Hoping this will find you where ever you are

Matthew 5:29 So if your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your body parts than to have your whole body thrown into hell

Everything about this verse makes me stop in my tracks. I've casually ran across it many times while reading...in my short sight taking these words very literally and thinking they did not apply to me, like I am exempt from ANY part of God's word. I've grown a lot and I'm still growing....and wondering if anyone else is like I was/am.

Christianity has not come easy to me. Most of my life was spent being abused in one way or another by other "Christians"....you can say my image of what Christianity and God are were warped. I wanted nothing to do with it. I knew people that were doing unspeakable acts to others and then talking about knowing God. I knew people that were going to church just to sleep with other people or keep up an image. I knew people that were changed so much by the world that I didn't even recognize them anymore. And it hurt. I wanted no part of it. Why would God let these people do and say these things...hurt others with no recourse while others were at the mercy of it all? I just didn't understand.

I think the last time I went to church was around the time I was 16 or 17. I was at one of my lowest points. No faith in anyone or anything. Why bother, it was always a disappointment. People I thought that loved me didn't....people I thought I could trust had been betraying me for years. A pity party full of bitterness and acting out.

I really didn't have another interaction with Christianity until I started working where I do now. I had friends that wore it on their sleeves proudly, which made me uncomfortable....it was in no way that they were showboating their religion, they were just so completely in love with Jesus they couldn't keep it to themselves....just as we all have been with any love in our lives. I became friends with them, but I was still very guarded. I still didn't feel like God loved or cared about me and I didn't believe anything they were saying.

Two years ago, my life was filled with lots of distractions....relationships that needed to be mended, but it was easier to pretend that everything was OK, lots of friends and activities, moving up the company ladder, daydreaming about what our lives could be in 5 years...etc. The fluff of the American life...I had bought into the American dream. 2.5 kids, house, job, money in the bank, husband. Not to say we did not have our share of struggles to get where we were, but still, we were there, we had made it. Wasn't that enough? I had it all....right?

Not exactly. One by one things started to fall apart in my eyes. My job that I had received so much joy from, was not so joyous anymore. My husband got a promotion, but that meant we would have to move...away from everything I knew. Everything. I even had to switch jobs. All of it was new. In a matter of 2 months, my life (outside of my immediate family) was unrecognizable....and to top it all off, my dad would be diagnosed with stage 4 cancer only a month later. I was depressed. With my job, I was working from home. No more comforts of gossiping with the office ladies or going out to lunch. I was alone. No more shopping therapy. The nearest Target was now 40 minutes away. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do but sit and think about everything. Before I knew it, I was praying. I wasn't sure how I felt about everything, but this time I was relying on my own journey and impressions and not someone else's.

When the passage above talks about tearing out and throwing away parts of you, there is a literal translation to be had surely, but also one that I had failed to look beyond. In my sin, I was too weak to throw these things myself and God knew that. If it was up to me, I would have never made such drastic changes to my life in that way, but thank goodness it's not up to me :-)

By the end of the year, I was going through a huge transformation. It was all becoming clear to me...and the more sick my dad became, the closer to God I grew. It would have been easy to fall back into that same thought process. Why would God keep my dad from me all my life to reconcile us 23 years later...and then take him away so quickly again in just a few years? Why was I still carrying around so much hurt and displaced bitterness and guilt from things that happened so many years ago with other people in my life. I remember clearly today falling to my knees in the chapel at the hospital and just giving it all up that December 2007. My life has never been the same.

I started going to church shortly after my dad's passing. I started reading the bible daily. I started praying daily. I started forgiving and letting go. I started cutting off all of those things that bound me to that previous life I wanted nothing more of. I started becoming the person God always knew I was. I started LIVING.

Our pastor did a series not too long ago about Living Against the Grain. I'm not going to lie and say it's easy. Sometimes that old part of me just wants to say "NO MORE" when I am trying to work through a troubled relationship. It's easier to to give in than push to the root of the problem or forgive something or someone. It's hard to get rid of those things you are so familiar with....those distractions in your day to day life that are keeping you from the kind of relationship that can totally turn your whole world around.

People prune back trees to make them grow....what needs to be cut off to make you grow? Is that bitterness you are holding onto worth the eternal sacrifice you are making? How does it really affect your life and others? Can you take all of that money you are making and hording with you when you die? Can you see something better to do with it? Could that hour of playing on the computer have meant more if you would have spent it with your kid? Are you living the way you are saying you are? Do your words match your actions? Could you be a better listener, follower, friend, parent, person? Now is the time my friends. Don't look back...in a few years you wouldn't recognize yourself even if you did.....now wouldn't THAT be something....