I have come to a realization about myself recently, thanks to some discussions with Tink, and it is that I refuse to put a judgment call on the quality of a day that I am alive for.  There are many dead who would love to be alive for the shit things that happen to good, hardworking people (like some people I know, but this isn’t %100 accurately describing me) and it’s not my right to say what a day is, especially if it’s in a negative way, because I’m alive and God is good.
For instance, the other day was full of interesting and ironic evidentiary support that would have given me the green light to make a quick verdict on its quality.  It all began when I woke up.
My alarm went off three times, as it is likely to do when I set three alarms so that I can convince myself that it’s ok to sleep in some more because I’ll have plenty of time to do what I need when I wake up, I’ll just skip breakfast, or skip a shower, or skip putting on makeup.  What I don’t generally include in the list of skip-ables would be necessities such as brushing my teeth and using the toilet before I leave.  After finally convincing myself that it was important to wake up, even though my body didn’t think it was, I realized I needed to pee in a major way.  Sometimes when I wake up it’s quite imperative for me to use the restroom, and generally things go smoothly, or as smoothly as they can when I stumble into the door frame on the way in, which can almost make me pee myself.  But this morning the door to the bathroom was locked.  I stared at the door handle for a moment in a state of bewilderment, then looked at the light switch, which is the other signal that someone is in the bathroom.  It was turned off.  Now I was not just puzzled, I was irate.  Someone had locked the bathroom door when they left the bathroom?  Who would do that?  Don’t they know?  Don’t they understand that other people have to pee too?
I hurried to the first floor bathroom and while finally draining my tension I realized that if the door really were accidentally locked from the inside there would be a big problem in my day: no access to my toothbrush.  My anxiety level rose a bit, then I calmed myself with a plan: if I can’t get to my toothbrush I go to CVS when I get to Concord and get a travel one and travel toothpaste, till then I have some gum and that’ll help a bit.  This plan did indeed get put into action, as I never managed to get into the bathroom this morning and had to be at work for 8:30am.  I should add that, while it’s a pain to have to buy another toothbrush (or two, it was a two pack) it is a really cool toothbrush!  It folds in on itself, but it’s not ugly and it’s a relatively good size!  When I showed my boss she thought it was really cool too, and I’m going to end up stashing one with my initials on it at work when I figure out where to put it so it doesn’t get used.
My work went well, I got to make a pretty sick display showing off our Saint Patrick’s day Irish Car Bomb kits, and my boss really liked it.  Then around 10am I got a call from my building’s manager asking me about the rent.  See, my boss was sick and busy and didn’t get the paychecks done yesterday, so I got paid today.  But rent was due yesterday and I forgot to call my property manager to tell him I’d be a little late.  I assured him that he would have the rent and half-security deposit owed by the evening and he was all set.  Then, about an hour later, I got call at work, as in the call was on my work’s phone.  The woman who owns the building asked me about the rent and security deposit owed because she and her husband are living in Florida and live off the rent money, and because I was late with mine they were not going to eat that day, their phone was going to be turned off and they were going to be kicked out of where they were, etc.  I told her I had talked to the property manager, and she asked me if I could overnight her the check for rent and security deposit owed.  I said sure, and that was that.  Shortly after hanging up the phone I realized that I didn’t have my checkbook on me, and that getting out of work at 4pm would make it hard to get to the post office in time for an overnight check when the train to take me home to get my check book and the train to get me back to Concord were almost 2 hours apart.  That wouldn’t even get me to the bank!  My immediate reaction was extreme anxiety, the kind that makes me pretty much useless.  I decided I’d have to leave work early, and was in panic mode until the paychecks arrived, then talked to my coworkers and realized that if I left early they would be short a person and everything would be shot to hell!  So I made a smart decision: I called Pilot.  I had a feeling he wouldn’t be up to much, and sure enough he wasn’t!  He agreed to help me out by driving me to and fro for my errands, which calmed me a bit and saved my ass from a major problem.
In the midst of this upheaval, I started praying.  It was a weird prayer progression, seeing as it went something like this: “Really, God?  Really? Ok.  I’m stressed!  Help me!  I know you might not do something to make the situation change, but can’t you just make me a non-stressor-type person?  Please?  Ok, help me already?  … God, give me strength.  God give me peace and calm.  God, help me.”
I tried to think of some verses to calm myself like I was doing a few weeks ago but I couldn’t think of one entirely.  It was really weird, I would try to think one to myself and it would go something like “God gives us peace… no wait, it was Peace I give you, my peace I give, no wait, it was My peace I leave with … ” followed by a weird fade out to a black abyss of stress.  When I called Pilot I asked God that my decision to call him was one that was in His plan and not just a human choice trying to make things work correctly.  And I don’t know for sure, but it seemed to be more of a God-plan thing, since I got all my errands done on time and didn’t have to leave work early, and afterwards I spent some time with Pilot and had some food and went into a delirium and I think that I cheer him up sometimes.  I know that getting him to enjoy himself made me enjoy myself, which balanced out the day really well.
Back to the display I did for work: I spent a good amount of time making the signs for the window, in the process getting ink-chalk all over my hands which made my coworker ask if I were bruised or had a disease, and I used crates and packing hay to make the kits look as though they were a shipment from somewhere seedy.  When I put together the Irish Car Bomb kits I used wire to bind the booze, then to make little shamrocks.  It was fairly easy for me, but what took me 10 minutes took the boys that put the rest of the kits together an hour.  My boss was super happy with it, my coworkers thought it was great, and yet!  The first comment I got on it was negative.
A guy was buying two of the beers that we used in the kits, and I asked “Oh, not a fan of Irish Car Bombs?”
Silence.
“What?”
He stared at me.  I fidgeted.  Gestured in the direction of the display.
“Irish Car Bombs?”
“That’s not funny.  I have friends that died from those.”
I heard a pin drop onto a feather mattress.
“They still serve them in bars.”
I had no idea that crickets were outside during this hour!
“I didn’t mean to offend…”
“It’s fine.”
I bagged his groceries and he was on his way, no words to be spoken to me again.  I honestly feel that these situations are more likely to happen on a day when I’m feeling overwhelmed, the days when everything is coming at me, just to kick me when I’m down.  The good news is that his comment didn’t affect the display, and we sold most of the kits.
Notice, with each of these stories there is a plus side at the end.  I realized, even in my stressed out and dizzy mind at the time that these things were inconsequential when it came to how I should be feeling, and I ended up laughing a fair amount that day.  A verse came to mind while I was writing this, and I didn’t even realize it was a real verse until I looked it up.

