A Homecoming of Sorts

I've been away from the blog for over a year, and I’m returning, but not with an update about my daughter (who is doing fabulously by the way).  I attended a retreat this past weekend, and discovered that as an adult with lots of things to do and responsibilities, I've neglected the part of me that needs regular attention to my spirituality. We go to church most weeks, and we pray before meals and before we go to bed. But one thing that I realized is that I don't often talk about my faith, either in an effort to grow it or to share it with others. I'm writing this blog more as an outlet for myself than as a means to share with others, but if you want to read and follow along on my journey, you're more than welcome.

To set the stage, I've been struggling. Not in the "is my life worth living" kind of struggle, but more of a finding myself, setting true priorities, and understanding why bad things happen to us.

My struggles have centered around two main questions:

1)      Why doesn’t God speak to us in a clear, understandable way, leaving no doubt over what his intentions are for us?

2)      Why does God just step in and fix the situation when bad things happen?

My retreat helped to shed a lot of light on my questions (and some I didn’t even ask), and I came away with four main points of clarity and understanding.

1)      God does speak to us.  It’s just not always in the way we expected, on our terms. 

2)      God doesn’t “make” bad things happen, but sometimes, he does allow them to happen (as in, he doesn’t prevent them from happening).  This gives us an opportunity to take our brokenness, and the hole that it leaves in us, and fill it in a way that magnifies and glorifies God.  Without our struggles, we wouldn’t grow in our capacity to love.

3)      I need to find a church home.  I am a member of one church, go to another, but feel rooted in none.  Although I don’t believe that the church is a requirement in a quality relationship with God, for me, it is essential.

4)     Something I didn’t come for, but came away with: I spend far too much energy on what people think about me.  I aim to please (sometimes even to impress).  I like to be praised, and I take criticism personally.  And this third realization is what is bringing me to write this blog.  I need to put myself out there, to be vulnerable.  I believe that letting people in on some of my trials and tribulations will help me to shake that need for approval (or perfection, or praise, or control).

In the following few posts over the next few days, I’m going to go into each of these realizations in more detail.  Then on a daily basis, I’m going to write about ways in which God reached out to me, or spoke to me, each day, as well as any progress I've made in my faith walk.  I am doing this so that I learn to reflect on each day, to seek out the “God winks” that I receive each day, so that I don’t get to the end of a month and have to wonder where God was in it. I’m also doing this to invite you into my life, to be vulnerable, to share my story with others that may be going through the same thing (or some variation of it), and finally, to let you all hold me accountable to seeking God in my everyday life.

I’m not posting my blog to Facebook, because I’m not ready to put myself out there THAT much, this quickly, but if you are close enough to me to already be a subscriber, then I assume you’re close enough to me to read this, and there are a few others that I intend to share this with that are helping me along my faith journey.

If you feel led to comment on any of my posts, or share your stories, please do.  Because perhaps God will be using you to speak to me too!