Love

I wanted to write this blog last night after our class at church when everything was still fresh but I just never managed to do it. So this is going to be kind of scattered, but we're gonna give it a go anyway.


Faith is an act of LOVE. 


I find myself dwelling on this abstract word of "love" recently. I love good music. I love my friends. I love my family. I love sunny days with a breeze. No matter how much I love these things my love for them is nothing with out action. Doing something about it. Acting upon it. This is a lesson I see over and over again in my own life. The lack of action. This absolutely includes my love and relationship with God.


I do in fact love God. I swear I do. And I know God loves me, after all, He IS love. The Orthodox church defines sin as (basically) a personal movement away from God, an act of self-will. This is different than many other denominations I've encountered where sin is much more of a breaking of a rule(s). No matter how much I suck (which is quite a bit these days), no matter how much I fight Him, no matter how unwilling I am to do the right thing, none of that has any effect on God's love for me. WOW. Even though I feel millions of miles away from Him right now I can rest assured that it wasn't Him who moved, who changed, it was me. God's love doesn't waver... Ever. 


Father Paul quoted a little bible passage last night (I believe from Revelation but I could be wrong) in which Christ says "I stand at the door and knock." I can hear it. It's interesting how although God works in mysterious ways and puts constant little reminders in my life (when I choose to see them) of His love but doesn't "force" Himself on me. He stands there, waiting. Faith is an act of love, a voluntary action, a virtue, a personal decision. So when am I going to act upon it? When is enough going to be enough? When will I start moving back towards God rather than spiraling away from Him? Sometimes I truly wish He would just force Himself on me, it would be SO much easier if I just had to do what I am supposed to do. To have a clear-cut, step by step, moment by moment instruction as to what exactly I am supposed to be doing and be pushed in that direction. But He doesn't work like that. And I can see why. God didn't create the Earth to have a bunch of zombie robots wandering around...


Ironically I know all these things, I truly do. I know it in my head but my heart, well, we're not there yet. I struggle so much with feelings of self-loathing, self-doubt... Why would God want ME? But I know He does. 


I was on the playground with Liam and another little boy I babysat yesterday reading a yoga magazine. I typically don't read a whole lot of the articles because a lot of it is weird, new-agey spiritual gunk that I don't really put any stock in. But I started reading this article about how yoga "changes" a person. As I was reading it I found it all incredibly weird that these were things people attribute to yoga but I found that it really spoke to me about God. I had one of those "ah-ha" moments as Oprah would say. Coming to God is a transformational experience. But where I've been getting it wrong my entire life is in my hope that God would make me into a different person, a better person. The truth is, God doesn't change us into something we're not. He merely strips away all the junk and clutter in our lives to expose the person we are and always have been deep down inside. Who we really are. God loves me for me! The me that's hidden somewhere below the self-loathing, guilt, bitterness, and anger. Because He knows me. He loves me for me. 


And that is profoundly beautiful. 

What if I just can't do this?

I'm so tired. So tired. Complete and utter exhaustion. My house is a wreck (which is so much worse than usual with chaos amidst Christmas decorations). And this weekend has been terrible. Can I get a break? Just for awhile?
We've been really slacking on a lot of things we had once been so good at. We rarely sit down and eat meals together since Jacob's work schedule is so insane. When we were at Jack's meeting Friday they asked what his eating habits were at home... Insert complete embarrassment. With things being so nuts I really just let him pick whatever he wants and if he refuses to sit at the table I don't push it. It's just not worth the battles these days. And with him being so insanely picky these days I'm really just glad he's eating. Well, this is probably NOT helping the issue of eating lunch at school. My bad. Three year olds just don't understand that things aren't always the same at home and school. So being able to eat whatever, whenever at home is really (more than likely) making lunch time a horrible task for him at school. Ugh. Now we must start regulating home eating yet again. Something we should do anyway, after all, it is the right thing to do. But it's hard... And I just don't want to do it gosh darn it! 
We used to take the boys out on at least one outing per weekend. We really haven't been able to do it lately because Jacob's schedule is INSANE and after last weekend's incident I definitely am not doing it myself. But we should, neither of the boys are going to learn to control themselves in public if they never are. Liam's excellent, but it's because I take him out with me whenever I run errands during the week while Jack's at school. But when the boys get together it's just chaos. Yesterday we tried to take the boys to the Christmas parade in the town next to us. We of course got going late (I was surprisingly on the ball and had everything ready to go and in the car LONG before we left, but a certain someone wouldn't get off the couch and get in the dang shower). I figured we should be close to the start of the parade route because we wouldn't be able to stay for the whole thing because we had a meeting with Jack's in home BCBA an hour and a half after the parade started. Well it was PACKED down by the start. We found a spot behind a woman and her child. Perfect! The boys could be situated so they could see. Well the parade started and up came five adults to sit with that woman and child. Annoying. No one could really see anything. And then Jacob was holding Jack up so he could watch and Jack peed EVERYWHERE! All over himself and Jacob. So we had to leave. Bring on major meltdowns by both children. We dragged two screaming kids back to the car, peeled Jack's soaked pants and pull up off and put on a new one. I of course in my infinite wisdom didn't bring extra pants with us so Jack freaked out about not having pants. He found an empty matchbox package in the back of the car and was screaming about wanting the cars on the back of the package (why do manufacturers do this??). We then had a long drive home through major traffic and detours with Jack screaming in the backseat and Liam yelling at him to stop screaming. Epic Mommy fail. And of course the meeting we had to come home for never even happened. Why can't I get a break?!?
The boys have been up off and on all night for the last two nights. A solid night sleep is really the only thing that gets me through the day. I'm running on empty. 
And none of the things we wanted to get done yesterday got done. Absolutely nothing. Yup, this is me in major pouting mode. 
I refused to go to church this morning. Jacob took both boys with him and went anyway. I should be either cleaning or napping. But I don't want to do either. I've wasted over an hour just staring at the computer screen. I'm going to regret this. 
It's just so hard to do anything when you feel empty inside.