After a Week

After a week of vacation, I'm actually feeling really good. Maybe it's the time I spent with friends and family. Maybe it's from going to the gym and working out a couple times, which I haven't done recently. I'm not unhealthy - I go for runs on the street every now and then and I do push-ups and sit-ups pretty regularly, but I don't have the petty cash to throw at a nice gym, where a full workout is more likely. But my friends appartently do have sufficient finances for such a thing and they brought me as a guest a couple times. We played racquetball and then lifted a little and biked a little afterward. It was a good time, and I'm still a little stiff from the last one, but it felt really good. I think I'm hooked.

Working out aside, I've also been thinking about life. I've realized that I've been really self-centered, in terms of what I want in life and what I'm working toward. I suppose it doesn't really have anything to do with what I'm actually doing, since regardless of my goals in life, I tend to slack off on them. But let's set aside that little character flaw for a moment - I'm working on it - and understand that the goals I do have seem to be about my career and my future life, a family and kids, money, comfort. I used to simply trust that eventually God would lead me somewhere, where I'd be doing his will. I have to realize that that might not be all that glamorous, But I need to make my goal in live to be living out the love and joy and peace of God and shedding his light in a dark world.

Along these lines is my little problem with girls. It's no secret that I'm a little girl crazy - well maybe it's a little secret, since you have to know me a little better to realize it, but that's kind of with anything. But anyway, I've always wanted to get married, and I'm 25 and still single with no prospects for any relationships in the works. Frankly, I'm ready to just forget about it, but that doesn't stop me from looking at all the pretty girls and wishing for that meaningful something. But here's my point. I need to be ready - and I think I'm close - to let go of my dreams of a happiness of that sort. I have no doubt that it will happen some day, when I'm not looking for it. But I have to let go of the longing, stop the searching, and I need to start searching for the life of love with God, who will lead me into everything good. I think it can be likened to a simple thing like growth. People and all living things don't grow by wishing they were taller or bigger or stronger. They grow naturally, when they eat and drink and breathe live over time. A plant gets nourishment and things happen. The sun shines and the buds open up and blossom and flowers bloom with the changing of the seasons. It's a part of it's purpose. This is the lesson I see in nature. That we live and we grow and we bloom and we mate and we work, and it's all a part of life. It is not something we need to look for. That is why Jesus says that we need to seek first the kingdom of God, and then all these other things will be added. "you will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you" - somewhere in the OT prophets. I dont' remember.