The only thing harder…

“When a soldier comes home, he finds it hard…to listen
to his son whine about being bored….to keep a straight face when people
complain about potholes….to be tolerant of people who complain about the hassle
of getting ready for work.  To be
understanding when a co-worker complains about a bad night’s sleep.  To be silent when people pray to God
for a new car.  To control his
panic when his wife tells him he needs to drive slower.  To be compassionate when a businessman
expresses a fear of flying.  To
keep from laughing when anxious parents say they’re afraid to send their kids
off to summer camp.  To keep from
ridiculing someone who complains about hot weather.  To control his frustration when a colleague gripes about his
coffee being cold.  To remain calm
when his daughter complains about having to walk the dog.  To be civil to people who complain
about their jobs.  To just walk
away when someone says they only get two weeks of vacation a year.  To be forgiving when someone says how
hard it is to have a new baby in the house.  The only thing harder than being a Soldier…  

Is loving one.  ”

Well, this was good for me to read. I can identify with some of these emotions and thoughts. A couple blogs ago I attempted to express some of the things boiling up inside of me with you. The truth of the matter is that it’s hard to verbalize the conflicting emotions and thoughts sometimes. I often feel like I’m caught in a transition. Yes, obviously there’s the physical transitions I keep making from cities and countries and jobs and everything else…However, there are deeper transitions where “ME” is slowly dieing but trying to fight for dear life…yet a deeper me is starting to claw it’s way to the surface because it’s based on Him.

I still fight feelings of being adequate and inadequate (different fights and different reasons), of wanting to “settle down” and yet never wanting to, of low confidence or self-esteem amongst a variety of other things humans just have to face at some point. I’m well aware of how far I’ve come and yet sobered by how far I have left to go.

In the meantime, I often find myself amidst who are seemingly in their niche and it appears fairly steady from the outside looking in. Part of me desires that and yet another part of me fears that more than most things. In 2 Tim. 3, it says that in the last days…they’ll have a form of Godliness, but deny His power…I’ve recognized that as being one of my deeper fears. I don’t ever want to merely have a form of Godliness and deny Him!

In the end I feel like I’ve just seen too much to dull myself and settle for comfortable…so I keep following this yearning for an intimacy with the one who created me…He draws me and it’s sometimes a tantalizing journey of freedom.

I don’t know where exactly He will take me and His voice isn’t always clear to my ears…but I know He’s the one in control and the one leading. I’ve decided to follow Jesus wherever that may take me. To turn back would be all sorts of torture to my spirit and really just isn’t an option…

Regardless, the one point I wanted to make was this:

Please have patience with me as I walk this out. There will be times where there is so much stuff bubbling up inside of me that it kind of just spews on the ones closest to me. Sometimes I just have to remember that the only thing that may be harder than following this crazy path is for you all to love me through it. So thank you to those who always seem to encourage and uplift me…listen, challenge and speak truth to me. I appreciate it more than you know…