Obtuse

Yes, it's obtuse to work on a sermon/message for church about suffering and the different views of it from a Western perspective and a Global South perspective while you are eating dinner at Outback with a more-than-full meal in front of you.

And almost making yourself cry while you read and take notes and highlight and underscore when you are alone in a restaurant booth probably doesn't look all that bright.

But I am starting to embrace the not-so-bright part of me more and more. At least I want to. She is definitely the majority of my makeup, and I am tired of getting frustrated with her and kicking her around for hours or days. I like to think I am a real smarty pants, but when it comes down to it, I am blessed in some moments with a brain and the right words, but I just don't have any game to bring to the table without Him.

And I sure need Him for this Sunday. I need eight minutes of speaking (shared with three other folks with eight minutes each) where He says what He wants, not what I want, and where I am not aiming for people to be happy with me or proud of me, but where His will is accomplished.

And sometimes that requires me looking like an idiot. So I need to be ready and willing for that, too.

I dread speaking. I love being engaged with people and talking, but this speaking in front of groups makes me more and more nervous the older I get. I grew into this dislike; when I was a kid, I couldn't get myself in front of a group of people fast enough.

Now, I know what words can do, good and bad, and I know what my ego can do, which is always bad. Getting myself out of the way for Him to talk is quite the exhausting emptying process leading up to speaking engagements. Me no likey.

But I can tell He wants me to do it, so I show up. And that's one of the themes for 2010: just show up. He doesn't need me to be smart, to be perfect, to be the Swiss Army Knife of all answers and solutions at the ready. He apparently just needs me to show up empty of myself and wait for Him to start moving.

Wow. Just the opposite of my character. Shocker.

So I go to bed with a full belly tonight and I will wake up with Haiti on my mind and more places like it in my heart. Because I live where I read about suffering in restaurants, and I go to places where I visit want and come home to plenty, and I was born into a culture that thinks suffering should never be part of the life equation and thinks we are rich enough and smart enough to eradicate it.

Obtuse.

Kickboxing Math

Humiliation of walking for a bit of the class when everyone else (it seems like) is running < Humiliation of having to call ambulance due to potential of collapsing in panting, heaving, gasping, red-faced heap

No Ambulance = Good Kickboxing Class

Fear of ex-military instructor who could snap me in two though she is half my size > Longing to faint to ground and wallow in the Jell-o-y wad that is me = Obeying every command of "JAB!", "HOOK!", CROSS!", and "SIDEKICK!" no matter how I bob and sway and drip

I like Thursdays :)

Dross: Burn it up, Lord

Man, there is a lot of dross in here. My soul is messy and crowded with things that have no business in there. I want that junk out and I want it out now.

It feels more like, "I want them out," like there's a bunch of hooligans running amok. Little jerks.

"Out, wearying worries and useless tail-chasing! Out, old, worn thinking ruts and circular thought patterns! And I've got a stick I'll use on ya if you come back this way!"

I wish it worked like that. God seems in no hurry to turn things upside down and shake out the garbage all at once. Even if I get fed up with it all at once.

Instead I get practice sessions at being a new creation in Christ. And while I am confident that, in terms of salvation and being seated in the heavenlies, the whole "new creation" thing happened all at once, I believe that in terms of refining me in the flesh I still walk about in, it certainly did not. It appears that I have the opportunity in that sense to be a new creation every day.

Make that every hour.

Okay, every minute.

Maybe even every 3.8 second interval.

So I pray for the grace to continue to show up for practice. I have never been good at practicing anything, really. Flute, piano, softball (never even got the gumption up for tryouts, though I would pine every season to play). I want instant results now; as Liann has noted, I just don't play stuff I can't win, which seems to indicate a liking for minimal exertion on my part.

But I am starting to get the picture that stuff takes practice. And I am sick of the ugly in here, sick of drowning in dross. So practice it is.

In 3.8 second intervals. Over and over and over and over again.

Glad He never gets weary.

Grace: Gimme more, Lord

Dang. Getting PRACTICE (I don't call it "lessons" anymore) to grow my patience and grace every moment in my work, it seems. Gonna look like Stretch Armstrong by the end of 2010.

Dying to self. Dying to self. Dying to self.

Feels like this crazy combination of God putting me in situations to care about things it's hard to naturally care about (or that I don't think I should HAVE to care about), and letting things go that my heart naturally gravitates toward. Nothing on the compass that God is using on me at the moment feels natural. I don't LIKE IT!

There ya go, ye amongst you who demandeth Slusser posts. Not pretty right now!