What you are today is what you are becoming. You are today what you have been becoming. Every day is a little life, and our whole life is but a day repeated.”
— Elizabeth George
…
I hit the ground running this month; I started a book club called Holy Root, finished the Gospels, made attending church a non-negotiable, worked intentionally towards developing my femininity and womanhood, became more in-tuned with my home with a deep conviction to nurture it, and began incorporating prayer with my just-under-three-year-old son; now I witness in complete awe how he asks to pray more and watch as he often leads his prayers all by himself. It has not been an easy road, but one definitely worth taking.
And I find there’s something to say about stamina and how consistency cannot function long term without it. But stamina — it’s built, it’s lived, experienced, not gifted. You work for it, fight for it, and the battle — it’s never over. I quit just about every day, no matter what it is, whether I want it or not, I fall to my knees and I say I don’t want it, hoping that somehow it cleans my hands of any effort requiring me to forfeit my idleness. Every day I suffer in this dark desire for idleness over something that would undoubtedly serve me ten times better; I suffer because I know it. It’s a disease, really, which is why the fight for stamina is necessary: you have to fight the flesh. Every day. There’s no other way around it. We can’t escape it, but we can endure it, and that’s a blessing that comes from the grace of God. He says:
No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation He will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
1 Corinthians 10:13
We are builders. Nothing in life comes without building, and nothing that’s built comes without choice. And it’s easy to be persuaded that things happen to you instead of because of you and that’s because some things are easier to assemble — so easy that you do it without thinking. Sin is so accessible that it’s available in every language, every instance, every moment; while we’re asleep, while we’re awake, with or without thinking, we can build with as little as our hands. Sin is no-bake, no-refrigerate, and one ingredient only: flesh.
You want to read a book? Write a book? Lose weight? Run a race? Climb a mountain? Finish school? Break a habit? Start a new one? Whether a want or a need, whatever it is that it may be, the cost remains the same, you need to choose to fight the flesh — a lifetime war, and you’ll lose some battles, but with every morning you choose to get back up from your fall, the victory is already yours. It’s when we completely surrender to our flesh that the war ends, without negotiation, without compromise, we lose.
But all it takes is a mustard seed of faith.
It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.
Mark 4:31-32
I planted my mustard seed in Mei, and only now has it begun to sprout, but it is growing faster than I could have ever imagined. So fast that I find myself convicted in the littlest moments, in the littlest things. So fast that I hardly recognize myself when seen in the mirror. I’m different, as different as I assumed the person I’ve always wanted to be would look like.
And that’s hope. Regardless of how sensitive it is or how fleeting — when it’s here, it’s addicting, and now all I’m thinking about is what next to plant here in my garden.
And I don’t know how it happened and I don’t know what to say other than something is changing; that for once in my life, I’m finally awake enough to witness how tangible change can be. That I’m emotionally aware enough to realize I’m living a moment that’s going to change the rest of my life. Tomiee and I never used to share the same interests before and yet an era is evolving in which this might no longer be the case at all.
So sensitive, so fleeting, yet absolutely addicting.
Where lies your hope? What’s in your garden?
Think about it.
Cheers,
B.
The Processing Mind 