Last week I was encouraged, by a Bible study I’m doing with some women at my church, to choose two verses each week and post them up and reflect on them, meditate on them, even memorize them. I have long thought known I should memorize and meditate on scripture beyond my daily Bible reading (which I have strived to make a habit this year), but I have felt too overwhelmed to do it. Where would I start? Yeah, I should “hide His Word in my heart,” but… there’s a lot of words! It felt too big to tackle!

But, I’m in a Bible study called Discerning the Voice of God.

And I really want to hear Him. And I really want to get the most from this study! So I took the suggestion and chose two verses. I wrote them neatly in cursive on a piece of paper and stuck it on my bathroom mirror. Now, the problem is, often if I post something up on my mirror I stop really seeing it after a time, but I tried to make myself look at it, read it, apply it to what I went through this week.

I believe that I will look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living!
Wait for the Lord;
Be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the Lord!
-Psalm 27:13-14 (ESV)

I am realizing that what I believe affects what I think and feel as well as what I do. To take an example from the book Thin Within, if I believe I’m a chicken, I will act like a chicken, pecking at the ground in the chicken coop with other chickens. But if I believe I’m an eagle, I will soar high above. I won’t stay in the coop. If I believe God doesn’t care about me and there is nothing good this side of Heaven, I will live accordingly. I will doubt him, I will feel hopeless, I will take situations into my own hands. But if I believe I will see His goodness, here, on Earth, that he’s here with me, that will then change my outlook on life.

I’m also encouraged by the message to wait on the Lord. Of course, this appears numerous times in the Bible, but I’ve never thought about it. Take courage, it says, and wait. Often I feel anxious in my inactivity. I need to know what’s going to happen and plan how I’m going to face it, and I feel afraid if I don’t know God’s plan for me. And he says instead to wait. With courage. Believe that I will see His goodness, and be okay with leaving the future in his hands.

The Lord your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save.
He will rejoice over you with gladness,
he will quiet you by his love,
he will exult over you with loud singing.
-Zephaniah 3:17 (ESV)

It is said rather indirectly, but it speaks to me and reminds me that God not only loves me but also delights in me. Exulting means lively, triumphant joy, jubilation, and elation. He rejoices over me and is glad for me. He sings over me.

I sing to Him, sometimes with a heart so full that I want to cry, and yet this verse says HE sings over ME. Our conquering hero never leaves us alone, but stays with us, and not only that, but he loves us and enjoys us. As I faced difficulty this last week dealing with depression again, I kept coming back to this verse and meditating on it, letting it sink in, trying to imagine a God who loves me so much. His love really did work to quiet my soul.

I think this is one of my biggest struggles: to not only trust God with the direction of my life, but to be content and to thrive where he places me rather than just survive. It’s a struggle at all times, but it’s especially difficult during trials. Of course, most recently it has been difficult due to deployment.

I hate deployment! That’s understandable, right? My husband is gone, and not only absent from my every day life but placed in a dangerous situation! I have to miss him and fear for his safety, and most of the time I just want to go to sleep and wake up when it’s all over. I don’t want to live through this year of deployment, but I have to, so many times I have this mentality of needing to simply survive. Do what is necessary to make it through another day, and eventually it will all be over.

That’s okay. I mean, eventually I will have survived the year, Hubby will be back, and things can go back to normal. But I don’t think it’s what God wants from me.

Jeremiah 29: A Letter to the Exiles

God’s people had been carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon and were going to remain there in exile for 70 years. Of all the times to justify that survival mentality, you would think this would be a prime example. But God isn’t satisfied with that… God asks for more. I found this passage really speaks to me and where I am with this deployment… Here’s my paraphrasing:

This is what the Lord Almighty says to those He carried into deployment: “Make homes and settle down; plant gardens and work on other projects. Care for your family and friends. Don’t let yourself whither away. Seek peace and prosperity where I’ve placed you… When your time is completed, I will come to you and fulfill my good promises. For I know the plans I have for you; plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. You will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me with your whole heart and find me, and I will gather you from the places where I have banished you, and bring you back.”

God wants his people to know that he can be worshipped outside of the holy land just as well as inside. He is God over Babylon (deployment) just as much as he is God over Jerusalem. As one commentary says, “Real hope for the people, according to Jeremiah, lay not in some immediate relief from social and communal death, but in living through that experience as faithful people, awaiting the Lord’s ‘future with hope’."

Biblical Encouragement

People are watching us, so let’s follow Jesus’ perfect example:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
-Hebrews 12:1-3 (NIV)

Thrive, don’t just survive. Think on God and his goodness and all the good gifts he gives. Run with endurance, don’t let yourself whither. Keep praying and pursuing God. This is how you should live, regardless of where he’s placed you and whether or not you want to be there. This is how you get the most out of life and bring God the most pleasure.

