Recalculating

I have so many things going on in my head and 12 of them (AT LEAST) I want to write on and each are different but of course totally connected...*DEEEEP Breath*

It started a month ago when I snagged a Joyce Meyer Believing God CD Series at the library to listen to on my way to school each night. The majority of it centered on what we of a Pentecostal background like to call 'stinkin thinkin'. Because we have the power to speak life and death (Proverbs18:21) what we say and how we think often effect our own blessings or the where our spiritual life is heading.

So it began...the collision course that lead my egotistical flesh to run head first into the truth of my heart. The realization that I go to school and everyone tells me I'm so sweet and that I really walk out this Christianity thing and then I come home and I'm short with my kids about the dishes, hard on my husband for not being up to my speed with the parenting thing, plain ugly with my best friend, and here's the kicker of it all...I didn't really feel that way!!! I could not wait until I got home to be with my family, but the second I walked in the door it was like a wave of annoyance washed over me. Oh and let's not forget that I am the QUEEN of Justification so aaaallll my actions and reactions were beyond called for, y'all.

The more I pressed in to the changing of my attitude the worse my behavior got. Emma had said on more than one occasion I was being a jerky (didn't go over so good...after all she is only 14 and I know everything cuz I'm bigger, right?). NiNi kept trying to gently call my attention to some details that just flat pissed me off at her. I was avoiding her and usually snippy and mean when I didn't. How come all she ever saw was the negative stuff about me? Isn't that why I gave her the CD to listen to too? So she could see herself? Why is it other people think I'm great and she's always cutting me down? I'm sick to death of her always pointing out every flaw I have. How come I can't grow around her? She just wants to keep me stuck and I'm tired of staying stuck for her!!! This was pretty much the tirade I went on in my head (you know, the place I was suppose to be getting away from negativity so it wouldn't poison my heart and hinder my walk).

Then one day last week she called and we started talking. I was immediately offensive and offended and any other adjective you wanna dot in here. Somewhere in that conversation where I was prattling on so I didn't have to listen to her, I told her how in the last week I had woken up three times in the middle of the night really angry with B. I mean hopping mad. Hurt. Rolling away from him in a huff. I didn't go to bed that way. I would have to fight to not stay angry when morning rolled around. But I would wake straight up in the dead of night mad as a March Hare. As I said it out loud something in me jostled awake. I felt like I was sluggish and just coming out of a really deep sleep which held very realistic dreams. I was operating a vehicle and completely lucid yet my spirit felt as Snow White must've felt when she finally came out from under that nasty spell. At the same time all this was happening in my spirit, I heard NiNi say with forceful alarm, 'That's not natural!!'

I had a vision of a sci-fi force field in front of me. It was iridescent and pliable. It had give but would not break. It muffled everything as if I was listening underwater. And most of all it seemed to have a numbing effect...except with irritation and/or anger which then was amplified.

I don't know if the field is dissolved or just weakening. I haven't seen it since. What I do know is that I went home that night and spilled my guts to my husband. We had a sort of spiritual confession session and it seems to be on the up. I'm still getting testy about stupid things that I have to stop and check if I'm truly feeling that or am I simply reacting in a way that was becoming habitual. Like Frodo in Shelob's web there were thin veils of cobwebby things that have been choking my heart, silencing my spirit, blinding my eyes, and binding my hands and feet....God is pruning the dead places.

I'd ventured off my path...not far...but enough that I've gotten a couple of thistles stuck in my feet. Out of clarity comes recalculating. Letting God reset the map and pull the splinters out so that He can bandage the wound and set me right.

Mirror Mirror on the Wall

There's a scene in The Neverending Story where Atreyu is having the 3 gates that he must pass through in order to get to the Southern Oracle. Gate 2 is a mirror. Falcor (eternal optimist Luck Dragon) is very Eh about it which prompts Engywook (the gnomish expert on the Southern Oracle) to become irritated and say to him the lines that keep looping through my head:

Engywook: Next is the Magic Mirror Gate. Atreyu has to face his true self.
Falcor: So what? That won't be too hard for him.
Engywook: Oh, that's what everyone thinks! But kind people find out that they are cruel. Brave men discover that they are really cowards! Confronted by their true selves, most men run away screaming!
I think marriage is life this mirror. There are things you thought for certain you just KNEW about yourself. Then suddenly you find yourself face to face with reactions you did not foresee being apart of your heart.

I think this may be doubly true for B and me since we're middle-aged when we are starting out. He's never been married and has 35 years of his own way under his belt. I have been a single parent for TEN YEARS!!! i.e. I raise my kids and keep my house MY way ....

B has always maintained that marriage is a mirror. Which is probably why these lines keep cropping up in my reveries. Mirrors show you that is not what you think. How often do we justify our actions? All the time. We constantly shift blame to say if so and so hadn't done this or that I wouldn't have had to say such and such. Justifying our own selfish behavior, but when we stare into a mirror and see that there is really self-serving ugliness behind it we can't hide....or at least it's not as easy. Marriage is perpetually dying to your own desires to serve another...another that is really our self as God joined us into One.

Right now, I feel like the people Engywook describes. I'm not as kind as I thought I was. I'm not gracious as I pretend to be. And I'm even harder on those I love than I realized.

My marriage is a mirror. One that shows me the hard things as well as the lovely ones so as not to leave me stuck in the mire of my fleshliness.  

Mirror, Mirror on the wall...Thank you for loving me through it all.