Much Needed Break Ahead

Happy Tuesday early Wednesday!

Just one more day before break! Over break there are a few (too many) things that I need to accomplish: PBI Exegetical Paper and Group Presentation planning, Lesson plans 4 and 5 with formative and summative assessments, IEP Standard with lesson plan, mission trip support letter and my Annotated Bibliography for Children's Literature (just about 16 books left).

A line from a song hit me a couple nights ago... "Where is reality and what are the actions that will define who I am?" It got me thinking about myself. Sometimes, I am so quick to dismiss little sins because they are menial; they just don't seem to matter ... and frankly, I get tired of striving for perfection sometimes. However, this line reminded me (even if it wasn't the author's intention to do so) that every little thing I do makes up who I am. If the small things aren't the actions that define who I am... what are? If it isn't every day that counts, which ones do? I start realizing that God wouldn't take care of the details of my life if He didn't desire me to pay attention to those details as much as He does; if He didn't desire to see me care about those details and dedicate every last one of them to Him.
Now, obviously that will take some time... but I was just thinking that its time to get focused. It is time to remember who I am and what I am doing here. It is time to take hold of the fact that the actions that define who I am are always before me... I am constantly telling people who I am by what I do.

Case in point... I have a cake story. Two weekends ago I was home and my mom had some really good store-bought ice cream cake. She told me it was usually seven bucks and she got it from the grocery store for about 2.99. Sweet deal. Since I knew Lisa's birthday was coming up (and I wasn't planning on baking for her...) I decided it would be a good idea to pick up one of those scrumptious cakes. (When I was there I changed my mind and got two... one that would be her favorite kind - brownie - and one that would be mine - reese's...) Since Lisa was way too full on her birthday I just told her about the cakes and said she was welcome to eat them whenever she wanted. Then, when Anna slept over last Friday... we ate a bit of the Reese's one... and stored the rest back in the freezer downstairs. Then, on Monday night, I (naturally) started craving some cake. So I went down to the freezer only to find my cake wiped out. (I seriously should have taken a picture to document this... there were fork marks in it.. and two reeses chunks left on top... the rest was pretty much history) So... I was basically ticked off. Who would eat my cake? I didn't go to the store, pick up a much-desired cake, so that someone else could enjoy it.
So... rather than letting it go... I decided to confront the culprit (yeah, I had a pretty good idea of who the theivish-eater was). Confrontation and... access denied. She said she didn't eat it and didn't know who did.
Afterwards, however, I was thinking about how silly it was that I was so concerned about that three-dollar-cake. Why did it really even matter? Am I homeless? Did the three bucks mean that much to me? Did I really need those extra calories anyway? Of course not. I confronted her out of selfishness. It's not like I was concerned about her well-being and wanted to make sure she understand the difference between right and wrong actions... ha! Nope. Selfish-reeses-loving-cake-eating-me went about this situation the wrong way. I just thought I would throw that out there. I still think it is ridiculous that someone would eat cake that is not theirs... but in the future if someone steals my cake... I hope to just let it go. I don't want to disappoint the Lord over cake. Its just not worth it.

Here are some quotes from Victory Over the Darkness, (probably a bit more uplifting than my silly cake story)... Read them, let them inspire you as they have me the past couple days...

"We fail, so we see ourselves as failures, which only causes us to fail more. We sin, so we see ourselves as sinners, which only causes us to sin more. We've been sucked into the devil's futile equation. We've be tricked into believing that what we do makes us what we are. And that false belief sends us into a tailspin of hopelessness and defeat."

"The human soul was not designed to function as a master. You'll either serve the true God or the god of this world..."

"A Christian, in terms of our deepest identity, is a saint, a spiritually born child of God, a divine masterpiece, a child of light, a citizen of heaven. Being born again transformed you into someone who didn't exist before."

"No person can consistently behave in a way that's inconsistent with the way he perceives himself."