All things green.....

January 05, 2006

New Years Resolutions

If I had a dollar for every instance in life that I've felt unable to live up to expectations and demands placed on the type of:
 
~person
~Christian
~girlfriend
~student
~friend
~employee
~etc.....
 
that I'm "supposed" to be....I'd be floating on a raft made of gold, floating in a pool filled with feelings of inadequacy......a pool I currently know all to well....and it is entirely my fault for trying so much to win the approval of others and being so hard on myself...guilt really affects me and I think wallowing is so lame...especially when I do it....yuck.  I know this isn't what Jesus intended for me, and I'm tired of living my life trying to uncover the next big issue that is separating me from Him.  I'm never going to be free from sin, and I'm never going to fit into the mold of what it means to be a good _______ (fill in the blank with the list above) due to the fact that everyone's view of that is different, oh yeah, and I'm the fact that I lack perfection.
 
Quite frankly, I'm exhausted. So I guess if I was going to make a new years resolution, or two (a practice which I normally despise) they would be: 
 
1- Love others (learning to love them more than myself...very hard thing for us humans, me especially) without trying to win their acceptance, and not thinking I'm a terrible person by not living up certain standards, especially my own. The only standards that I should care about are our Lord's, which are high or course, yet His response when I fail (which happens often) doesn't end up making me feel terrible.
 
and that brings me to my next.....
 
2- When I don't live up to biblical standards, to not get so upset and down on myself about the sin that is inhibiting me from Him; trying to figure out some way to fix it...nothing I can do will really fix anything, and yet I seem to keep trying. The simple fact is: I SIN. *gasp* I know....bet that's a surprise.  Instead, I want to focus on how much He loves me anyways, and when I finally face the fact that I will never be completely free from my sins in this lifetime I will praise Him for that love/mercy (in other words, stop the self focus of my screwed up-ness and change my focus to His greatness).
 
I apologize if I seem upset. The truth is, that I am. No need to worry, because once again, another truth is that I get that way sometimes. Comes with the territory we call life. I love you all, and I appreciate your prayers and how much you love me. I pray that you may be filled completely with the fullness of Christ's love, and that you won't view the way you live your life as a failure simply because things go wrong sometimes, or others disapprove.
 
The only opinion that really matters is God's.....
 
.....and He will love you regardless, so stop feeling bad about yourself and enjoy how wonderfully He has made you (disclaimer: I AM NOT saying to revel in your sin and just do whatever seems right to you, not worrying about being changed with blatant disregard for those around you.  I do believe that we are sanctified by the Holy Spirit as we seek Him, and that we should strive to be holy; reacting to the scriptures and applying them to our life...our sanctification is a something requiring a relationship that relies on the actions of all parties: me and God. One part of spirituality is to learn to be aware of what is going around myself, including sin,  and allowing myself to feel its effects and then reacting; we cannot grow spiritually unless we allow ourselves to recognize sin...I'm simply saying to stop the constant sin focus and stop feeling inadequate when you mess up, or keep messing up, that's all; kinda like a perspective shift....hmmm...guess this blog could have been shorter, well, you know how I like to ramble). God bless you my wonderful friends and family, sorry if I didn't make any sense in the post.  But whose "journal" entry really does anyway?
 
 Feel free to comment if you would like, or you can also email me if you have anything you don't want to address over this site (although, not that many people actually view this silly blog): rachelrathburn@hotmail.com 
 
"So Jesus said to them, "For a little while longer the Light is among you. Walk while you have the Light, so that darkness will not overtake you; he who walks in the darkness does not know where he goes." John 12:35 
 

posted by Rach @ 2:53 PM  

5 Comments:

  • At 10:59 PM PST, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Rach,

    You might be just a little tooo hard on yourself. You have definitely met and exceeded all the expectations of a daughter. You are indeed the "perfect" daughter. You have so blessed my life with happiness and love. In fact,I have been doublely blessed with TWO wonderful daughters. You both have made me a better person and made my life worthwhile.

    Thank you and may God continue to bless our family.

    Dad

     

  • At 7:23 AM PST, Blogger Rach said…

    I love you daddy....you just made my day. Thanks for your comment (i'm glad to know you read my site!) :-) I'm so blessed by you.

    rach

     

  • At 10:59 AM PST, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Reading your blog Rachel reminds me a lot of myself and a lot of my friend Paul and his same struggle with this issue of living up to expectations and trying to do what is right. He came to some amazing realizations. Here is a quote from his blog.

    "With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.

    God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.

    The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn't deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.

    Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God's action in them find that God's Spirit is in them--living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn't pleased at being ignored.

    But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won't know what we're talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells--even though you still experience all the limitations of sin--you yourself experience life on God's terms. It stands to reason, doesn't it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ's!

    So don't you see that we don't owe this old do-it--yourself life one red cent. There's nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God's Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!"
    This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "What's next, Papa?" God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what's coming to us--an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we're certainly going to go through the good times with him!"

    My prayer for you my dear is that you would listen and know the words spoken in Romans 8. That you would sit at the feet of the Lord, knowing that you are a daughter of the King and that He has so much more for you than, the worries and cares of this world. He desires to take every one of them and in return give you a peace that transcends all understanding. He desires for you to take pleasure in all of who He is and all of what He has for you. Much love and prayers my beautiful girlfriend.

     

  • At 9:57 PM PST, Blogger Lara Nichols said…

    Rach, I love you just for you... I know that from your actions that you feel the same about me. so thanks for the humble reminder that we don't have to live up to expectations of others.

    I think one could spend their whole life trying to live up to everyone's expectations, and never actually live at all...

     

  • At 7:31 AM PST, Blogger beckalippy said…

    Hmmm... this blog sounds like a late night talk on the couches downstairs... I wish i could give you a hug and tell you how much i love you and how much God uses you, in all your imperfections, in my life to heal me, convict me, motivate me, and most imporantly, through you He shows me love.
    I promise a good hug when you get here. Only like 44 more days!!!!

     

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