Last two days were strictly work to sleep days. Scrubs to PJs. I'll have to pull it together later today, after I've had some time to sleep, and find something decent to wear. I'm really missing my corset the bebe seester borrowed for New Years.
However, it is official: GoTrip dates have been posted and my PTO requests have been turned into the scheduling office at work! YAY!!!!! Easy part's over, now comes the faith part.
Crossroads last night was AH-MAZING, as always. We've been in the middle of a series called "Grow up" all bout maturing spiritually. It's the only place I've found that can point out multiple flaws in me and I leave wanting to change instead of find the flaws in someone else. It's like God hand-crafted the place just for me.
Today we combed through the beginning of Ephesians 5 as part of our fruits of spiritual maturity list and I was reminded again on how many levels I fail:
No obscenities. It's a rare day at work when a Grade A Level 1 curse word doesn't cross these lips.
No coarse joking. Even this morning I made a joke about the fact that Joe spent way too long playing with one of the Child Life toys which is basically a sack of gelatin and small balls.
Thanksgiving. The number of times I leave a patient's room rolling my eyes or make a beeline to the nurses station to complain about a family far outweighs the number of times I plop down in front of a computer a cheerfully say "I have the cutest kid in there."
No greed. Regardless of what Brian says, there are in fact people out there will cop to being greedy. I am one of them. I think I can't live without the internet, am always trolling the internet for cool clothes, can't pass up on sweets in the breakroom, hoard money in my bank account and basically think about money and things way too often.
Greed is the monster I continually find on my closet, the enemy I'm constantly staring down. I hear myself chanting the world's motto far too often: "Never give up what someone else can give up." Or should give up. I rarely live by the Kingdom credo "Don't resist, give beyond!"
But like I said, I do stare the enemy down here. While I know that I should watch my mouth and complain less, I actually do take a stance against my greedy self. I can't help it. Every time I get angry about someone else's greed (which is nearly every day), I'm reminded of my own.
One of my favorite songs of the moment is "I Refuse" by Josh Wilson
I forget who Brian credited with the idea but there was a comic where one fish said to another "You can do anything you want!" Our immediate response is that that's ridiculous because they're in a fishbowl. They're limited by the walls of the tank and if you take them away so they can "do anything" what they're actually going to do is flop around, suffocate, and die. But we live our lives trying to shatter the glass of our fishbowl, trying to break boundaries to live our lives outside God's parameters. We think we know better than God how life works. We don't want to live within the confines of an alter as a living sacrifice. Again to quote Brian, "the problem with living sacrifices is they keep crawling off the alter."
We think that the price of sacrifice far outweighs any benefits to ourselves. We think the stench of blood flowing in the street from our sacrifice couldn't be overpowered by anything else. But it can. It was. When the Israelites would take their animals to be sacrificed and blood literally flowed in the streets, Jerusalem smelled like a barbeque, because the dead animals would get roasted. (Hence the references to our lives being a pleasing aroma to God.)
The fragrance of the burnt offering overshadows the smell of spilled blood.
That's what I want to remember.
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