Celebrate God all day, every day. I mean, revel in him! Make it as clear as you can to all you meet that you’re on their side, working with them and not against them. Help them see that the Master is about to arrive. He could show up any minute!

Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.

Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.
-Phillipians 4:4-9 (The Message)

Thriving

I’m still working on it, but I’m getting better at ridding myself of that survival mentality. It’s about time, since we’re almost five months into this deployment! God is really trying to pound some lessons into me, I think…lol. And I feel like I’m finally ready to start learning rather than burying my head in the ground and waiting for it all to be over. I’m finally ready to hold up my chin and start facing things head-on, with His help. I don’t know if I’m really thriving yet, but I’m doing a little more than just surviving, so I guess that’s good.

Anyway, that’s what I’m working towards, and that’s how I want to go through the rest of this deployment. I want to do more than just survive. So there are my disjointed thoughts for the day.

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Previous Fridays

1. I love how you make me feel strong.

2. I love how you always encourage me.

3. I love when you wipe away my tears.

4. I love that you see that I’m about to start crying when no one else can.

5. I love how you always see the positive.

I miss you so much.

I’ve been brought to a stand-still too many times by the phrase “I should.” It creeps into my thoughts from some kind of deep, dark corner of the blackest abyss of my mind. It hits me hardest in certain areas, making me think that trying my best isn’t enough because there are standards I should live up to. And if I don’t, I’m a failure.

I Should Keep House

This is one of the biggest shoulds that’s been hitting me lately, and maybe some of you can relate with me on this. Especially for me as a newlywed, the shoulds in homemaking can be paralyzing. I feel sometimes as if I should always have a perfect home. I should always have the dishes and laundry clean. And if there is a pile of laundry to do, or a stack of dirty dishes in the sink, I start feeling like a failure. I should always have clean floors, the shoes should always be kept in their assigned place, and everything should at least have the appearance of organization. The problem is that sometimes (or a lot of the time), I can’t keep up with all the cleaning I think I should do.

My husband, loving and supportive as he is, never blames me for this, and always praises me for how well I keep up. He encourages me to do what I can. For those who don’t hear that support on a regular basis, let me say to you that you don’t have to be perfect and neither do I! Our houses don’t always have to be perfect. In fact, sometimes your house will feel a lot more homey if it looks a little lived in. I try my best to keep up with the basics of washing and picking up, and every week I try to throw in some deeper cleaning that I don’t get to do all the time (scrub the areas that sometimes only get wiped down, for instance). And really, that’s enough.

I Should Be Happy

If I tell myself that I’m not entitled to my feelings, I will only end up feeling worse. It’s true! I know, because I’ve been stuck in that rut before – have gotten stuck for way too long at a time, if you ask me. Have you been there? Especially for those of us that have struggled with depression, the idea of something or someone dictating how we should feel can really make life tough.

I’ve had to come to terms with something: It’s okay to feel down.

After I accepted that, I had to accept something else: It’s okay to feel down for “no reason.”

I finally told myself that I don’t have to have anything resembling a legitimate reason for feeling down or depressed, upset or lonely, or anything negative. Why should I have a reason? I don’t have to have a reason to be happy, do I? This is the biggest piece of advice I can give to anyone struggling with depression. Allow yourself to feel all of your emotions, not just the positive ones! I find that if I let myself feel sad, I get over my sadness a lot more quickly than I would otherwise. If I let myself feel sad, I don’t get stuck in a loop of I feel bad BECAUSE I feel bad BECAUSE I feel bad about feeling bad because I feel bad. What?!

I Should Look Like…

Fill in the blank. There are countless ends to that sentence because we all have a slightly different idea of what we should look like. For me, it’s usually something like “thinner,” but no matter what it is, it’s usually wrong. Your loved ones accept what you look like; why can’t you? Everyone is unique, right? I remind myself that there’s no reason I “should” look like anything other than myself. And my mother pointed out to me that you can tell when someone is comfortable in her own skin. On the flip side, you can also tell when someone is self-conscious and too worried about her own looks to enjoy herself. Since weight is an issue for me, I have to remind myself that when I am conscious of and worried about my weight – that’s when other people will notice it.

Trying is Enough

“I should keep trying.” This is the only should that I consistently allow myself to think. I don’t even say that “I should keep trying my best” because sometimes I don’t feel like I can quite do that. But I should at least keep trying. I try to better myself. I try not to settle. I try to push for a little bit more, and, when I can’t, I try to accomplish what I’ve done before. By doing that, I’m succeeding.

Do you agree or disagree? Am I right to abolish “I should” in my life, or do you think we’d all be better off with some more shoulds? Let me know in the comments. You SHOULD leave a comment. Especially since I’ve written the would should so much now that it’s looking like it’s spelled wrong. The end.