The Eagle Has Landed on My Nest

“For here’s what I’m going to do…I’ll give you a new heart, put a new spirit in you.  I’ll remove the stone heart from your body and replace it with a heart that’s God-willed, not self-willed...”  Ezekiel 36:26 (The Message)

Don’t all of us “schedule Girls” just LOVE it when people throw kinks in our perfect plans?  Case in point, here are a few things that strongly tempt me to be and to act, AGGRAVATED!! 
Ok, imagine a list that contains a lot of self centeredness and mostly consists of completely unavoidable occurrences in it. I’m so ashamed at my narcissism that now you have to imagine big black scratches through this list.  Since I am typing, it is hard to actually do this, so you will need to imagine with me the scratching part while I mash at the “delete” key.  What a whiner I am!  What an inflexible control freak! 

I love people.  I’m very much a people person.    Unfortunately, the things that keep getting into the way of my plans are, PEOPLE.  And, most often, they are the people that I want to show love to and serve the most, my own family.  Not every time, mind you.  Random strangers incur my secret mental wrath as well.  I mean seriously.  Who calls you in the middle of the day while homeschooling and giving a spelling test and fending off a bossy, loud, and demanding two year old and tells you that you have a Dr. Appointment the next day and then proceeds to take 20 minutes of your time going over insurance paperwork that hasn’t changed since 1947???  THE NERVE!! Ok, ok…I might be exaggerating, a little.  (Topic for another day!)  Back on point.  As far as my own family is concerned, I’m constantly amazed and horrified when I catch myself being annoyed at things like potty breaks (NO POTTY BREAKS ON MY SCHEDULE!!) and drink runs during schooling.  (Can’t you wait until lunch for a drink!?)  But still, I have a certain amount of “mommy patience” for little people who are, after all, children still in training to be adults.  So, for them, the annoyance remains mostly internal and I struggle to gain real ground in the patience and flexibility war.
 I love my husband dearly and am very grateful that he is home safe and sound, but it is harder than you think to adjust back to real life and rebuild the mental schedule and priority structure that comes with being a two parent household again.  The transitional adding of WIFE (back) onto my “titles” list and time schedule is a tight and not always welcome, squeeze!    Can I also mention this means one more person in the house looking at me and asking – “Do you know where  ____________ is????”  So again, let me reiterate.  What a selfish whiner I am!  What an inflexible control freak! 
Let’s just say I KNOW that I need to get a grip.  It isn’t that I can’t control my urges to ACT aggravated about the things on my long list of annoyances, I can.  But what I’m really after is HEART CHANGE.  I need to be reminded daily that the very reason I have “A Nest” to clean and laundry to wash, fold, and put away, and every other item on my “annoying!” list…is because I have a family in my nest.  I have an “Eagle” who works to lead our family well, and loves me and has provided me with this nest and all that fills it. He has a good job and many talents for helping others.  He shows love through acts of service and you will NEVER hear me complaining about my man not helping out around the house or taking care of our needs.  In this department he’s a Mary Poppins!   (Practically perfect in every way)
God has grown me and stretched me and developed self control where once there was none.  Getting a grip on the heart change is coming a little slower.  I need it, I want it, I know I am helpless to change it myself…  all I know to keep doing is to take each thought captive, give thanks in all things, do everything as if it were for the Lord. 
It is scary how easily I slip into thinking about what belongs to me, and what my “rights” entail… How can I ever hope to be effective for the Kingdom of God when my own heart is so self centered and deceitful?  When I look to God’s instructions for my priorities instead of concentrating on my own “laws” (or rules or lesson plans, or expectations) I clearly see how much more I have to be grateful and thankful for, and how silly it is for me to be so inflexible and so easily aggravated by the very people God has given to grow me and to bless me.  After all, don’t I often expect from them behavior that I myself cannot produce?  Hmmmm…
I am often comforted by the words of the apostle Paul.  He describes perfectly the very struggle that haunts my thought life, and then very clearly tells me who will deliver me and what I am to do in the meantime, GIVE THANKS!    And, Hey God!...How fast can you deliver up some heart change???

For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.  For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.  For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do-this I keep on doing.  Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.  So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me.  For in my inner being I delight in God’s law, but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.  What a wretched man I am!   Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?  Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!  Romans 7:18-25 

Monday, February 21, 2011 | | 1 Comments  

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