Are you ready to live?

I was reading in John 13: 31-38 this morning where Jesus predicts Peter’s denial just after washing the disciples’ feet. Verse 37 is Peter’s response, “Lord, why can’t I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you”. I found it interesting because Peter was ready to die for Jesus, but he wasn’t ready to live for him. What I mean is just a few chapters later we see him again, ready to die and willing to fight a group of soldiers single-handedly in the garden to defend Jesus, but he was not willing to wash the feet of his brothers as Jesus had done just a few minutes earlier.

As the rag-tag soldiers for Christ that we are, we are ready to fight and go into battle together, but often we can be reluctant to love and serve each other. And it’s this same passage that Jesus gives the command to no longer just love your neighbor as yourself, but love as HE has loved us. We are so willing and ready for the battle...in fact sometimes we are so full of readiness that we end up fighting with each other! But what we are not ready for is to love each other as Christ loved us, and this is where Satan knows he can divide us.

We are ready to fight the battle, we are willing to die to ourselves for Jesus. But are we ready to live for him? Are we ready to love each other in the midst of the battle?

How you know you're working like a crazy person...

You know how every time you open up a word document, it keeps count of how many you've opened and labels it something like "document4" until you save it and name it something else?
I just opened up word document #294...so I decided it was time for a lunch break.

I'm Over It

Just about every Valentines Day, you can count on me having something to say about it on this blog. Sometimes it's a girl-power, singles-can-have-just-as-much-fun-as-couples-today post, sometimes its a today-is-stupid-and-overrated post (See V-day 2007, one of my favorites!). Today, it's neither. I'm neutral. I'm Switzerland. This Saturday is just another day and to be honest, I'm not planning on doing anything different than I would normally do on a Saturday. Basically, I'm over Valentines Day.

So what if I am single on Feb 14th...what makes that different than any other day of the year? And yet somehow come every February 14th, there's that little girly part of me that thinks "maybe this year is different...maybe this year that secret admirer I didn't know existed will leave secret notes on my car and show up with a handful of flowers to take me out and sweep me off my feet..." and every year (shockingly enough) that doesn't happen, and there's just a little part of me that is disappointed.

But why? I don't have these thoughts on any other day of the year? What is so special about Feb 14th? So this year...nothing. Nothing is special about Feb 14th, it's just another day. Call me bitter or jaded or cynical if you want, but I have no need to fill a regular day with a pint of ice cream and a cheesy chick flick just because I'm single, so why Valentines Day? I do still think it's sweet for a couple to celebrate it, and I know this post would be different if I were in a relationship. But for me, this year, it's just another regular day.

I'm over it.

We never remember the compliments

For some reason, the things people say that hurt us seem to ring in our ears for years and years, and there's always just a little bit of sting left to them no matter how much time has passed. I remember so many things people have said that have hurt me, that I have taken to heart and believed as truth. I could list them off right now except I don't want to see them in writing where they will live forever. But for some reason, we never remember the compliments. And for that matter, we rarely even try to remember the compliments, while the hurtful comments seem to just magically appear in our brains.
Tonight I tried to remember special compliments I've received, and the truth is I had a hard time. Somehow it's just so much easier to believe the lies...maybe it's because I'm a woman and we're just better at it, or maybe it's human nature, or maybe the environments we typically surround ourselves in really are more negative than encouraging. Whatever it is, we could all do a better job of building each other up. Everyone needs to hear the real truth about themselves because most of the time, we won't look in the mirror and see it ourselves.

So I tried to remember some of the compliments that have always stuck out to me...not to toot my own horn by any means, but so the truth could be in writing and overcome the lies Satan uses to keep me discouraged and ineffective! So here's a couple:

*Once in college, a girl was explaining my uniqueness to me: "You are so awesome because you are 'one of the guys'; you are independent and tough and know things like how to use a jigsaw, and you could probably kick the butts of most of them here. But you are also so...so feminine, and...soft. Those two don't usually mix".

*From Ross: "Besides my mom, I've never met anyone who God spoke to so openly and clearly, and someone who obeyed him so instantly and completely." (that compliment is two-fold if you know Ross's high opinion of his mom!)

*From Amy: "If you were an inanimate object, you would be a pink hard hat. You ARE a pink hard hat!"