Nehemiah said, “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.”  – Nehemiah 8:10

The joy of the Lord is our strength?  What does that even MEAN?

Joy – The emotion evoked by well-being, success, or by the prospect of possessing what one desires

The well-being of God is secure, he is all-powerful.
The success of God is evident, immediate, and yet to come, seeing as he wins all over the place now in our lives and in the future will play out the finale in epic strides.
The prospect of possessing what God desires is fulfilled and yet left wanting, because he desires us.

Strength – Capacity for exertion or endurance, power to resist force, power of resisting attack

So our ability to keep our hearts humble, our ability to keep our voices lifted in praise, our ability to resist temptation, our ability to heed to God’s discipline; the strength needed is to be found in the Lord’s joy, which is in himself, his works, and his desire to be close to his people.
This is my new favorite mantra.  The last one was John 14:27, which reminded me in the midst of an anxious and stressful time that the peace of Christ Jesus is his gift to us, to me.  Now I am trying to constantly remember, on the days that friends let me down and break my heart, on the days when I haven’t gotten enough sleep, when I’m really bored with praying for the same things over and over because I don’t know what else to say about them and nothing is happening, on the Sundays that I can’t get to church because I have to work, during visits with family that end in me making my mother cry, when I don’t want to read the bible because I’m more interested in doing anything else, when I’m super jealous of the rich snobby girl who gets to own two Rebecca Minkoff purses and a wallet, when I really miss my dog: The joy of the Lord is my strength.  I can get through none of these things on my own, and the more I steep myself in his presence the more I choose his joy over my emotions.  And let me tell you, his joy is better than my emotions, especially since they are usually sinful.  And in the same way that getting into the prayer habit has reduced my stress and anxiety over silly things, getting into the joy of the Lord gives me the ability to keep on truckin’.

I’ve been playing connect the dots with bible verses.  I hope that the conclusions I’m drawing will make as much sense to anyone that reads this as it does to me.

