Hold that Stretch

Okay, so this post really wants to be serious, but when you have sounds of a dog chewing on a plastic bone and bits of that blue bone strewn all over your carpet, you can't really achieve this.

But we push through. Though stormy weather threatens to dash the hopeful spirit, and the hubby is away at training in Indiana, and its 11:05 pm at night, I can't help but have floods of deja-vus when this was about the time I began to click on and study for the next day.

Hang on here, puppy wants some lovin'

Okay, puppy loved.

I had a pretty good day. It was a day where I felt stretched in all the right places, the places where I know that I need to be stretched in order to make worthwhile changes.

First, I felt the stretching in all of my muscles when I worked out at the gym early this morning. Its been a pathetic month since I haven't been disciplined to push myself farther than the neighborhood walk. With moving and life changes, I won't make myself feel too bad about it though. Life kind of sways sometimes, and you have to adjust. I was glad to find a nearby gym to join though. The workouts may be a little intense for the next week, but through the aches, I know that some good differences will hopefully come.

Mental stretching came just a little while later at work. Many things come up every day, and as my employer says, "you sometimes just have to make a list of the fires that you need to put out each day, and realize that you may not even get to them all'. So true. Sometimes you don't even have the time to make a list. You just have to act and pray that you are acting in wisdom. Well anyway, all are opportunities to grow this baby sprout of patience that I know is in there, somewhere ;)

And lastly, emotional stretching. Its been a 'basket case' day. I have felt close to tears with my hubby leaving for training the next couple of days. He doesn't go away a lot, but enough that I should be used to being alone. But I honestly don't think that I ever will get 'used' to being alone. I miss my other half and without him, I struggle to see that I am serving a purpose. I honestly feel so called to be his wife that I feel useless when I am not able to 'wife' him.

After work, I battled through some traffic to get to BSF and had an awesome evening observing the children's program from angles of levels 1-4 and senior high. Being fairly new in leadership with the children's program, these past two weeks have been sort of overwhelming. I love children, but its seemed rather daunting to think of being a leader of them. Oh how faithful the Lord is to us when we are weak. God really opened my eyes and stretched my heart wider than I thought it could stretch. This was a night full of joy and discovery that the Lord can really equip His own children to do anything & everything that He calls them to do. He transforms our weaknesses into His strength through His mighty power. He wraps up all of our doubts and casts them out of our hearts. And what He gives us is beyond what we could ever ask for or think.

Tonight I realized, and without naming them specifically, how much I struggle with two particular sins that are tied so closely together that they could almost be one mega-sin-struggle. Not that it should be foreign to anyone that I struggle with sin either. I do. I seek to daily fight it and claim the power of Christ over it, but I do give in to it as well, which grieves me, but I am always thankful that I am forgiven by God.
Anyway. Tonight's lesson was on Romans chapter 14, which looks closely at how Christians are to live with others in mind, with the goal of not stumbling one another. I realized again how much these two sins I have in mind do that very opposite. Through committing these offenses, I stumble myself and others. It is not gracious, it does not seek the good of others, but delights in the sinful nature into which it was born. It made me sick to think how this affects others. But why would I consider sin such a personal thing to me anyway though?
It always offends God, why would this not get me riled up? I grow calloused again and again, but God always wounds me in the deepest places, to make my heart raw for Him, stretched and aching, bleeding and yearning to be healed, restored and reconciled to Him.