I bought a book the other night during our "Hang Out and Shop" service with VBCC. (See Alan's post.) It's called, The Holy Wild: Trusting in the Character of God", by Mark Buchanan. It's about trusting God when things don't seem to be going your way, or when it seems like He isn't fulfilling the promise you know he spoke to you. This is something we've been discussing quite a bit in church lately, so when I happened by the book, It seemed like just the thing.

I'm only on Chapter 2 so far. In this chapter, the author says that we have a tendency, when things are going badly, to wonder, "Is God really good?" Here's the funny thing: ever since I've been a Christian, I've never really asked that. Before I came to Christ, my whole thought process was wrapped up in the notion that, if God were really good, He wouldn't allow all the crap that goes on in my life and the world in general. So, if God's so horrible as to allow such things, I certainly don't want to serve such a creature. That was my mindset. But since I've been a Christian, if things are going badly for me, my tendency is more to ask, "What am I doing wrong to bring all this onto myself?"

They say that we tend to equate our Heavenly Father with our earthly father. However your Dad treated you, you tend to think that's how God will relate to you. In this case, I see that quite clearly. I was the "good child", the "Dad-pleaser", or at least I tried to be. Everyone has their own way of dealing with criticism, and my way was to work ever harder to try to be what my Dad wanted me to be, to the point of majoring in college for two years in a major that really would never have suited me in life. Only in the past couple of years have I had the feeling that my mere existence might be pleasing to my Dad. In childhood, nothing was ever good enough. I was generally a straight "A" student, but if I ever did bring home a "B", why wasn't it an "A"? And if I brought home an "A-", why wasn't it an "A+"?

I'm trying to break free of that mindset even now. I want to cut myself (and others) some slack and allow myself to be who God made me to be, even if that doesn't fit the mold that others try to push me into. One day I'll figure out exactly who it was that God made me to be, but that's for another post.

On a related note, Brian's got a blog! The "related" part is that his first post is similar in theme to this one. I think he inspired me as much as the book did. We are planning to get together this weekend for our annual "wrap party", where I bring my laundry to his house, we eat pizza or something, and I wrap his Christmas gifts for him, as well as any I might have lying around not wrapped. I think I've just about bought everything, but nothing is wrapped yet. (And I still have to ship most of them to my brother's place in Kansas!) Anyway, when we get together, I may talk Brian into putting comments on his blog and show him how to do links and photos and the like.

posted by #Debi at 7:29 PM | permalink | 0 comments

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