Let’s start with what I mentioned in my last post.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.  – Philippians 4:6-7

These verses explain something that is brilliant and often forgotten, especially by those of us who were raised in the church: through prayer, our ever evolving conversation with God, we gain peace that guards our hearts and minds.  Simple enough, and an incredible reason to pray more often, especially since guarding our hearts is a big deal:

Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.  – Proverbs 4:23

Oh snap!  Our hearts are the wellspring of life, and other translations also say that everything you do flows from it, that out of it are the issues of life.  It makes sense, no matter how you look at it, since our hearts are what bring about just about everything that we do.  If we want something, if we love someone, if we hate someone, if we’re afraid, if we’re filled with joy; all of these things are centered in the heart.  But there are issues to be had with our hearts, since we are all incredibly sinful.  Each of us has a dark, seeping, oozing heart.

The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?  – Jeremiah 17:9

What a crap-shoot.  Our wellsprings of life, that we’re supposed to guard and protect are not even worthy of being protected!  They are constantly trying to bring about destruction and death.  They want everything the world has to offer, not just to be near to God.  But there’s a way to change that:

And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!  – 2 Corinthians 5:15-17

When we give our filthy, dirty hearts over to Christ he gives us new ones.  It’s his gift to anyone who will receive, and it’s our key to having a heart we want to protect and guard.  When we put our hearts into God’s hands, allowing him to take over the entire thing and breathe his life into the putrid mess, we end up having tragically beautiful hearts, the kind that we should be careful with.  And through making our relationship with Christ the top priority we continue to anchor our hearts in his living water, which is the safest place to be, and the best way to ensure that our wellsprings are flowing with life. 
In case this was hard to follow, here’s the breakdown:  God gave his son in exchange for the chance to give us life.  In Christ we have new life, new hearts.  That’s really cool because our hearts are bad.  Since we get shiny new hearts we need to guard them.  The best way to guard your heart is to have prayer time, worship time, and general quality heart/Jesus time.  And Jesus said:

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.  – Matthew 6:21

So if Christ Jesus is your treasure, your heart will be with him.  If your heart is with him, you are having a continual conversation with God, your heart is safe.  If your heart is safe, there’s no need to worry.  And that’s how I connect the dots.

It’s hard to remember what the point is of praying at times. I’ve mentioned this recently, the struggle we face against our dark and sinful hearts that are completely logical. What’s the point in asking for something when if God wants you to have it, he’ll give it to you anyway? What’s the point in asking for things for other people when he’ll do what he wants whether or not we’re praying about it? Being raised in a christian household can really dull our senses to what the intentions behind our actions should be, and for new believers the overwhelming power of God and his plan can make it seem fruitless to bother with anything but a redemption prayer. I’ve felt overwhelmed at times with the logic of these arguments, but I hate accepting what I don’t like and I don’t like these arguments. So while I was trying to think of good reasons for prayer I decided to make it personal.I decided not to write about why we pray as a whole, but why I pray.

I believe God wants to hear from me, and prayer is part of our conversation.

Each person who has given themselves over to Christ Jesus has entered into a relationship with him, and when I’m in a relationship with anyone I like to keep in touch. I like to talk to them, to tell them about what’s going on, to listen to how they’re doing and what’s on their mind. Whether or not the Holy Spirit searches our souls to the core and God knows the desire of every heart and all that jazz, I still think that God would rather that I come and talk to him, get things out there and tell him about what’s on my mind, than not.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. – Hebrews 4:15-16

It’s so comforting to have a talk with someone who has been through everything that everyone else has and yet has walked with no sin. And the best part is that he wants to help me do the same, walk in a way that is pleasing to him down a path he has planned for me. Aside from holding up my end of the continuing conversation that is our relationship, it’s a way of being humble before Christ. By coming to him with my every sinful thought through the day and giving over to him each little anxiety I sometimes find myself treating others with more grace and patience, and being less defensive about my own wrongdoings.

I believe that God has a plan, and sometimes his plan includes me praying.

There are far too many complications in life when it comes to God’s plan, but I do know that sometimes it just includes one person asking for something and it’s like the signal that sends an entire army to attack.

This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him. – 1 John 5:14-15

“According to his will”… so if we ask for something that he already wants to give us but hasn’t because we didn’t ask for it, that’s a big flaw in the theory of “God gives us what he wants when he wants”. And it’s not like we can’t ask for something ridiculous with no expectations; the word is full of stories in which regular people ask for miracles and are blown away by works of God, all because of prayer.

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. Elijah was a human being, even as we are. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops. – James 5:16-18

I feel way better after praying.

