ways, I felt like my first hours of being a parent were taken from me, as I was unable to breastfeed for my son’s first feeding, too drugged to remember any but a second-long snapshot of my son’s moment of delivery, and too immobile to tend to his simplest of needs for days to come.  Sitting with Mary this weekend, seeing her tears, hearing deep wounds (far deeper than her incision) about not being “there” for her child as she had hoped, broke my heart.  I could relate.

Please understand that this is not an attack on the medical community nor cesarean sections as a whole.  I believe that there are numerous labors and deliveries that require such drastic medical intervention and thank God that He has placed those skills in talented and caring individuals to help in that time.  I am also fully aware that doctors today, because of our insanely litigious society, have to be very sensitive to anything at all that might (no matter how slim the chance) go wrong.

This is more of a blog about the emotions of a mom. . .the feelings of helplessness after a cesarean that many moms experience and the regrets that plague us, even when we did all that we could do.  This is also about what I see as a hidden epidemic, if you will.  Some of society seem to present cesarean sections as no big deal. . .as just another birthing option. . .the easier choice because you can bypass all the labor, schedule it on your time-table, and be more in control of your labor and delivery.  I resent this inaccurate presentation.  Listening to Mary, reliving my own experience, and reading others accounts makes me realize just how deep these wounds can go, and they are anything but easy to mend.

So I wonder, for those of you who had c-sections with the birth of your first child (or subsequent children), what was your experience and did you (or do you still) experience any of these same emotions?   If these statistics are true (see International Cesarean Awareness Network here), that “32.9% of births result in major abdominal surgery” and that 2009, when this study was conducted, was the “13th consecutive year to show increase,” there are plenty of us out there that have gone through this surgery.  How many of you have felt as Mary and I did, and still do?  Let’s have the discussion. . .

180 Movie

The following is an excellent video from “Way of the Master” teacher Ray Comfort.  It is WELL worth your time.  I encourage you to view it (but not with children nearby), and share it.

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