learning to be content

My husband likes to remind me occasionally of quotes I've made to him when life seems as if we can't seem to get past our circumstances to meet our goals.

For three years I worked with the same clients in home care and I grew to love them over the years. We have a great relationship that up until a few months ago I was too stressed to see what was going on. I was in school and had just finished when I began to think things that I prefer to not mention. Like I had stated before I had a mindset that I thought I had to match my husband's income to get out of our debt quicker, pay off the house, and be able to do the things that we wanted to do above the mountian of medical bills that had piled up between Dani and I in the past year.

When my employment ended at the nursing home, this couple hired me back on call for now. I feel as if I am back home.

Several months ago as I was driving to their home to work when I was on the day shift, the Lord reminded me of something I had prayed for several years ago.

Hubby and I's dream was to eventually buy a piece of property out of town, make payments on it until we could afford to put a manufactored home and it and sell where we are. I wanted to have an ocean view that I could look out at every morning the sun rise and the boats as they were going out to sea, sipping coffee on the deck and having my devos.

One day my client's husband and I were standing in the kitchen and I was looking out the window and I realized, that God had given me my dream.

So it wasn't in the form that I was hoping (for one thing its is a stick built home!) and it really wasn't my home, but I was able to go to work, have coffee in the breakfast nook and watch the sunrise either when I got off work in the mornings, or watch the boats leave the port when I got to work during the day.

I also took pictures of deer roaming on the property and playing in the field below.

God had given me my dream then and He returned it to me when I was done with this past journey.

Do I regret my education? No. I was able to do that while working. I don't regret any of what I've gone through in the last six months. I admit I had thoughts of telling them that the prodigal has returned home, but my Oford American Dictionary states that my experience was not prodigal material as I was not wasteful or extravagant in my journey. I increased my learning in taking better care of those that I do care for already.

In learning to be content I have now been able to let go of the fear of being retired and still living in the same house I am in now. It really doesn't matter as I really like this home and the area I am in. There's still a lot of work to be done here, but we've got plenty of time to get it done.

Being content is not easy when you watch the outcome outwiegh the income, and watch that the things that you already have get worn to the ground and you can't replace them like you would like to and have to do without for a while.

But contentment means that all of our needs will be met when we need them. Apparently I don't need my family room as the old dining set is there, as well as parts of the kitchen that we are still working on when we found the pipes were leaking, not to mention the master bathroom where the former vanity is still taking up a small portion of the master bedroom until we can get the floor put in.

But I am content with where God has put me. I am His employee, even though at times I still ask "Why me?" Because even though I made the choice to work for Him, He first chose me.

As I stated in my last post I am working on a Daniel Lenton Fast between now and Easter.

In my own opinion and for some it may seem as a warped sense of thought I do see a connection in my employment ending on Fat Tuesday. God wanted me to change some things in my thought life as well.

I started actually a day late with signing up with Greg Dickow's Postive thinking Fast but so far it fits for what I turned from what could have been thoughts of failure of a goal I had set a year and a half ago to seeing it as just a change of direction, not a failure of a goal.

I've heard people tell me that I'm taking my firing pretty well. I'll admit some days the old thoughts like to pass through, but I have learned to remind myself of verses such as Prov 3:5-6 "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. Acknowledge Him and He will direct your path"and Jeremiah 29:11 "I have great plans for you, 'Says the Lord' plans to prosper you and not harm you. Plans to give you a hope and a future".

We may not see how all things work together that we do in our lives except when as it states in Romans 8:28 "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose".

When circumstances change God's plan doesn't

With this mindset of working as God is my employer I'm learning that circumstances may change but His plan doesn't.

Several years ago when I started working I wanted to go into nursing but I allowed fears to come in that made me change that direction. No matter what I have done in the last several years God still had that plan in motion.

I've learned over the last several months that there are many areas in nursing now that were not available in the late seventies/early eighties.

The Nursing home facility is not for me. I thought it was but as I look back just in the past couple of days the stress of trying to keep up with things that sometimes aren't pertinent to a job was just has hard as working the job.

Over the years I've had the op to working with various stages of people in thier lives from those have lived with mental and physical disablities to the elderly and those that have been abused or have abused their bodies with alcohol and drugs. I've enjoyed that atmosphere as I enjoy working with a person on a one on one basis and learning the person's ablity and strengths and helping them to achieve the goals that they set for themselves.

