Today was one of "those" Mondays...the ones where I wake up feeling totally spent and exhausted, with a headache to boot. Typically this pattern seems to be due to a combination of allergies, busy weekends, and weather pressure systems moving through. I've had more of "those" Mondays recently than I would like to admit, even to myself. It is discouraging to wake up and realize that my plans for being productive and getting things done might just have to be put on hold.
Thankfully, after some extra rest this morning, I was able to get up--not that I was super motivated, mind you--but I knew from experience that if I at least got a few things done my mood would inevitably improve. There's something so healing about a clean living space. Once I've completed my chores I can fully relax rather than feeling the weight of the clutter oppressively clouding my thoughts.
So, I got up, as that seems to always be the first step to any productivity. And I started, one task at a time, and the more progress I made, the more motivated I became to take on additional tasks. I turned on a favorite personalized music station to keep me company in the relative silence of the house and hummed along to the worship tunes that filled the air. Several hours later, I found myself sitting on the couch and surveying the fruit of my labor: a clean kitchen and living space, clean clothing folded and put away (albeit with a few straggling pieces spread out over chairs or a drying rack to air dry), a hot peach pie on the table and the "guts" of another chilling in the freezer for a later date.
After those productive hours, I was encouraged by how much better I felt and how much I had accomplished. I decided to read the final chapter from The Pursuit of God before Jonathan got home this evening. It didn't take long to realize I was in for an even bigger treat than I had anticipated. The final chapter, whose title inspired mine for this blog, was perhaps the most practical and impactful of the entire book. I could try to summarize Tozer's thoughts, but he does a much more eloquent job than I could in this quote from that chapter:
"We must practice living to the glory of God, actually and
determinedly. By meditation upon this truth, by talking it over with
God often in our prayers, by recalling it to our minds frequently as we
move about among men, a sense of its wondrous meaning will begin to take
hold of us. The old painful duality
will go down before a restful unity of life. The knowledge that we are
all God's, that He has received all and rejected nothing, will unify our
inner lives and make everything sacred to us...Let us practice the fine
art of making every work a priestly ministration. Let us believe that
God is in all our simple deeds and learn to find Him there."--A.W.
Tozer, The Pursuit of God
As I sat and considered what I had read, it occurred to me that, in addition to my personal quirky nature that causes me to actually enjoy cleaning, part of the reason why it was so enjoyable today was that I get to meditate on the Lord and serve my husband through my efforts. Now, I am not claiming to have mastered sacramental living--far from it--but I noticed a correlation today. I am convinced that my choice to listen to praise and worship music rather than half-watching a TV show (a common background noise choice, and not one that in and of itself is wrong) had a huge influence on my attitude and the outcome of my afternoon, because it caused my mind to be centered on Jesus, His sacrificial love for me, and my response of love and gratitude to Him.
I know the Lord brought this realization to my attention, because this morning I had practically given up on today being productive or uplifting. I am thankful for the His willingness to reach down and prove me wrong by touching my day with His presence. I realize that I cannot expect the Lord to always speak into my day so obviously, but I have learned to appreciate the times when He does. Furthermore, I look forward to practicing sacramental living more and more in the coming days. What an opportunity, and even more, what a blessing!
Monday, August 29, 2016
Tuesday, August 23, 2016
Returning to the land of blog-dom
I closed this blog over 3 years ago when I quit my full-time teaching job and moved back to the Upstate to get married. Interestingly, another good friend closed her blog about the same time--we were married within a couple of months of each other. Today I noticed that she recently re-started her blog, and that spark was enough to remind me how much I have missed blogging. So, I am going to follow her lead and revive this blog as well.
While I have not taught in a traditional classroom since May 2013, I am still a teacher at heart, and I love the opportunities God has been bringing into my life to invest in others through all sorts of teaching experiences. Oftentimes I'm also on the flip side and learning as God continues to teach me so much about Himself.
My current teaching life involves discipling some younger women, assisting people in a variety of ages and stages in becoming better writers, acting as an educational sounding board for homeschooling parents and some who are sending their children to more traditional school settings, and training people in a variety of different skill sets, from crafts like knitting to volunteer positions at my church where I work as the administrative secretary. While this isn't necessarily the road I would have expected for my 30th year of life, it has been both a rewarding and challenging journey.
