Bless my heart

So for the past couple weeks, I've really been feeling God moving me to start writing again. But there are just so many reasons not to. The biggest excuse I've been using is having a 10 week old baby and finding time to write is extremely difficult. She is actually sitting in my lap as I am typing right now. My second favorite excuse was that no one would want to read it. I am nobody special. I'm not even a very good writer. But there is one thing I've learned through the years and that is if God tells you to do something, you do it! After Pastor Doug's sermon this weekend about God using us even if we are "untrained" I knew that I couldn't use excuses anymore. So here it goes... The ramblings of my mind and how God has been speaking to me:

I've really been marveling at how God answers prayers. It seems like everytime I pray for something, I go through a storm that teaches me a lesson. Sometimes I have to go through it several times before I actually pay attention and learn the lesson.

Several months ago, on the brink of having my first baby, I began to pray for what all parents should be praying for: wisdom and patience. Within a few days of my first prayer, I was verbally attacked and put in a situation that I believe I would have reacted to in a very... non-christian way had I not recently been praying. Only a couple short weeks after that, another situation came up. As hard as it was, wisdom forced me to look at both encounters from the other person's point of view. When everyone was telling me how a reasonable person should have reacted by screaming my side or telling them they were being ridiculous, I felt horrible for them and how they must have been feeling. And a big part of me wanted to be really upset and act out like a normal person would have, but I knew there were already too many emotions in the pot and more would just make it worse. This even I was driving and I was thinking about these lessons that I learned. I am very sure that I will have many more lessons before I can call myself "wise" by any means but, I wonder if the reason some Christians don't pray for wisdom is because a lesson always follows. Even knowing now how difficult it was to go through those few weeks, I would do it all over again. Yes it was very hard and some relationships were broken and others were mended but I wouldn't have done it different. Lessons are sometimes hard but once you get through them, you feel a accomplished. You know you can make it through and that makes it worth it.