A month ago one of my fun-loving cousins introduced me to a concept he called FOMO. Him and his whole family have a tendency to start their epic hangouts and fun times somewhere around 10pm, enjoying games and laughter way into the wee hours of the morning. I experienced this first hand when my brother and I visited them for Thanksgiving last year.
FOMO: Fear Of Missing Out.
Yeah, I have that too. I've been having a glorious summer, making several un-wise choices and pushing aside my usually well exercised common sense in order to have as an adventurous summer as possible packed in between work and sleep. Unfortunately the time window between work and sleep is very narrow thus I've been eliminating the sleep stuff to make room for the adventure parts.
I'm glad, though, all of my adventures have given me more ways to see Jesus and grow in Him.
It's been a great summer. :) I have a feeling that shortage of sleep might catch up with me eventually, though.
Yesterday I awoke shortly after 6am and arrived to work shortly after 7am. As I drove my sleepy self to work, all I could think was, "in 12 hours I can go home and take a little nap and go to bed at 9 and catch up on sleep.
14 hours later I was finally given the go ahead to go home. At that point I had a chance at 8 decent hours of sleep as I would be working another full day starting at 6am. However, I'd been informed that 2 of my friends were going on an adventure and I was much pleased at the idea of joining them.
I got a few hours last night and a few more this morning whilst waiting for the kiddos to wake up. :) The Lord truly did bless me with a great job.
The last two weeks have been amazing as far as how the children have been behaving and getting along.
I think somewhere in the Bible it talks about how the Word of God does not come back empty. Like if you plant in the Spirit, there's gonna be some sort of harvest later.
I love this. Especially because I see it as evidence in my own life.
I think my mom should get an award for most creative punishments as she had to think outside the box a little when the usual methods were lost on me (which was almost always). I was a terribly rebellious child/teenager with not much evidence of the Lord in my life.
Scoldings and spankings were expected consequences of my misdeeds and I knew I'd survive them, so my motivation to stay out of trouble was never especially high. I think even now I don't have a ton of anxiety over following rules.
When I was 13 I realized how much I loved writing and began filling journal after journal full of thoughts and adventures. My mom decided to use this to her advantage when I was bad. She would assign papers one why what I did was a bad thing complete with a thesis, main points, body, conclusions, etc. using only scripture as my sources. But I had to cite 2 sources for every point.
Talk about away to experience conviction. We also had to memorize a lot of verses as a result of our behavior. At the time I hated it and I felt like it only gave me a bitter taste for the Word, but now I remember all of it and have started using similar methods on my nanny kids. It seems to be working well and I've had several wonderful spiritual conversations with them as a result. I like that.
The peace that surpasses all understand will guard your heart
I've heard the Spirit whisper this over and over in the last several days. Maybe even weeks. When I made the decision to call 911, I had a lot of peace, even though what I was seeing frightened me to tears. As we waited in the ER, speaking with doctors and nurses, recounting what all we knew, Amanda and I both had an unnatural peace.
I think I'm learning that peace is a result of confidence in the Lord and anxiety is a result of a lack of confidence. I have some friends that worry easily, and sometimes I've wondered how one can worry and trust Jesus at the same time. I think, I've learned through my own experiences that it's not actually possible.
I've had a thought pricking the front of my brain the last week or so. Earlier this year, my sister and I found ourselves on a snowy sort of adventure in Kalona. (Of course, right?) Well, this one wasn't actually as enjoyable in the moment as it is to tell about now. But after a blizzard-y sort of Wednesday, we were invited to go sledding and, I'll leave out the details, found ourselves with my sister's tiny Ford Torus hopelessly stuck at the bottom of an icey-curvey, steep hill. The person we were with seems really casual about it and came off as a little too confident in his ability to resolve the situation. It was one of those adventure where I genuinly wondered:
1) if we'd actually be home in our own beds that night
2) How we'd actually get out if we did
3)What it'd be like to snow camp in a car in the middle of nowhere and possibly die of cold in one's sleep.
They were legitimate concerns. Somehow someway, the fellow was able to pull the car out of the valley using some chain and his tiny little truck. I was riding shot gun with him as he pressed his gas peddle to the floor as the truck slid sideways towards the edge of a steep ravine with a semi-frozen creek at the bottom.
I was braced so tensely inside of that truck that my legs started to cramp up. And it was while the truck was sliding and the chain was jerking and the car was jolting that our hero was praying out loud. I think this may have been the point when I most strongly experienced a fear that there was a possibility of something very terrible going to happen. I think half of it was that the guy had acted so calm and carefree and confident and now in the tensest moment, he was praying things like "Oh lord let this truck be a good investment"
And when I've re-told that story, framing myself as the victim and our hero a little more like a villain as he was the reason we were there in the first place, I've gotten varied reactions. Most people react with gasps and words of disbelief, especially when I mention the pitchfork that was stuffed down the hood of the car.
However, when I told the story to the hero's friends, the pitchfork punchline was received with, "Sounds about right. Go on.." And it was like, "wait.. do I have to retell the part about the pitchfork?" So if the pitchfork doesn't get a reaction, praying out loud should because that means the situation is bad, right?
Well, a little over a week ago, months after the whole ordeal the story was being re-discussed with the hero's friend that showed little reaction. He was commenting on how I'd mentioned that the hero had been praying out loud and had trouble connecting why that added to the situation. I didn't really know how to explain, but I feel like I've learned that praying out loud for all present to hear are the kinds of prayers meant to bring comfort to a stressful situation. You pray out loud because you need God and you need God now.
It's been pricking at my mind ever since then. I didn't realize it at the time, but that made it sound like I only do emergency prayers or that I never pray out loud. I do. I pray with my friends. I'm just not used to impromptu outloud prayers. Well, I wasn't then, but I'm learning to incorporate it more into my life. Especially since it can't do me any harm to try it anyways.
There was a lot of conviction in that conversation too. I feel like there's a lot of conviction most the times I'm around that friend group. Mostly because they're all really godly and conservative and everything I rebelled against the majority of my life before Jesus.
I've come to realize that my eager questions of curiosity as to why they do somethings they way they do has only made myself to seem arrogant and proud. This of course was slightly devastating to realize as I don't think I have quite fallen in love with any other part of Iowa quite like the part where this delightful group of friends call home, nor have I ever else encountered such solid group of people who only cause me to love Jesus more with every interaction.
They are thoughts to ponder, at any rate. I don't think I'm as solid a believer as I would like to be. I don't think I love Jesus well enough or let the fruit of the Spirit grow in my life. Perhaps I've been fooling myself into thinking I had a great relationship with God all these years only because it is contrasted by darkness of worldly pleasure found in Iowa City. Perhaps when my light gets around other lights, it's the dimmest of them all.
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