Silent Time

Well everyone, it's 3:30am and once I go to bed and wake up it's my silent time. I talked to PJ and decided that not talking to him at all isn't an option I think is going to benefit this. So the final say in this is that I'll talk to him when I wake up for no certain designated amount of time, but just to have our normal morning talk (I love you, Good morning, How did you sleep? What did you dream about?) and then at night when we do that normal talk (I love you, goodnight, sleep well, have good dreams). And if I want to tell him that I love him in the middle of the day, well that's okay too as long as it doesn't turn into a big conversation where I get distracted from my goal. I also prayed about it and have felt God tell me that getting rid of the internet completely isn't necessary that it's about getting away from the distracting parts...like Facebook. So I'm going to use the computer, but for the purpose of blogging, reading things about religion, and listening to sermons and whatnot online. Not for Facebook, not for WoW (yes, I've been playing World of Warcraft...), nope none of that!

This is going to be tough.

But I think having quiet time with oneself is really essential. I also think it's going to give me some time to connect more with God and really get my spirit aligned with where it needs to be.

So here we go, I'm off to sleepyland here in about five minutes :)

Getting Married/Getting Back on Track/Silence

First things first:
Guess who's getting MARRIED?! *jumps up and down* ME ME ME! PJ proposed to me on Christmas!! More to come on that subject, but I have something on my heart I want to share...

Things have been kind of here and there for the past few weeks. I haven't been doing my devotionals, and because of either snow or being out of town I also haven't been at church. The first thing that made me realize I need to get my behind back on track was a couple of weeks or so ago when PJ and I were eating lunch. I don't know what sparked it, but out of nowhere he looked at me and asked, "Have you been doing your devotionals?" I did a kind of timid looking face and admitted that no, I hadn't. "Well...you need to get on that." Since he doesn't do devotionals I wasn't sure why it seemed like such a big deal until I asked why. "Doing them made you happy, and I want you to be happy." He was right, as he almost always is. So that's what I'm starting with as soon as we can get back to the house (we were having electrical issues so we stayed at a friend's house tonight). Back to devotionals and *thank God* back to church. I've missed church, I haven't been skipping it because of wanting to. I've been skipping it because I've not been anywhere I could go. For two Sundays we were snowed into our house, and then we were with his family in Jacksonville and I was just so engrossed in being with family that I didn't go. Plus I found out some unsettling things about the church we attended the last time we were there...but that's not something I need to go into right now.

Anyways so tomorrow it's back to devotionals. I've also been praying about the silence I'm feeling I need in my life. So far my plan is that January 3rd through January 8th I will be taking my silent time. That is from a Monday until a Saturday. Here will be the exceptions to the silence:

1 - I can speak while out job hunting, because I really need to find work.

2 - I can speak with my fiancée for one hour during the morning, and one hour at night, this has a condition of if something is extremely important that needs to be discussed.

3 - I will not be using the internet *or* answering the phone/text messages. The exception is if the number that is calling is one I don't recognize and therefore may be something related to getting a job. I haven't decided yet, but I may allow myself to check voicemails once at night...I'm still praying over that one.

4 - I may or may not also be choosing to not watch any TV/movies, and instead opt to read. I'm leaning towards doing this (no TV), another one I'm praying about.

I think that's about it. I'm still praying about it and will be up until the time it begins. I can't believe I'm doing this, and I've had two people say so far that basically they don't think I'm going to be able to do it. But that's half of the point, doing something that's hard and working my way through it. The other half is learning to enjoy the silence (not always feel a need to fill it), learning to enjoy time without technology, and having time with God.

Whew.

So next post, hopefully tomorrow...if I'm around a computer, will be some more details about my very recent engagement (^_^).

Later folks!!!

Christianity should be about faith, not religion.

This goes for just about everything in general dealing with "religion"...it should be about faith.  It really upsets me how much we as Christians fight over all the things we don't have in common instead of focusing on all the great things that we share.  I remember talking to a friend who went with her church on a missions trip and her church wouldn't let another church there work with them just because that church wasn't Baptist and instead was a Non-Denominational Church.  Really?

Really?


In the end we all, for the most part, are united on two things:
1. A belief in God.
2. A belief in Jesus Christ as our savior.

Why do dwell on all the things that we don't agree on?  Part of it is our human nature to want to be "right."  Every individual person has to be "right" as often as possible, and if someone's opinion differs from our own (even very slightly) then they are labeled as wrong.  Sure, we can all have very strong faith in what we believe is the truth about Christianity and the Bible...but when you think about it in a realistic way you should be able to admit that everything we believe is just an opinion.  Some people have the opinion that the Bible is the be all end all of our religion.  Others believe it was written by man, translated by man, etc and because of our free will it could be flawed.  And still even another group doesn't put much faith in it as a religious text whatsoever.  As the love of my life Patrick said, yesterday I think, "Everyone is just as sure that their belief is right that you believe that yours is, how passionate you are is just how passionate they may be."  Or as I've heard it said before, "Opinions are like buttholes, we all have them and they all stink."  As much as I may believe one way and think it's right (because again, it's human nature) another person may believe the exact opposite thing and have just as much certainty that they are right.

In the end when you  just constantly bring up all those differences in opinions, our religion begins to divide.  You end up with separate sects of Christianity...Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal.  There is a group who tries to get themselves out of those labels and call themselves non-denominational.  For years I've been a part of that following and have enjoyed it thoroughly, yet I still see that they preach on what they believe to be right and there seems to be only a bit more wiggle room there when compared to other more strict sects.  I really want a movement to start in Christianity.  That movement is about bringing back the relationship of people to Christ and bringing up the common points instead of focusing on differences.

For years now I've been called into youth ministry, but haven't actually made much effort in following that calling.  At first I ignored it because I didn't think that my ex-husband would go along for the ride (while we were married obviously).  My next excuse was that I was scared, I had a spirit full of fear of the unknown.  Thankfully that one went away when I was watching a Hillsong United DVD and one of their youth pastors talked about her initial fear in entering ministry.  After that it was pure laziness that put me off.  But no more.  You can only ignore what God puts on your heart before you give in and realize, "This is what I was made for."  I'm not sure how this whole thing will unfold, but I do know that God will be beside me every single step of the way...and if God is with you, you're covered.  I am contacting the leader of the local Young Life chapter tomorrow to talk about working as a youth leader with them.  Here's the thing, it's about gaining experience and knowledge.  I want to get to know what it's like to lead the youth before I work on my ultimate calling of working to unite people by faith as I mention above.  I think youth ministry is the first step, that's my "original calling," but over this time I've realized that in the end it's about uniting people for the cause of Heaven and working to break the barriers that divide us.

Anyways, I'll have another post (probably similar in nature) tomorrow...but for now I need to continue working lol.  Keep safe everyone, and don't be blinded by those divisions.