Jesus said it perfectly in Matthew 26:41: “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” My flesh, this body and this human nature, loves what is easy and what is wrong. It loves sinning. Sinning tastes really good, feels really good, looks really good. But it leads to a life I don’t want, and I am not strong enough on my own to back away from everything. When I am weak, I know that the only strength I will find is in the word and in prayer, because talking to Jesus makes me feel a little more stable and secure. Reading the word reminds me that my identity is not one that I make for myself but one found in him.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. – Philippians 4:6-7

I am more than happy that the peace of God is over my head, figuratively and literally speaking. I would much rather rest in his peace and know that it’s bigger and greater than I can comprehend than know more than I do. The difference between when I pray and when I don’t is like this: If I’m staying at my parent’s house in Maine and my dad isn’t home, I don’t sleep well. I don’t feel as safe. I check the locks repeatedly and stress over nothing. But when he is home, I don’t worry about anything like that. I know that he keeps the house secure and that he would never let anything happen to us. So when prayer gives me a peace that guards my heart and mind in Christ Jesus, it’s like knowing for sure that dad is home and taken care of the safety of the house. Although I don’t think that God would snipe the best tv in the house to watch sports.

A friend asked me once whether it was really worth praying.  She’s a christian, and had been praying for a softening of heart towards someone but not fully understanding what it meant to ask God to soften a heart.  She made her case of doubt, questioning because if God knows what we’ll do and the path we will take and there’s not really free will and all that theological crap that we can’t quite understand, what’s the point in praying for God do change a heart?  Is it even possible?
During the conversation I brought up the story of Moses and how God had hardened the heart of pharoh, and she seemed to get a good revelation from that recap.  But now, weeks later, I find myself still looking in the bible for the times when God changes people’s hearts drastically.  Since I’ve been having a weird week or two, feeling a bit lonesome and bored and generally just sorry for myself, I’ve been trying to read through the old testament.  Really remind myself that life could be worse.  And while I might just still feel that I have a point to prove, I’ve also found something that I think is much more interesting in the process.
My first example is from the story of Moses, of course:

But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in Egypt, he will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and with mighty acts of judgment I will bring out my divisions, my people the Israelites.  – Exodus 7:3-4

God, in his awesome way, changed Pharaoh’s heart so that he could prove his power to the nation of Egypt, thus delivering his people.
Second, I found a story where God changed someone’s heart during the Israelite’s little jaunt through the desert for 40 years.  On their way back to the promised land they had to pass through many regions, like Heshbon, and they would ask to be let through and pay their own way.  But randomly God decided that it was time to start letting everyone know that his kids were legit:

But Sihon king of Heshbon refused to let us pass through. For the LORD your God had made his spirit stubborn and his heart obstinate in order to give him into your hands, as he has now done.  – Deuteronomy 2:30

And again, God changed the heart of a king to prove that he could do anything.  But not every story was about God proving his power in that way.  Later, Ezra got a letter from his king giving him permission to go on a mission to rebuild the temple.

Praise be to the LORD, the God of our ancestors, who has put it into the king’s heart to bring honor to the house of the LORD in Jerusalem in this way and who has extended his good favor to me before the king and his advisers and all the king’s powerful officials. Because the hand of the LORD my God was on me, I took courage and gathered leaders from Israel to go up with me. – Ezra 7:27-28

This didn’t involve a battle, it’s more like God gave Ezra a boost of confidence in his ability to go on this Holy Crusade by having him find favor with the king.  As it says, because he felt the favor and presense of God Ezra found a courage and strength he didn’t know he had.
So that’s nice, isn’t it?  God can change hearts!  I can hear you all rolling your eyes, begging me to tell you something you don’t know, but I don’t know if I know anything you don’t so just hold your horses and enjoy what I write.  I know that it’s all been said before, but I enjoy sharing my revelations via this thing.
Here’s where I stumbled upon something good: I was considering looking for God changing hearts of people in the new testament, but I realized that it would have been Jesus doing it and not God… and then I couldn’t think of a way that Jesus had done the same sort of thing, overpowering and changing people’s hearts like God did.  So Christ must have been showing us a different side of the everlasting and awesome personality of God.  Then I remembered something I’d read back in the old testament:

And God said to Moses, “I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty [El-Shaddai], but by My name the Lord [Yahweh–the redemptive name of God] I did not make Myself known to them [in acts and great miracles].”  – Exodus 6:2-3 (Amplified Bible)

