Heart's Desire

"Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart."

This verse sometimes seems to give people the impression that if they just humor God for a while and pretend like he is the most important thing, that eventually they will get what they are really looking for. But I don't think that's really how it goes. It kind of reminds me of something my dad used to say when we'd have peas for dinner (we still sometimes have peas, we just don't have to have this conversation anymore). If I'd whiningly ask "Do I have to have peas?" he'd reply, "Do you want them?" If I said no, then the answer was "yes, you have to," but if the answer was yes, then he would say, "then you don't have to, but since you want to, you will anyways." Pretty much, it was a lose-lose situation for me if I was hoping to get out of eating peas. But as far as my health was concerned, it was a win-win. There was no way I was getting out of eating those peas.

This verse kind of reminds me of that. If I hang onto all the things I think I want more than anything else, God might not give them to me. He might make my life full of a bunch of other things that I don't really think are what he should have given me. The verse doesn't say, "Make God one of your priorities and you will get all the things you always thought you wanted." The first step is to delight yourself in God. But as soon as you decide to delight yourself in the Lord, you are surrendering the desires of your heart. You are saying "God, here are the things I think I want, but most of all I want you," and allowing him to change your desires into something new. That is a hard thing. There are some things that I am pretty confident that I really do want. But I don't think that I can hang onto them as the be all and end all and still be truly "delighting myself in the Lord." If I make God my everything, if I let him "have the whole tree down" as C.S. Lewis says (see my last post), then he will give me the desires of my heart. But my heart will be changed when I make him my all, and my desires are bound to change with my changing heart. Am I willing to let them?

All of You

"The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says 'Give me All. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don't want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don't want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked - the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.'

Both harder and easier than what we are all trying to do. You have noticed, I expect, that Christ Himself sometimes describes the Christian way as very hard, sometimes as very easy. He says, 'Take up your Cross' - in other words, it is like going to be beaten to death in a concentration camp. Next minute he says, 'My yoke is easy and my burden light.' He means both...

...Teachers will tell you that the laziest boy in the class is the one who works hardest in the end. They mean this. If you give two boys, say, a proposition in geometry to do, the one who is prepared to take trouble will try to understand it. The lazy boy will try to learn it by heart because, for the moment, that needs less effort. But six months later, when they are preparing for an exam, that lazy boy is doing hours and hours of miserable drudgery over things the other boy understands, and positively enjoys, in a few minutes. Laziness means more work in the long run. Or look at it this way. In a battle, or in mountain climbing, there is often one thing which it takes a lot of pluck to do; but it is also, in the long run, the safest thing to do. If you funk it, you will find yourself, hours later, in far worse danger. The cowardly thing is also the most dangerous thing.

It is like that here. The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self - all your wishes and precautions - to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call 'ourselves', to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be 'good'. We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way - centered on money or pleasure or ambition - and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do. As He said, a thistle cannot produce figs. If I am a field that contains nothing but grass-seed, I cannot produce wheat. Cutting the grass may keep it short: but I shall still produce grass and no wheat. If I want to produce wheat, the change must go deeper than the surface. I must be ploughed up and re-sown."
- from Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis

What Time Is It?

Here is a little diddy that I am singing today for reasons I'm sure you can figure out.


What Time is It?


What time is it?
SUMMERTIME!
It's our vacation!
What time is it?
Party time!
That's right, say it loud.
What time is it?
The time of our lives!
Anticipation!
What time is it?
SUMMERTIME!
School's out, scream and shout!

Finally summer's here
Good to be chillin' out
I'm off the clock (not)
The pressure's off
Now my job's what it's all about (not)

Ready for some sunshine
For my heart to take a chance
I'm here to stay
Not movin' away
Ready for a summer romance

Everybody ready, goin' crazy, yeah we're out.
Come on and let me hear you say it now, right now

What time is it?
SUMMERTIME!
It's our vacation!
What time is it?
Party time!
That's right, say it loud!
What time is it?
Time of our lives!
Anticipation!
What time is it?
SUMMERTIME!
School is out, scream and shout!

I've got no rules, no summer school
I'm free to coil till I drop
It's an education vacation
And the party never has to stop

I've got things to do, I'll see you soon
And I'm really gonna miss you all
I'll see you and you
And you and you
Bye bye until next fall

Everybody ready goin' crazy, yeah we're out
Come on and let me hear you say it now, right now

What time is it?
SUMMERTIME!
It's our vacation!
What time is it?
Party time!
That's right, say it loud!
What time is it?
Time of our lives!
Anticipation!
What time is it?
SUMMERTIME!
School's out, scream and shout!

Now I'm waking up at 6 am, cause coiling agendas is my role
Enough already, we're waiting, come on let's go... out of control

Paper cuts let's show them
Pay checks, I've earned them
Premier is my home
Navy and white

When it's time to work, I do it
When I come home I'll groove it
I'll live it up, party down
That's what the summer's all about

What time is it?
SUMMERTIME!
It's our vacation!
What time is it?
Party time!
That's right, say it loud!
What time is it?
Time of our lives!
Anticipation
What time is it?
SUMMERTIME!
School's out, scream and shout!


