Coffee & Grace…lots and lots of Grace!

I am just going to be real here for a bit.  This last couple of weeks I have just had moments where I feel angry.  I really have no reason to feel angry, I am usually not easily pressed but little things have left me feeling so frustrated.  Just the other day I stopped by the bank to deposit a check.  Naturally, I was in a hurry, who isn’t these days?  Well, I will tell you the lady in front of me!  She was slower than molasses, as my grandmother would say.  She had not gotten her deposit ready at all.  She had not even torn the perforated parts off her check or signed the back.  I seriously wanted to take a moment and walk up beside her and ask her, what in the world are you doing?  I mean come on they make it so easy now if you are ready with check and card in hand you can be on and off that machine in like 10 seconds!  I love that I don’t even wait for a receipt anymore it just texts it to me!  Okay, perhaps that is a patience issue.  We will save that for another day!

Various other things happened off and on all week that just pushed my normally not so easily pushed buttons.  My buttons used to get pushed much easier so I started wondering, am I slipping back into old habits?  Am I overly tired because as a mom don’t we blame everything on being overly tired?  Sorry, my kid is such a brat, they are just overly tired.  Am I hungry?  I definitely suffer from hangry sometimes when I don’t eat right.   Maybe I am suffering from a chemical imbalance, those things run in my family. Yikes!   I know, it is probably my hormones, I am knocking on 50’s door so could it be?  I literally sat in my car and tried to think, why do I feel like this?  My daughter just moved away maybe it is me just trying to sort and deal.  I took just enough psychology in college to be dangerous.  I treated myself to a venti Starbucks because that cup of coffee does somehow make things better in the moment and then went on about my day.

The next several days came and went some days I felt less angry than others.  I don’t really like being angry, I mean who does?  It is overall just ugly.  Over the weekend and into the new week I spent additional time in bible study.  I read devotionals, books and bible verses that all seemed to have a common theme in my reading.  What I was realizing was it was not anger I was feeling but discontentment.  I started analyzing myself and wondering if I was no longer being effective to those around me.  Did life have me in pinned in a corner where I felt like I wasn’t going to get out alive?  The answer to that is, no one gets out alive! The key question was, though, am I being effective while I am still here?   I literally was having trouble focusing and processing all the emotions running through my mind.  I started recognizing this has been going on for months.  I remember years ago we lived outside Sacramento and the Tully fog would be so bad you could not see your hand in front of your face.   I have felt like I am walking around in my own little Tully fog.  Tully fog is extremely dangerous and you do whatever you have to do to get out of it and stay out of it.  That my friend is what I realized; this was not a place I should stay.   Hebrews 4:16 Let us, then, feel very sure that we can come before God’s throne where there is grace.  There we can receive mercy and grace to help us when we need it.   God’s grace is always available to us! I started seeing that when I was not feeling that sense of discontentment was when I was doing something that made me feel like I had a purpose.

With that realization in the back of my mind, this past weekend I was at a women’s conference and one of the speakers was wearing a shirt that said Rock Your Purpose, which was the biggest and most profound thing I came home with from the weekend.  Rock my purpose…now to figure out what that is.  Have you ever been there?  I do lots of things well but there is nothing in particular that I feel like I just do great.  I am sure others close to me would see things they think I might do great but for me, that is where I am at.  Not in a sad, I need attention sort of way but more of a self-awareness.  I need to figure out what I am supposed to do.  It may be something far different than what I have always done in the past or have been doing as of recent.  God showed me 1 Corinthians 15:41 The sun has one kind of beauty, the moon has another beauty, and the stars have another.   And each star is different in its beauty.  I can’t compare myself to anyone else or how anyone else does something.  I should not really even compare how I have done things up to this time.  I am unique; I have a unique purpose set in motion by God himself.  My purpose is in this moment.

So, I am not angry.  I am unsettled.  Unsettled in my spirit, which is not necessarily a bad thing, it can actually be a good thing.  I think God allows us to be unsettled so we press in and seek Him.  Seek what he has for us.  Search for nuggets of truth in His word.  Spend time being quiet and listening to what He has to say.  I have found through the years when God allows me to feel unsettled he is usually moving me from one thing to another. Perhaps you are feeling that way.  Just because you have done something for a long time does not mean you are meant to keep doing it.  God might have something bigger and better for you, and sometimes He wants us in a season to just be still.

I am going to forge forward and I have a feeling this process will not be something that happens overnight.  I am thinking it will be the more long drawn out process like when you are teaching your child how to do something and you go over it and over it.  I am just going to embrace it, I am going to watch, listen and try my best to learn what God wants to show me.  We were all created for a purpose and always for a much bigger purpose than we ourselves can possibly imagine.   I am sticking with that because it is much better than thinking my hormones are out of whack!  Grace and Peace…oh and a good cup of coffee!

Until Next Time…