God’s way is above ours, obviously, but from what I can tell by the pattern he’s got a good thing going.  First he comes in as God Almighty, the powerful, the jealous, the creator and ruler of man.  He shows everyone who is really in charge by giving them hard lessons to learn.  The first testament has a lot of that sort of thing, God proving himself through acts and deeds and heart changes that lead to further proof that he is the most powerful God ever, above and beyond our ideas and thoughts and way better than any stupid idols we make for ourselves.
Then, when his people have fallen down and can’t pick themselves up again, he reveals himself to be the Lord, as our redeemer, our savior and champion, the father who won’t forget about his children or let them fall by the wayside.  He illuminates the lives of his children with his kind, unfailing love, and using his power again shows that what we knew he was capable of isn’t even close to the incredible things he will do for us.  He loved his children so much that he changed the heart of Pharaoh, used signs and wonders and miracles to get his children released, and walked them on bare land through a sea.  Later, he showed his children that yet again by revealing that he had a game plan, that we wouldn’t get sucked in by sin and darkness, that he could make the biggest deal in the history of religious corporate sabotage.  He broke his own heart and killed his own son, just so that we would be freed from the slavery we entered into from the first bite of that apple.
He chooses to reveal himself according to what will get his will done on earth, according to what will propel us in the direction of the plans he’s set before us.  We cannot comprehend everything that God is (A Divine Trinity Of Awesome is my favorite way to put it) but that’s not something to worry about.  He will always show us who he is, whether it’s the powerful God or redeeming King, according to what we need to see at the time.

This is a short one, but that’s fine.  Right?  Right.

According to an online dictionary, the definition of suffer as a intransitive verb is to endure death, pain, or distress, as well as to sustain loss or damage.   As a transitive verb the definition is to submit to or be forced to endure, to feel keenly, labor under, undergo, experience, put up with especially as inevitable or unavoidable.
There are many things I have been blessed to not go through in life, and there are things I have been through that I look back on and cringe at.  But for some reason, no matter what I’ve gone through, I never considered suffering to be a part of the equation.  Suffering is what people in worse situations do, what whiners do, what selfless martyrs do, not what I do.  I always relate the word to the process of dying, not for the person dying but for those that are in their lives that love them or have to watch.  Yet, for some reason, the horrible and horrific things that others go through personally that I can’t imagine are things that I feel the word suffering is too weak for.  They go through seriously painful, bone tearing things and I don’t think suffering describes it well enough.  But apparently it does.
Suffering is a weird concept for me because when it comes down to it I think we are all suffering all the time.  Some go through real hardships that change their lives in the wink of a frog, but some have things that they are forced to endure for long amounts of time that shape their lives slowly, like a river to the land.
David had a house full of suffering when his baby died.  In 2 Samuel it tells the story of how not only he was struck with the heartache and grief of losing a child, but his new wife was too.  And she was most likely a hot mess considering he had just taken her off her roof to have sex with her then killed her husband to cover the fact that she had gotten pregnant and now the child was dead.  Not to mention that the child had to go through (I think) a week of being sick and dying before he actually died.  That is the kind of situation that strikes quickly and leaves suffering in it’s wake.
But I think that we all suffer in our own ways each day, on the other side of the spectrum.  Maybe someone’s boss is verbally abrasive.  Maybe a family is full of turmoil.  Maybe a best friend is hooked on drugs.  Maybe someone is illiterate.  Maybe someone feels lonely.  These are all things that we endure and experience, things that fit under the definition of suffering.
And the bible has words for each aching heart, each suffering soul.

“The godless in heart harbor resentment;
even when he fetters them, they do not cry for help.
They die in their youth,
among male prostitutes of the shrines.
But those who suffer he delivers in their suffering;
he speaks to them in their affliction.
He is wooing you from the jaws of distress
to a spacious place free from restriction,
to the comfort of your table laden with choice food. ” –  Job 36:13-16

So maybe some of this is my fight against myself to prove that what feels to me like suffering that I refuse to think of as suffering (because suffering is worse than my pathetic problems) is actually valid suffering.  Also, through the past two weeks of thinking and talking about suffering this part of the concept hasn’t been breached to my knowledge.  Maybe by broadening the term we can give comfort to those who are suffering in the hard cases and those who feel like they are in constant struggles.  Both sides will feel drained, and we should spoon feed them the Word and chicken noodle soup.