Lately….

Well, here’s my annual post! Okay, to be fair, I have a lot on my plate, and blogging often hangs out on the bottom rung of the priority chain right under “sleep” and “eat” (not necessarily in that order). Due to lack of funds both in my wallet and in the wallet of potential customers, my cake making “business”, if you can even call it that, has hit a  sustained lull. I blame NFL owners for this since they seem to have all of America’s money anyway. This being the case, I have taken up a number of interesting ventures.

Never in my life have I gardened, but I am now. Tomatoes, basil, onions, peas, beans, peppers, chamomile, sage, rhubarb, lettuce, carrots… the list goes on and on. Whilst humming cheerful tunes from My Fair Lady, I managed to obtain lumber from the nearby Lowes, and built myself a grid for my square foot garden. Running my fingers through fresh vermiculite and composted chicken manure is surprisingly satisfactory, and though my neighbors snickered at my determination in some pretty back-breaking work, I am OWNING my beds. I’ve absorbed books upon books on the subject of growing things, and have yet to be bored by all of the wealth of information found therein.

On top of this I decided to be a teaching assistant for the International House of Prayer University’s Book of Daniel Course. I have to admit, I’m my parents’ daughter. My teaching gene kicks on, and all of the grading and managing of a classroom makes me itch to know the subject matter more and more. Some would think it’s among the more boring responsibilities available, but I happen to love it. It’s not that I’m particularly good at administration or that I like administrating life in general- it’s that I’m a nerd and love to learn and be challenged. Plus Daniel is one power-packed book and has been a favorite for 7 years.

More than anything else, though, hunger for the Scriptures has swooped in and grabbed me by my throat. I have been spending more and more hours in the prayer room when time allows, and in that time I have been struck by how necessary our daily bread in the Word really is. I have recently become acutely aware of the loss I suffer when distractions create excuses, and excuses create a void where Biblical study and meditation once resided.  It’s never worth it to lose ground in reading the Word and getting to know the God who wrote it. But I have resolved to feast daily and let the Lord renew my mind, taking back the ground that was lost in my own memory of the Scriptures. The Lord is worthy of my time, and my time is the most valuable possession I can give to Him, so I’m hittin’ the Good Book pretty hard these days.

Daily Bread

Upon the request of my friend Trisha, I am setting a small goal to begin blogging again. The hard part about blogging for me is the veritable lack of “flow” in small periods I am able to give to writing, because they are often abruptly interrupted by chasing an extremely fast-crawling baby before she reaches the stairs to begin her  frequent ascent. Thankfully she is currently playing at my feet by dragging as many Tupperware containers out of the cabinets as she can.

For the last several months I have been pained over a gigantic lack of Scripture reading and studying in my life, so last week I put together a plan to get rolling. Of course, since motherhood is not so new to me anymore, I hold the plan loosely, recognizing that it’s more of a suggestion than a to-do list. However, I find it funny that there is so much warfare surrounding the simple reading of the Scripture.  *pause for baby chase*

Given the amount of times in the last year I’ve attempted similar lifestyle changes to the one in progress, I’ve had my fair share of frustration over planning out my day. But I believe that this time is different. My husband runs a Christian summer camp for teenagers, and ever since the couple of weeks leading up to the beginning of it, I have noted a sudden rise in all forms of attempts at derailing my confidence in the ability of God to aid me in spending time reading the Word and in prayer. Side note: when you engage in partnering with the Lord in ministry, expect resistance from the enemy.

Anyway, so far every time I sit down to have that quiet precious time with the Lord, something interrupts. Where my daughter’s nap used to last an hour and a half in the morning, ever since I began to plan my day around moments to get in the Word, this nap has been whittled down to 30 minutes on a good day. Today I was stoked because I found some old highlighters that would not bleed through rice paper. I searched the house and collected as many colors as I could locate, warmed up my nearly untouched cup of coffee, and since Natalie had only been sleeping for about 10 minutes, I was sure I would get around an hour to tear through Revelation and probably knock out Jude. A couple of text messages distracted me for a few minutes, but I was still good on time, and began my morning voyage on the high seas of the Holy Writ. Twenty minutes later, I heard the cries. My child was awake.  And annoyed about it.  I was happily highlighting my way through Revelation, but had barely begin. I I let her carry on for a short bit, but then the cries turned to screams, and upon closing the cover to my favorite book, I felt the ache.

I do not blame my daughter for interrupted sleep. It’s out of her control. Frustration would be too strong a word to describe such interruptions. “Disappointment” may be better suited, but even then, it’s a mixture of ache, longing, desperation (not in the negative sense of the word), hunger… maybe Bible-starved is the closest I can get to an explanation.  It would be one thing if it happened one or two times, but EVERY TIME? My record so far is 40 minutes of actual reading time, and today something special finally occurred to me.

Before beginning this new “schedule” of Bible time, I was daily aware of my need and my lack in making the Scripture enough of a priority to plan my day around it, but still felt so overwhelmed at the prospect of actually STARTING to read, that I neglected it no matter how conflicted I felt. Today, however, as much as I would love to have two hours to just dig deep in the Word of God in some way or other, whether by meditation, study or simple reading, what hit me was the fact that I was finally unable to live without it.

I’m not satisfied to live off of fumes from days and old studies gone by, or by someone else’s revelation. That’s why Jesus called it “DAILY bread”. I used to have all the time in the world to saturate myself in the Word of God, but now only brief snippets of moments. The powerful thing is that it counts. And what the devil doesn’t get is that all of the interruptions he can throw my way to keep me from the Word, only serve to deepen the hunger.

…And thank God for Bible on CD.