Ends and Beginnings

We're not the first or only ones to struggle to make ends meet.

I'm not the solitary Mama who feels like she's trying to burn the candle at both ends.

It just, well, it seems like there's been a lot of metaphorical ends in my cliches lately, and not a whole of beginnings.

I have a tentative job lined up for September, but it is only June 19th and that seems ages away. It is ages away, in fact, when you have to pay the mortgage in a few days.

I always knew it would be worth it, the staying home with my kid part of life. And it was. It is. I love that I am the one who holds her, soothes her, feeds her, teaches her. I knew it would be hard, too. The loneliness, the desire for intelligent stimulation, the boredom, the exhaustion and the financial strain. Knowing something, and living something are two very separate things.

My sister Emily moved to Hawaii when she was 19 to find God. No, really. She did. She got hooked into a community and church there called "One Love Ministries" led by a pastor they called, "Pastor Waxer" simply because he was a surfer. Isn't everyone in Hawaii a surfer? No? That was nearly 8 years ago and she still talks about what an impact he made on her faith journey. So, I decided to check out if they had a podcast- you know, something to listen to while crying over unpaid bills or mistakes I've made or what an idiot I am, the usual. And I came across his message about Galatians 5, and the most important mandate given to us by God- to love him with everything we have, and love our neighbors as ourselves. He posed an incredibly important question that stung like a bee sting. Are you only walking WITH the Spirit, and not IN the Spirit?

Gee whiz.

It made me think about where my head has been the last few weeks.

Have I domesticated Christ into a traveling companion? Someone I allow to join me on my walk? Have I settled for knowing Christ, and not LIVING through him?

Ugh. I want to say no, but the evidence proves otherwise. When I allow these circumstantial worries overwhelm me, I am not living through Christ. The one who calls me by name. Who has taken me out of slavery into adoption. As Sister Sunshine says, "I just forgot who I was for second".

That I am the daughter of a King who loves me so profoundly it goes deeper than I can fathom- that I am entrenched in his bloodline and his history and nothing can erase it no matter how stupid, how wrong or how lost I am.

That every promise made in the Bible pertains to me.

Only walking IN the Spirit brings peace.

Looks like I found a beginning after all.