Living

I have often looked at the words "A Nest Amid Thorns" on my home links page and then looked away full of guilt.  It's not like I don't have anything to say, but it is often not the type of thing I want to put on a blog, or know how to put on a blog in a creative way, and so I turn away.

Then I thought of making a whole new blog, but I love the look of the one I have.  After all, I tweaked and tweaked the basic Blogger format until I had the right background and colors.   With me, once something is the way I like it, it rarely needs change. 

And so, today, instead of turning away I clicked.  And then I wrote. 

What's new?  I'd like to say that everything is coming up roses, but then I'd be making things up.  Things are just......life. 

I'm getting older as is everyone who has their present residence as planet Earth.  So nothing surprising there.   However, as one reaches their 60's, body parts, as I like to say, begin to fall off.  What really happens is that our bodies, a temporary dwelling place, begin to break down.  If you are particularly attached to your body - and most of us are - you are nonplussed when the process begins in earnest.

I'll just list a few things without description and then we'll be done with this subject.  Overweight by about 50 pounds at least, sedentary at home and at work, suffering from depression, diverticulosis causing diverticulitis, various joint and muscle aches and pains, numbness and tingling.

Now that we've cleared that up you know enough.  The worst part of above?  Depression.  It takes motivation and covers it in gray, which exacerbates all the other issues.

Next?  Poor financial decisions over a lifetime leading to having to pay the piper now.  Enough said about that.  No one beats themselves over this worse than I do myself.

What to do?  Only one thing. 

Trust in the Lord with all your heart

    and lean not on your own understanding;

⁶ in all your ways submit to him,

    and he will make your paths straight.

That's Proverbs 3:5,6    One morning last week I had to repeat this over and over to myself as I drove to work.  I thought of each phrase, especially "your own understanding."

This part of the verse means a lot to me.  I was raised to almost worship intelligence, being "smart".  If my mother wanted to make me blush with pleasure, she would tell me how intelligent I was because I knew she held that virtue most highly.  She could give me no better praise.  

Unfortunately, the Bible tells us not to lean on that.  It might mislead us;  what we think we know is often disproved later.  To make matters even more ludicrous, our minds are like a tiny ants' when compared with the mind of the Creator of the Universe.  If we place what we think we know above what He has said in His Word, then at the very least, we have problems.   

I have always found my experience to be much more real than......faith.  And therein lies my difficulty:

"Now without faith it is impossible to please God, for the one who draws near to Him must believe that He exists and rewards those who seek Him."  (Holman Christian Standard Bible)

And so, I am choosing faith over experience, immersing myself in His Word more than I have in the past, but not as faithfully as I should.  After all, I am a work in progress.

Don't you think the details above - the problems of life, aging, self-brought difficulties - make the perfect situation for God's touch?