no, Lord, I can do it

I finished my first year of grad school at the end of April and have been trying to take some time to invest myself in other things since...those things include frisbee, a new social group, exploring Nashville restaurants, and hitting the road for some weddings. This year has been a time of discovering: I have great potential to be a workaholic, college students are way more irresponsible than I remember, and meal plans are dangerous.

It has been a good time to look back on the year and realized that I did not know what a time commitment grad school was going to be. I have kind of felt like my life has been on hold and I do not have the energy to invest in people as I have before. While I am usually very self-sufficient (not really a good thing in the context of what Christ calls us to), this year I have depended on Carrie a lot and had to ask for help from co-workers, as well as tell co-workers "no" because there is only so much of my time to go around. Much of the year has felt selfish, and there has been a lot of guilt associated with that, but yet, I still have insisted on saying, "no, Lord, I can do it"...sometimes I wonder if I will ever learn what it means to be in community and depend on others and let them depend on you without keeping tabs and tallies.

In the movie Dan in Real Life, there is a line..."love is not an emotion, it is an ability" and as I reflected on that statement, I thought of how much my brother and I often seem unable to engage in this exchange of love...I could blame it on our family of origin or the experiences we have had, but while it is important to understand the source, I know that with the Lord's grace, anyone can move beyond these things. In order to practice that ability to love, one must allow others to see fully their scars and bruises beneath the surface, which then gives the other person permission to do the same, and I have no idea the timing of disclosing such information.

If anyone knows about StrengthsFinder, it is an assessment based on positive psychology and one of my strengths is "Restorative", which means that I see problems, and figure out how to solve them, and restore things to life. I find this most often relates to the lives of people, and while I find joy in restoring broken people, I have found that a) sometimes it can be an unhealthy pattern (i.e. co-dependence), and b) if I do this for others, I should be willing to let others do the same for me.

All this to say, the Lord has really broken me in His sweet tender way recently, so that has been evidence of His love and drawing me back to Him.

I think today the Lord might have led me to the church community in which he wants me to explore these things and this passage was offered:

"But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." 2 Cor. 3:16-18

I thank the Lord for the way each of you reflect His glory, and may He transformative work continue.