Are we REALLY all overcomers, though?

Have you ever had one of those moments where you just felt like something was missing? Like when you don't have your seat belt on and it almost makes you feel naked because it's so weird to not be wearing it..? (or...uhh...maybe that's just me. Awkward.) Or have you ever been missing a piece of jewelry you wear every single day and then all the sudden you realize IT'S NOT THERE?!

Well, that jewelry story was me today. I lost a really important ring, but I didn't even notice until almost the entire day had gone by. So I had no clue when I really lost it...I just knew I was heartbroken over it. Because I really like metaphors, (and I've spent most of my life in church where, incidentally, a lot of metaphors get thrown around) I'm going to turn this into a teachable moment. (Because I also kinda like teaching) What if we replaced the ring in my story with Jesus? So I went about my whole day and didn't have Him with me (not actually true, but just stick with me), and then as the day is beginning to wind down I finally look around and notice that He isn't there. Can't we so easily do that in our spiritual lives? Even though He is always always with us, aren't there times we can just unknowingly cast Him aside, with about 1,000 possibilities for as to why we just didn't decide to carry Him along? I mean, it isn't as if we notice right away when we have lost our connection with Him. It is something that happens gradually, and typically we don't have any clue.

Our lives get busy. We sometimes experience seasons of life where we feel strong enough to handle life without running to Jesus. That life is so false, though. There is no true, genuine life outside of our Creator. Then, when hurt or pain strikes, we flail around like babies trying to learn how to swim. How different, and less stressful, would life be if we started living in Christ, day in and day out, no matter how hard or easy it was? I know, I know. I am constantly learning what the heck that means, too.

I guess what strikes me most about this ring of mine is what it says on it. It is inspired by the song, "Overcomer" by Christian artist, Mandisa, and I got it when my friends came to visit me in Honduras. The song carried me through what was honestly one of my most difficult life seasons. Talk about feeling like a failure and never being enough. Honduras brought all of that to the surface for me for the first time in my life. And it was painful. The verse engraved on the back of the ring is 1 John 4:4  --But you belong to God, my dear children. You have already overcome those people (referring to nonbelievers, essentially), because the spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world.
Here's the truth, no matter what BS might hit the fan in our lives, we can ALWAYS take hope in Christ that He has overcome it all. And because of that, we can live boldly and face our fears because we know that in the end we have nothing to lose when we already have the One who is enough, who can never be taken from us.

The line that keeps popping up today from the song is this: "Stay in the fight 'til the final round." Here's the beautiful thing I am discovering about this...whether we fight or not, we still have Jesus. But, oh, wouldn't it just be so beautiful if we let God fight for us so that we might experience His power here on earth? Wouldn't it be awesome if we showed up for the fight?

That ring I lost was incredibly precious to me, but apparently it didn't really hit me until I lost it. When I looked down at my hand today at work and it wasn't there, I literally almost ran to the bathroom just so I could cry. Cry for the loss of something that knew my time in Honduras and experienced it right along with me. Something that always reminded me of what good community looks like, which in my case was my 2 dear friends making a goofy music video to the song and sending it to me BECAUSE THAT'S TOTALLY WHAT THEY DID. It's awesome. The reason I decided against running, though, was because running doesn't change our problems, at least not for the better, If anything, it just makes them worse; harder. If I am going to honestly learn how to dance with fear, then even in some of those moments of weakness where I want to break down (no matter HOW silly it may seem), I choose not to.

Oh, and it turns out I didn't actually lose my ring. I never even put in on for the day! Talk about being oblivious to things in your life...don't forget what the focus is. What the purpose is. It isn't us. It isn't our stuff. It isn't our lifetime achievement goals. It's Jesus. Always Jesus. We are all overcomers. In Christ, we have enough. We just have to learn how to dance with the fear when it threatens to make us feel like we're failing.

 *disclaimer* - I am always always always speaking these same words back to myself when I write them. Please don't let me fool you into thinking I already have this figured out. I don't.

Even the Clouds Can Shine

Today started out as another perfectly normal one. I felt fine, did my usual thing at church, and then this dreaded thing happened: I was asked to go to some friends' house for Sunday lunch. Yes, you may read that and be like, "why is that bad? You're friends...I don't see the bad!" Well, that's what I thought, too. Except I am learning this new thing about myself where I covet my alone time without even realizing it, so certain sporadic, random, spontaneous invites to go places and do things KINDA FREAKS ME OUT.

Okay, I'm not saying all of them are hard. But gosh, sometimes, and of course I have no control over WHEN those times are, I just really DON'T WANT TO BE SOCIAL, OKAY? Is that bad? Does that make me a terrible, selfish human being? AM I THE ONLY PERSON WHO GETS LIKE THIS?

The answer to all of those questions is NO. No, it is not bad. No, it does not make me (or you) a terrible, selfish human being. No, I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO GETS LIKE THIS. Friends, it is TOTALLY OKAY to not be okay. Do you know that? Here's the thing I am trying to do more and more, though. I'm trying not to let that desire to be around nobody but myself be the thing that I end up giving into every time. Sometimes, it really really is okay to just take some time for ourselves. Necessary, even. However, there are also those times when I am just making a silly excuse up by saying "Oh, but I have things to do", when really my 'things' are just writing some letters and reading a book that I'm currently addicted to. Those do not give me a "get out of socializing free" card for the day.

I am recognizing the more times I have these feelings that it is actually another form of fear. Fear is something I constantly want my life to be known for in the way that I fought against it. Shoot, I even re-titled this blog after that desire in me to not let that STUPID FEAR win. The blog first started when I decided to leave this country for the wonderful (and seriously hot) country of Honduras. *Feel free to scroll back to my first blogs for more on that adventure* Then when I got back my blog's theme was more of how I viewed life in light of how Honduras changed me...except I'm pretty sure I only managed to make one entry...oops. Then there was this current season. The season of battling fear. My dear buddy Ben Rector (okay maybe he doesn't know he is but WHATEVER, a girl can DREAM, right?) has this beautiful song called...you guessed it (or maybe you didn't) FEAR. He has this line in there that immediately made it my absolute favorite song of his:

I learned to dance with the fear that I'd been running from.

Thank you, Ben, for making fear something okay to have. So often we hear that we have to be fearless. Well, I don't think that actually even exists. I think the only way we can get over fear is to just deal with it. To push through. To keep going in the direction God is calling us, even though it's scary. The only way to do life well isn't to get RID of fear, it's to dance with it. Ben is a smart guy.

I ended up going to my friends' house and hanging with my sweet friends and smiling at cute babies and eating yummy food and, my favorite part, playing with a cute Corgi (yes, I am that person who gets more excited about the dogs at parties than I do about the humans sometimes.). And then guess what...I still got to go home and do some reading and some writing. Turns out there's time for all of it. Then I ended my night with some karaoke jamming with our youth group kids, and DUH, THAT IS NEVER NOT FUN. On my drive home tonight, I noticed the rain had stopped and the sun was shining through the clouds, the clouds that earlier in the day threatened to steal my joy, metaphorically, because I felt a little broken in not wanting to be with people. That's what God does, though, isn't it? He reminds us of His love in something as simple yet beautiful as a cloud.

My last thought before I go, something again simple yet so needed, was this reminder from my friend, Sarah. No matter what trouble we go through here on earth...it's all TEMPORARY. I pray you can rest in that today. And always. We were never meant to bare heartache and pain forever. The only forever we were meant for is when we go Home. Thank You, Jesus.