I'm not a vindictive person and I don't like to try to fight for something that I find others are more qualified then myself. I find that I spend more time apoligizing for having an "attitude" and correcting it then if I didn't have the attitude to begin with it. When its time to move on, I am learning to take it gracefully, knowing that my time there was done to best of my ablity and that I did it for God's glory and not my own. Yes I am broken hearted for a time, but its a normal reaction when you find that circumstances have changed. When you realized that God is the one you are working for, the plan stays the same.

What is next in this journey? I don't know. I'm waiting and listening. Praying alot. I started today with a Lenton fast, something I haven't done for many years. I'm still going to stay with a vegetarian lifestyle as its healther for me.

Like my title states, my circumstances may change but God's plan doesn't.

Sometimes we take on a offense from a person whose hurt is far beyond anything we can think or imagine and what that person says to us is out of their pain and their perception of something while they are working out the painful experience in their life.

I'm reading a book by Art Mathias about why we do what we do. It goes along with why some will say they aren't convicted over an area in their life with something while others are convicted over the same area. It has to do with things that have been passed down from generations of feelings of rejections, bitterness and the like that we end of squelching the things of the Holy Spirit.

The bible tells us that we are to be filled with the fruits of the Spirit. That clashes with areas of pain in our lives from feelings we've picked up from cirmcumstances were out of control in our lives. We have to focus daily on how we are going to live and which kingdom we are going to live in.

There's two kingdoms, God's and satans. God doesnt' violate his nature. He's not going to give us something of His if we still have feelings that are not from Him. It would be tainted and soiled and not used for its intention.

Satan will violate his nature because he is a liar. He will make you believe that you have the same Holy Spirit and can do whatever you feel like when in actuallity what you are doing is not glorifying God.

I am speaking for myself because of areas that I am still working on. Does God still bless those of us who are struggling between kingdoms? He does because when we do the right thing, He blesses us. When we do the wrong thing He doesn't, but if we confess our sins He forgives us and the blessing return. We may have to pay for our consequences for our actions of what we did was wrong, but we have the freedom of forgivenss from God and He will protect us.

A follow up thought to my Ghandi post

In the bible study today the quote began to take form.

Whose kingdom are we serving? Are we serving God, truely serving Him? If we are we will have His fruit of the Holy Spirit in us. We would seek to obey and do His will with all of our hearts.

Are we serving satan? He carries evil like a second skin and a person can have an innumeral amount of demonic activity in their lives.

God can't voliate his nature. "We have become immune to sin so that we don't understand that sin in our lives separates us from God. God called each of us to be holy and set apart. We are to be in this world. but not of it. Sadly, many of us are "leavened " by the things of this world. Then we wonder why God's power is not evident in our lives or our churches." Bibical Foundations of Freedom by Art Mathias

This may be why we are not so liked amongst those we are trying to share Christ with. We are doing our own things saying that its okay that we do them even if someone else is convicted of the very thing we are particpating in.

A quote from Ghandi

"I like your Christ. I do not like you Christians. You are so unlike your Christ."

This quote has me thinking in the last couple of days as to what is it that we are doing wrong? Where are we not showing the love of Christ to our friends, family and to those in need that we have yet to meet?

My pastor brought up something in our service yesterday that I hadn't considered and is a strong part of my personality for those who know me. I can become a mother lion and protect my friends when they've been hurt. And recently I did let my anger get to me when a friend did get hurt and I took that offense on myself. I've done it for my daughter and for my husband several times over the years.

Do we take offense in areas where we really aren't suppose to? Battles that aren't ours to fight? God has already won the war and if you don't know the war I'm talking about read Revelations. We win. So why are we still fighting battles that God has already won?

There are only a few times I've protested something. Abortion is one of them. As I think more of how I handled myself in those arenas, I have to say its not really my nature to stand on a street corner and hold a sign. I did it once, but I don't think I'll do it again.

I am finding out the one area that we can always win a battle that we are currently fighting as we are living in a world that is not our own. Prayer and fasting. Those arethe only weapons we have that we will never lose.

Christ never protested anything and I think He had plenty to protest about while He walked the earth. He approached people with a gentleness and a kindness that they weren't used to being in whatever condition they were in whether it be an illness or sin. He didn't judge them for what they were doing. He showed them how much God loved the people He created and how He wanted a relationship with them. He gave up His own life to prove that fact.

So why aren't we doing the same? Why are we saying we are doing things in the name of the Lord when its not something He would do?