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"The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart." Dorothy Day: Part 1

I recently made an observation (by way of a comment from my mom) of my life.  I have changed.  I have grown.  I have blossomed.  And it would not have happened if life had not been so grossly uncomfortable for the last bunch of years.

Hindsight really is a gift.  I was able to look back, ok maybe for the first time in many months, and see the thread weaving through.  I can see why one door closed and how another opened and how, while one path crumbled (think Indiana Jones type path crumbling), a new one appeared.  (So wierd, but my brain is seeing this in video game format.)   I can see that my heart broken, body rocking crying was not for nothing.  I've started to feel life pumping through my veins.  Please don't get me wrong, and think that I was unhappy being a wife and mother, this is something I was made to be.  But something was missing in me. One of things I have realised is that my Christian walk had become so religious.  It had become so much about me and me being righteous and me growing and blah, blah, blah.  I don't want to ever be like that again.

Awhile back, while at my previous church, I was given a book by Donald Miller.  The book, Blue Like Jazz, spoke in a simplistic, real language that for whatever reason did not correspond with the way I was growing.  I managed to read all of one chapter and decided that, while something in me began to move, I could not accept the freedom from which he wrote.  If anything I decided it was probably wrong and possibly against the Christianity I knew.  I loved my previous church, but, through human error, got incredibly hurt.  Then we moved to a new church where I have had to start the whole prossess over of making friends, finding fellowship, submitting to leadership.  And it has been hard.  I had a new baby, we had no money much of the time, dealing with a gorgeous toddler with eating issues and ecsema, a marriage that almost fell apart and a new church!!!!!  And then I started reading Blue Like Jazz again, when I was raw and broken and in so much need of a redeeming God.  I lost the book 3/4 of the way through, somewhere, somehow I put it down and it stayed put.  I so badly want to finish it!  What I read spoke the beginning of a new walk, one that I can be excited about. 

My character while gentle, always lent towards critical and judgemental.  That is being shifted.  I really want to love.  I want that my life reflects the Christ in me and speaks to the Christ in you and in everyone I meet.  I also see for the first time a concreteness (is that a word?).  No longer will there be a flitting or a flirtation.  This is it. 

Oh, and in case you were wondering how The Irrestible Revolution by Shane Clairborne is going, it has blown my mind.  I recommend that you try and get yourself  copy and read it and Blue Like Jazz. 

Happy to share my heart with you
Philippa
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