On Joining A Community

I have been dreading writing this post and I've had a hard time pinpointing why. I think I have come up with an answer. I hope.

Some of my "five loyal readers" might remember at the beginning of the month when I posted that The High Calling was hosting a contest for free registration to their Writers' Retreat. To enter the contest, you had to be a member of The High Calling community. Registration is easy, so I did that. Then you had to write a blog post about why you need to be at that retreat, which I did. They also suggest that one should display The High Calling badge on their blog. Thankfully, I'm proficient enough to make that happen on my blog. I followed the rest of the instructions on sharing my blog post to enter the contest. Voila! I was done.

The contest winner was announced the following day (I had waited until the very last minute to join). The winner - whose name I think is Kathy - is from the same area I live in. I'll have to catch up with her now that I know she exists! Even though I did not win the contest, several lovely people made it possible for me to go to the Writers' Retreat. In fact, I'm leaving in a few hours for the retreat and I am nervous, excited, and nervous. Or is it excited, nervous, and excited? I'm not sure...

Never Beyond: Is This Working For Me?

"I consider myself to be a deeply flawed person, and I identify with those whose character flaws have led them into grave troubles, whose momentary impulses have caused lasting harm."
- Cary Tennis

I really like that quote, even though Cary Tennis and I don't really share the same politics or ideas about life. He is more liberal than I probably will ever be. I don't recall him saying anything that leads me to believe he is a Christian of any flavor (but I cannot prove that). I do like to read his advice column, Since You Asked, though. Cary and I have shared some of the same life experiences. More important than that, he is very articulate and well-thought-out in his writings. He understands many things about the human condition. If he doesn't know something, he will say so. He understands something about grace and second chances. More than I do, I'm pretty sure.

Some of you know that I have been working on the Never Beyond Poster Series with People of the Second Chance. If you are unfamiliar with the project, you can get more info by clicking here. I really don't know what I expected when I agreed to participate in this project. I'm sure, since I was new to POTSC and still in my "honeymoon phase", that I thought it would be some nice, warm, fuzzy feel-good experience. I did not stop for one second to think how I would be personally challenged by this project. I felt God pushing me towards it and for once I didn't stop to try to negotiate. I'm not saying that following God's leading by jumping out in faith is bad. But stop and think about some of the places He has taken you when you've done that. Those types of growing experiences were not on my current to-do list when this project came along.

I also forgot to do the math when they said 25 posters at 1 per week. Six months. That is six months. I can't even commit myself to a 10-week Beth Moore Bible study (granted, the Bible study requires me to show up somewhere other than home and the POTSC project can be done alone, in the dark of the night, in my bedroom), and yet I jumped in feet-first to a project that will take six months of my effort. Do you know that I am a quitter? Or "non-finisher", if you want to be all touchy-feely about it. Do you know that I turn around when I see a mountain in my way, only to find out MUCH later that it wasn't a mountain at all - it was a speed bump that I had amplified in my mind without investigating it.

Cool Quote of the Day

“Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter” Francis Chan.

An Answer For A Friend

The other day I wrote here on the blog that I was “childless not by preference but out of absolute fear and disobedience.” My dear friend Rebekah mentioned in the comments that her becoming a mother was out of rebellion and disobedience and she said she would like to hear my story. It’s obviously been a few days that I have been pondering this and I think I’m ready to write.

My first thought was how I was going to tell the story without giving out sordid details of my sinful life. Then I wondered what the point of the exercise would be anyway. I know that I had told God that I would be obedient in writing about the lessons He has taught me. And this lesson is one that I finally figured out recently, so it’s applicable to my pledge. Sometimes I don’t even worry about what God might use my essays for, but this time I wanted to know. The only thing that came to me as I turned this idea over and over is that disobedience and fear do not outwardly look the same on each person. Instead of comparing our insides to other peoples’ outsides, we might need to come along side of them and know them better. We might be able to help someone through a struggle that was not apparent at first glance. So with that thought in mind, let us start at the beginning.