Wednesday, January 2, 2013

The Blank Blog

I have one friend that likes to remind me that it has been a while since I updated my blog. Most recently, he informed me that my blog would be removed from his list if I did not update it within 2 weeks. While talking with this friend, I told him that I don’t update my blog because I have nothing to blog about. I go to school, I go to work, I come home, I hang out with friends, I make dinners that I could post pictures of, and Allan and I even get to do fun things in the midst of his rotations…but really---what are those things?

Don’t get me wrong, I am so thankful for my job. I really love what I am learning in school and am excited for what it will allow me to do. I am blessed by the friends God has put in my life here in Charleston, and I am glad other people post about food because it has helped me be a better cook Smile. I love my time and adventures with Allan and am so so so happy that medical school has not been the big bad ugly monster I was thinking it was going to be.  I can see how God is working in my life, protecting me and our marriage, providing smiles and friendships, etc. etc. etc.. I don’t want to undermine that at all!

but something has been missing for me--and as much as I hate to admit it, that something is dependency on God. I am too comfortable. My life here has been rather easy. Like I said, I go to work, I come home, I go to school, I hang out with friends, I make dinner, I hang out with Allan. I know God is in my daily life, I feel that, but I have not been in a place in my mind of truly, truly needing him and wanting him (or letting him) control my life. Because of that, my life (as demonstrated by the blog) has been, well, blanker. I believe that life is fuller and  more exciting when we are chasing after the Lord and pursuing things of the Lord—things the Lord has put on our heart, things that aren’t always easy, but things where we can see the Lord really move.

For me that thing is tough kids and truth is—I couldn’t tell you the name of one “tough” kid in Charleston. I am so saddened by that fact.

Working with kids at the DHP, I learned how important it is to be in kids lives. I watched people sacrifice their own lives so that they could love kids in the Lord’s name. I watched my supervisors spend their holidays with the DHP kids because the DHP kids didn’t have a family to spend the holidays with. I watched my co-workers take kids on a week long vacation over Christmas so that the kids could experience a “family vacation” because they had never had one. I watched self-less love happen everyday—even when it was not easy or fun.  It’s situations and experiences like that that I like to blog about, and since I have not been doing that, I have had nothing to blog about. And that’s what I think I miss—being in situations that cause me to depend of the Lord’s strength to do something and not my own. I can depend (although I shouldn’t) on my own strength a lot easier when what I am doing is easy to do and when who I am loving is easy to love.  It’s my own fault. I have become too comfortable, while at the same time, feeling discontent because I have not been pursuing the thing the Lord has set on my heart to pursue. (using excuses all the while to not do it)

I guess this post is just a reminder to myself to not be complacent in my walk with Jesus. I want to live each day for Jesus and I want to be challenged. I have a choice to make in that though. The Lord provides opportunities to me, and I often chose the easy path. I could have been nicer to my classmates and pursued the ones that needed friends, but instead I chose to hang out with the people who were easy for me to hang out with.  I want us, as believers, to be challenged in our daily lives, to do things that are tough and uncomfortable, but things that stretch us and grow us in our dependency on the Lord. I want us to do things that we couldn’t do unless the Lord was in it. I I don’t want to live a comfortable life because I don’t recognize the Lord as much in that. I want to live a life that can only be because of the Lord. I want to live like I believe what I say I believe. I believe true joy lies there.