Reflectional

 No photo this time....what! You always have a photo? As this post is lacking direction, so is my mind currently. There's so much stuff going on right now that a battle for control is waging a war in my mind. Work has turned itself upside down as my boss has up and quit as of next week. I'm headed for a cruise next week also which leaves my co-worker by herself. My house is torn apart as we continue to remodel it by ourselves, very slow progress indeed. December was a blur as I was either injured or with a cold. January is looking like a blur and I have not shot one good photo in months. Work is chaotic, home is chaotic and all I want to do is run away and take photos. I hope and pray that this upcoming vacation can reset me and give me some much needed time to reflect, focus and breathe. 

It's colder than cold outside so I can't go out and enjoy the outdoors. My living room is now a disaster as the floor is being replaced and everything is changing at work and I am a person that likes a statis quo. I hate change and I don't think it is a conscious thing, it's deeper than that. It's like having something rubbing you the wrong way. Eventually if the rubbing persists it creates a blister. I'm starting to feel like a blister is forming in my head. I just can't deal. When I can't deal, I'm like an overloaded circuit and I blow a fuse, which is me withdrawing into myself more and being less functional. 

I don't like that side of me very much either. I don't like that depression side where doubt and loathing take over. I have been in those states before where it takes months for me to come out of them and I don't particularly want to go back. It's a very dark pit of despair. I learned several years ago that God loves me. Now I have been a Christian for near twenty years but it took me around ten to fifteen of those years for me to realize in my heart that God loves me.

We can read it all we want and we can hear it all we want but to really understand it and to grasp it in your heart is a much different thing. Head knowledge is learning, repeating and writing it down. It's what gets us through twelve years of school. Learn the stuff, repeat the stuff and take a test to see if you remember the stuff. However, one in a few dozen children that learn the stuff want to actually pursue more knowledge which leads them to understanding and eventually a career. 

See, we can know God loves us and if you ask a Christian if God loves them most will say yes. They even do you one further and quote "God so loved the world...."   Who's not heard that. However, repeating words and what I like to call head knowledge gets you nothing in life. Take a straight A student right out of High School and place them in a career atmosphere and what do you get. A person completely lost. Why? Because school teaches us how to pass tests. We learn for a week, take a test on Monday then move on to something else. It doesn't change anything in us if we don't get some desire and passion in it. 

When I went to school, I learned from teachers who were passionate about the subject they taught. If they went off book and spent an extra day diving deep into the subject and presenting the materials from different perspectives then I became engaged and wanted to learn more. Head knowledge doesn't make change, passion and desire do. If I was a non-Christian and I had two people approach me, one handed me a card with Jesus loves you on it with a bunch of quotes and the other asked how I was and invested some time and energy into me, which one do you think has my attention. Of course the second one. 

I found out God loved me because the passion and desire I had for Him, the pursuit I had for Him gave Him the ability to open up to me and for Him to leap from my head to my heart. I can't create moments of clarity for myself, only the Holy Spirit can do that but once it is done, it's done. I can't go back. With those dark times I used to have, it was before I had the understanding of God's love for me. Even now, a bit lost and confused about directions and life, I see clearly God's love for me. 

Why do you think it says, My people perish for lack of understanding. He's not talking about knowledge, He's talking about understanding which is a migration from the head to the heart and no matter how much you study, read, hear or see, only God can make it real in your heart. He only makes it real to those who desire and pursue His heart. 

I think I have rambled on enough. I've covered this before but sometimes I need to hear it. Maybe someone out there needs to hear it. Who knows. All I know is that I need Him.

To God be the Glory always!