I think I might be pregant.

Yep, you read that right. I know, it surprised me too. It's pretty miraculous considering the circumstances.  I am pregnant with a ministry. The idea has been growing in me since I was 19.  I believe that it is from the Lord and He has given it to me to steward for some reason. One of my amazing mentors has been describing my passion for this ministry to me this way. I joked that it might be the only time I am pregnant with something.  Don't groan here friends and think I am being self-deprecating...it's true, and I might be ok with that. I am excited at the idea of experiencing pregnancy at all. It's giving birth that is the thing that always terrified me.

I was challenged to think about how I would nourish and care for this idea I am pregnant with.  That's a hard one. I mean what do dreams and passions live on? Hope comes to mind, and faith.  How will I continue to hope and have faith that this ministry will come to pass? It's quite difficult at times for it not to be just a pipe dream.  It's one of my greatest fears that I will only ever be just talk about this.  But when you are pregnant, that baby is coming no matter what.  So I think the idea is to prepare as best you can.

Right now my heart just wants so badly to "nest".  I want to create the home for this ministry to happen in.  It seems such an insurmountable task.  I mean I need land, buildings and funding. I do things up in quality fashion also as you know too, so it will take serious funding.  I suppose like all moms I just want the best for my baby.  But what if we end up homeless and on WIC?  That was not what I had in mind. Today we discussed some property that is for sale for a great deal, but where will we find a million or so to buy it with?

I just have a lot of questions and concerns right now.  There isn't any What to Expect When You Are Expecting books that I know of for this.  Not that that would help, because it just ended up making most of my friends who read it paranoid and neurotic. I really want a Father for this baby. I don't want to be a single parent. That is so much to o alone! I need a partner. This is where it gets trippy for me, if it wasn't before.  I suppose the way this works is that the one who impregnated me with this idea in the first place is responsible for this idea.  So my God who loves people so much and wants me to express this love to them is in this with me.  He has the resources of all of heaven and earth and beyond and his disposal.  I suppose I should trust that He is the one who is going to provide for me and my baby.

I am still scared of the birthing process and pains though...and I don't even want to begin think about the translation of stretch marks to this idea!

Plan vs Actual

"The span between life as we intend it and life as we receive it is vast. Our true purpose is worked out in that gap. It is fashioned in the crucible of interruptions." Mark Buchanan The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul By Restoring Sabbath

Life as I had originally intended it in my dreams and youth is certainly not what I have received. I like the word received here.  What we envision at times is so very limiting on what the Lord intends to do with and through us. When we open our hearts up to see where He wants to take us, when we receive the life He has for us, our perspective changes. The drive falls away and is replaced by seeing His plan.  I still very much struggle at times to see His logic and plan. But looking back I see I have been steered well. He has taken me on a very different path, but I can only be grateful for that.  Can we let go of those intended things without them becoming disappointments that drive a wedge between our Father and ourselves? That is my assignment to reflect on for now. 

At work we talk a lot about how we are doing with our actual results versus our plans.  We are always striving hard to hit plan or do better.  Yet in my personal life I see sometimes my plan is no where close to the actual which is happening.  What is the real "plan" I should be working toward?  See the flaw in the logic I have at times is I think I am driving the plan. When really I never saw the actual plan.  I need to be seeking, looking for His plan. When I orient myself toward that these other things will no longer appear to be interruptions, but purposeful.  

“One of the largest obstacles of true Sabbath-keeping is leisure…Leisure is what Sabbath becomes when we no longer know how to sanctify time. Leisure is Sabbath bereft of the sacred.” (p. 35)

Most of my thoughts and ruminations right now are finding their genesis in Mark Buchanan’s book “The Rest of God” (2006).  These posts are my working out of his teaching in my own life.

I no longer like to go on a vacation where I do a lot of sightseeing and activities and call it restful.  It’s not restful being on a schedule or running from site to site in a new place.  It’s just as tiring or more than going to work all week.  In the past I would go on this sort of vacation and come back to work and feel worse than when I had left.   I had seen a lot but I had run myself ragged in the short time I was gone, packing in every minute.  Vacation in its root means to vacate, or leave or evacuate something. When we go on vacation do we actually leave behind our busyness, or do we just take on a new form of busyness, vacation busyness? We need to learn how to find real rest.  A time that is set apart for restoration and renewing of our mind, so that we can continue on in our day to day work. Romans 12: 2 “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is —his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (NIV)

I must admit that more often than not my dream is to just not work anymore.  I mean wouldn’t that be the ultimate in rest?  You wouldn’t have to DO anything.  I have been deceived multiple times into thinking that if I just didn’t have to work my life would be easier, more restful, less frantic.  Why haven’t I won the Lottery or that HGTV Dream Home yet?  Oh wait, I don’t enter the lottery… But would my life really be more rested and less frantic if I didn’t work?  No I don’t think so.  In fact when I stay home and do nothing, I don’t feel any better either.  I just feel lazy and like I wasted the day.   I think we really need work.  It helps us feel productive and feel purposeful.  No the answer to my struggle against a hectic life and busyness is not stopping work.  We were created to work.  Adam was given the Garden of Eden to tend, and the animals to name and care for. Later work became at its core frustrating after the fall (Gen 3:17-19), but there is still so much satisfaction in a good day’s work.  I often find working in my garden so restful and restorative.  I see the fruit of my labor in the tidiness of the flower beds, the growth of the vegetables and blooms.  God is at his core a grower of this world, a gardener of our spirits.  We are replicating God’s work.  I love to build things for my house.  I love to create and knit something from nothing.  To see an idea or plan take shape and come to physical existence is so exiting and satisfying.  Again, this is one of God’s core characteristics.  He is the Creator.  And now we get the opportunity and joy of creating. So removing work from our lives is not what we need.  It is not the solution.

Rest is really setting apart time for the sacred.  Sabbath time is a time to renew our minds, to re-center and refocus on God’s core plan for us, for this world, to remind ourselves of truth. What we really need is to be made new in the attitude of our minds.  Ephesians 4: 22-24 “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”  I’ve never been good at “quiet times” with the Lord. I’ve never been naturally disciplined to take and make time sacred.  This is my next quest, this is how I will stay rested.  I suppose I need to just start trying.