Counting the Cost

I feel as if I need to do a little driving update after the "tapping" mentioned in the last post! I have been driving a lot over the last few days and am feeling much more comfortable with the whole thing. I can actually see myself getting a license which for all my willingness to get behind the wheel as a learner I never before truly saw that happening!

My permit runs out in June, and although I feel far from ready to test, I wonder if I might be ready by then to take it...humm, except for being gone for a week in May I think I can fit in quite a few more lessons! I am not even sure I could book a test that soon - I hear they are quite the hot commodity with the DMV closures that have happened recently.

I have been really loving my new school classes, even the economics - who knew?! I am enjoying how applicable some of the basic principles are to my life. We have been learning the concept of Opportunity Cost, when doing one thing means you cannot do another. Last weekend the message at church included discussing how when we are called to turn towards God it means we have to run away from something else, sin. We cannot be focused don two things at once.

Now, I love to play the multitasking woman card but in all honesty when I do two things at once, it is rare I am fully present in each activity. I may feel like I am getting more done, but I am fully enjoying or experiencing any of them?

This followed with me into the area of discipline in my life. I have such a hard time being a good student, and it is because I am so easily distracted by the television. I have a very long to do list of small projects around the house which I am adding to but not crossing off - Why? I am getting distracted by blogs and emails. This is truly an area I feel the Lord challenging my heart about. If I turned from the television and the things I let distract me and moved towards the other things in my life, namely Him, I believe I would feel more content with life, more satisfied and more like myself.

The distractions in life can numb us to reality. We can keep a distance from the people in our lives but feel connected because people comment on our Facebook status updates.

I love Facebook, and I enjoy television but I know how easily my eyes turn fully from God and following His leading in my life, and focus on the distractions in a way that prevents me from being fully who I was created to be. This is not how I want to live, and I feel as though I am coming back to this issue time after time, month after month. I know God calling me to focus only on Him. And I know that in the grief and uncertainty of the past year, I have allowed myself to take my eyes off Him, and to look for comfort elsewhere. I have wanted to allow His perfect peace to rule my heart, but it has been a losing battle, and in the hopelessness and ambivalence what has settled, the TV has felt like a better companion. Or at least an easier one.

In God's story, I am worth so much but it is a hard journey. My life has meaning and purpose, but sometimes I just want it to be easy, and I just want things to happen in the way I plan. I can lose hours at a time watching the TV or reading on the internet. I can get through a day without my feelings touching the sides.

I realize again that God is calling me out of just coping with life. Calling me out into something new, calling me to Him. To sit with Him when I am feeling sad, when I am confused. God is asking me to focus on Him fully and let Him be my comforter.

I know that coming out of the numbness may be painful, but its the way I heal. It is the way I begin to hope again, because when you are numb its not just the bad feelings that you can't feel, it's the good ones too - and I am in the market for some good feelings!