My learning life is equally varied. I'm especially grateful for my patient husband who is always by my side regardless of what life throws at us. I have grown so much as a wife through experience and learning from some wonderful wives whom I'm blessed to know and spend time with--my amazing Mom, my sweet mother-in-law, my best friend Kristin, and so many others. These ladies also invest in my spiritual life (and pretty much every other aspect of my life), and I'm so thankful for them. Most importantly, I continue to learn so much from my Heavenly Father, who teaches me more each day about how to live by His Spirit and in His strength rather than my own.
Currently, Kristin and I are reading through The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer. I read this book as a young teen and was totally overwhelmed by how much insight Tozer had to offer, and recently decided to return and see what more I could glean from his thoughts. As I chew on the words he wrote several decades ago, I am frequently amazed at how relevant they are today. I often have to re-read a chapter several times and still I find on another reading that I have not fully grasped the entirety of his message. This has been both rewarding and also spiritually challenging to me. How often do I read the Bible with the same hunger--to read and reread the same passage and better understand it each time? Not often enough, is my conclusion, and I am reminded to immerse myself daily in the truth of God's word. It has also been interesting that this renewed interest in Tozer's most famous writing is in tandem with my current devotional inductive study of the book of Hebrews. So much of Tozer's text digs into the symbolism and parallels of the Old Testament worship with New Testament worship, and Hebrews has a similar focus.
Well, I could keep writing, but I think I will close for now with a quote from Tozer that has challenged both Kristin and I in the past few days:
While I have not taught in a traditional classroom since May 2013, I am still a teacher at heart, and I love the opportunities God has been bringing into my life to invest in others through all sorts of teaching experiences. Oftentimes I'm also on the flip side and learning as God continues to teach me so much about Himself.
My current teaching life involves discipling some younger women, assisting people in a variety of ages and stages in becoming better writers, acting as an educational sounding board for homeschooling parents and some who are sending their children to more traditional school settings, and training people in a variety of different skill sets, from crafts like knitting to volunteer positions at my church where I work as the administrative secretary. While this isn't necessarily the road I would have expected for my 30th year of life, it has been both a rewarding and challenging journey.
My learning life is equally varied. I'm especially grateful for my patient husband who is always by my side regardless of what life throws at us. I have grown so much as a wife through experience and learning from some wonderful wives whom I'm blessed to know and spend time with--my amazing Mom, my sweet mother-in-law, my best friend Kristin, and so many others. These ladies also invest in my spiritual life (and pretty much every other aspect of my life), and I'm so thankful for them. Most importantly, I continue to learn so much from my Heavenly Father, who teaches me more each day about how to live by His Spirit and in His strength rather than my own.
Currently, Kristin and I are reading through The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer. I read this book as a young teen and was totally overwhelmed by how much insight Tozer had to offer, and recently decided to return and see what more I could glean from his thoughts. As I chew on the words he wrote several decades ago, I am frequently amazed at how relevant they are today. I often have to re-read a chapter several times and still I find on another reading that I have not fully grasped the entirety of his message. This has been both rewarding and also spiritually challenging to me. How often do I read the Bible with the same hunger--to read and reread the same passage and better understand it each time? Not often enough, is my conclusion, and I am reminded to immerse myself daily in the truth of God's word. It has also been interesting that this renewed interest in Tozer's most famous writing is in tandem with my current devotional inductive study of the book of Hebrews. So much of Tozer's text digs into the symbolism and parallels of the Old Testament worship with New Testament worship, and Hebrews has a similar focus.
Well, I could keep writing, but I think I will close for now with a quote from Tozer that has challenged both Kristin and I in the past few days:
"And always He is trying to get our attention, to reveal Himself to us, to communicate with us. We have within us the ability to know Him if we will but respond to His overtures. (And this we call pursuing God!) We will know Him in increasing degree as our receptivity becomes more perfect by faith and love and practice.
"O God and Father, I repent of my sinful preoccupation with visible things. The world has been too much with me. Thou hast been here and I knew it not. I have been blind to Thy Presence. Open my eyes that I may behold Thee in and around me. For Christ's sake, Amen."
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