No Day but Today

I find it to be the utmost in corny when my blog title and Facebook status are the same. Ugh. But when something gets stuck, there's no other way.

I figure if I get this mentality into my head, I will use every moment to its fullest. So far it has not worked...or, at least, so says my logical brain. I say it has not worked, but only because I have not completed any homework. Valid reason? Maybe not.

What I have done: spent time with people, gone for a walk, laughed. Soul-restoring kind of stuff. What is so wrong with that? This week has been the best intensive I've been in so far. Church Growth Strategies. Barry told us to try to take away one thing every day, and stop trying to remember everything and end up retaining nothing. Yesterday was focusing on Psalm 23 and all about how God leads, restores, refreshes, guides and reprimands. So flipping good. And I think I am going to be okay. I don't remember the last time I thought that, but I do.

I want to be a whole person, you know? I want to be that person God made me to be. This gets tricky when my theology gets too involved, because that states that no matter what I do I will be, in effect, being who He created me to be. But! - besides that! Because that just hurts my head - I want to love Him like I used to. I want to remember what it's like to know He loves me, for all the inexplicable reasons in the universe. And I want to walk in the way He asks.

It's funny. I've been watching my life closely lately, to see my "level of sin." What do I need to work on? Where are my greatest shortcomings? Realizing that I have been messing up only after fairly lengthy intervals (considering my general humanity...ness) was a shock. Until. How to explain this? I break the first commandment more than any other, and forget to love Him and worship Him only. I forget about the fire in His jealousy and the wrath He has for those who trample His gift of life. But that's me. I shrug off His humiliation, life, work, miracles, death, resurrection, sovereign reign...I shrug them off as philosophical topics and things to contend over instead of just standing in awestruck wonder, speechless and breathless and guileless at His feet. Can someone just punch me, tell me to get over myself, and then punch me repeatedly every time I forget? I forget to love Him, to honor Him, to recognize Him for all that He is and die to myself.

Put yourself to death, Leanne! And then live for Him. Then, and only then, will you be fulfilled. Only at that point will you be satisfied and whole. Go for walks with Him. Laugh with Him. Yell at Him, if that is what it takes. Get angry, get over it. Read the Word, meditate on it, know it in the depths of your soul until it consumes every part of you. Live for it, die for it. Do not bend under the pressure to let people use and abuse and slaughter it; stand up for the Truth and then live by it. Then die by it. And drive until you fall in love with Him again.

Mercy saved me

Mercy made me whole

Mercy found me

You called me as Your own

This leads to a million other life things, but it is so essential. Foundational. Then I can build the rest.

Oh, and. I think I have finally figured out my "body art" plans. Phenom, that's what they are. Balance. Perfect.

If I knew what I were saying, I would have probably stopped by now.