Life Overhaul, anyone?

Life Overhaul:

No mores:

No more sleeping until 3pm.
No more being awake until 6AM.
No more precision eating. (Laboring over what and how much I eat as if my life depends on it.)


YES mores:

YES, more hanging out with people- new friends and old
YES, more outgoing.
YES, more cooking with my brother and friends.
YES, more taking pictures of things I like.

YES, more morning reflections
YES, continued evening reflections
YES, more discussions with mature Christian women
YES, more group prayer (where two or three or more are gathered...)

YES, more immediate answering of emails and phone calls and texts (better to do it now than have to worry about doing it later)
YES, more accepting of myself and others. I am fallen, you are fallen, we're all fallen for ice cream.
YES, more recognizing my total dependence on God and that He makes no mistakes.

YES, more humbly recognizing the natural and spiritual gifts God has given me. And remembering that I am ordinary, but God likes to do extraordinary things with ordinary people.
YES, more thinking about what Jesus would do if he were leading my life right now, equipped with my gifts, in this cultural context, as a 24-year-old female in Houston, TX, who loves to play music, play sports, ask people wacky questions, and share intimate details about life. Who is very "visual" and likes to take pictures, make picture-stories, and draw cute and a little awkward-looking cartoons. Who loves getting down. Who enjoys beauty in the details. Who quiere hablar muchas lenguas. Who is very sensual, sensitive, and enjoys silence. Who needs to go to bed right now if she has any chance of following through with her "No More" list any time soon.


Que tenías sueños ricos...

Measure of Worth: my own v. God's

It's always been a struggle for me to understand how someone could love me UN-CON-DITIONALLY...No matter what stupid stuff I do, how much I hurt them, how twisted my ways become. Even though God loves me no matter what, I struggle to comprehend it because I, myself, am not capable of loving someone that way. It's beyond my little human brain's understanding.

A good friend pointed out to me yesterday that I've been gauging my value on the success of my behavior: how well-disciplined I am with this, how skilled I am at that, how I lose points every time I fall here and there and back over here again. How pure my heart is, how deeply I pray, how much I dwell in the Word, how well my behavior reflects prayers being answered...That last one is interesting, because it's as if my prayers being answered is a reflection of my own doing...As If I answer my own prayers!!

(!)

Nuts.

I am so very human. I need God so very much. He loves me no less when I'm at my worst, my most sluggish, my most shameful, my most faithless, my most doubtful, my most resentful. When I want nothing to do with God, He loves me more than anyone could love anyone, always and forevermore, as I am His; He has called me by name.

He will finish what He has started.


Amen.