From High School Musical 2 (a classic if there ever was one) with some modifications to fit my life.

PS - for those of you who don't have the weather channel on 24/7 at your house, the post time of this is significant. It is the first minute of the summer!

Personality Revamp

I went through a moderate personal crisis the other day. I think I am getting over it, so don't go spending too much time worrying about me. Just in case you are curious to know what my crisis was about, I will tell you. You may or may not know and have taken a Myers-Briggs personality test in your day (if I know you from Prov, you probably have, because in my experience they are all the rage at Prov), but if you haven't you just might not get everything I say in the next few paragraphs. Tough.

I did my first personality test almost 2 years ago and discovered that I was an ENFP, which was fine with me and I really felt was a fairly accurate representation of my personality. However, in the past while I have had a few conversations with other people as well as with myself (don't you have conversations with yourself?) about things that bother me, and one of my biggest pet peeves I have discovered this year is when people cancel plans last minute. I never before realized how much this bothered me until this year. I have a pretty busy life, and I like people a lot, and I like a lot of people, and so in order to see them all and also get all of my work done, I generally have to plan ahead somewhat. What drives me crazy is when I book a night off for someone and refrain from making plans with other people and then I end up at home because someone realized they forgot about a prior commitment. I work hard to make sure that I am able to follow through on my commitments, and it irks me (yes, I did use that word) when other people don't do the same for me. On a slightly different topic (but enough the same one to stay in this paragraph), I find that I have developed a large amount of appreciation for being able to use time well. That means such things as: finishing assignments on time (even if they were only started hours before they were due), doing work when it needs to be done, keeping tabs on commitments, not spending vast amounts of time doing nothing, etc. The thing is, that I also like being able to enjoy my leisure time to the fullest. I don't want to waste away a day off - I want to relax to the max (is that a saying for real? because I feel like I just made it up right now). I feel like I can't do that unless I have finished what needs to be finished first. Then my mind can rest and I can REALLY have fun, without things I need to do still weighing on my mind. Okay, this is turning into a rant so I'd better move onto the next paragraph.

All that suggests that my former identification as a "P" is in no way possible. I have concluded that I am a "J", and I have done a couple tests in the last few days to check up on it. So that's that, apparently something has happened to me in the last yearish that has changed my personality type. Crazy. And since I base all of my self worth in the personality type that I am, you can see how this really was a hard week of soul searching and questioning who I really am (please understand that I like to use sarcasm [and brackets today apparently]).

So, in conclusion, I would like to suggest to all of you personality test junkies out there (I find that those who love personality tests are the same type of people that love blogs) that you don't have to become complacent and conform to the personality type that you once believed you were. Change is possible. Life is bigger than those 4 small letters. There are 8.

Peace

It is so easy to be restless. It doesn't take many hours, or even minutes, of not thinking about my God who is in control before I start feeling unpeaceful and restless. "Unpeace". Apparently this is not a word, since my computer is underlining it in red as I write this, but I am going to leave it. I have used this word a lot in my talks with people throughout the year. Unpeace is the best way I can think of to describe the thing I am trying to describe. When your mind is rushing in all sorts of directions, or not going anywhere, and all you know is that something isn't right, that things aren't okay. It is the complete opposite of rest.

I think I experienced some of the greatest moments of unpeace in my life last summer. I didn't know what it was that was making me feel that way, and although I have been learning more about myself this year, I still don't know all the reasons why last summer I felt such inner turmoil. I feel like this year has been a journey back to a place of peace, and yet I still have moments and even whole days or weeks when I feel like things aren't okay and I need to do something to make them better. That's the problem: I keep looking for something that I can do. The thing is that the Person who can give me rest and make it all okay isn't me. I'm not the one who has to do anything.

We sang one of my very favorite hymns in church this morning. I had never heard the third verse before, but I found it when I searched for the lyrics and I figured I'd throw it in there. Here they are:

Be Still My Soul

Be still, my soul; the Lord is on thy side.
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain.
Leave to thy God to order and provide.
In every change he faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul; thy best, thy heavenly friend
Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Be still, my soul; thy God doth undertake
To guide the future as he has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake;
All now mysterious shall be bright at last.
Be still, my soul; the waves and winds still know
His voice who ruled them while he dwelt below.

Be still, my soul; though dearest friends depart
And all is darkened in the vale of tears;
Then shalt thou better know his love, his heart,
Who comes to soothe thy sorrows and thy fears.
Be still, my soul; thy Jesus can repay
From his own fullness all he takes away.

Be still, my soul; the hour is hastening on
When we shall be forever with the Lord,
When disappointment, grief and fear are gone,
Sorrow forgot, love's purest joys restored.
Be still, my soul; when change and tears are past
All safe and blessed we shall meet at last.


-Katherina von Schlegel, 1752 (translated by Jane Borthwick, 1855)