Sluggish Saturday

For many people, Saturdays are the day to accomplish much. They have their task list of to-do's and begin first thing in the morning.

As I posted here the other day, God has been turning my life upside down...each night! By Friday I was so exhausted, that I stayed home from work and slept in. I then proceeded to get caught up on some computer work and other small tasks. It was great. I feel like I am completely caught up on paperwork.

With that, I planned a great day of work for today in cleaning out the office to get ready to split up the boys, who are currently sharing a room.

Yet, here I sit at 9:50 in the morning surfing my blogs, and I felt like I would drop my blog readers a line. I wanted to share a thought I had after reading Gena's Blog this morning. You can go hear to read it if you want.

One of the things that Autumn and I have had to learn over the past couple of years, the hard way, is that we are who we are. God made us with the quirks, personalities, minds and passions that we have right now. For so long, Autumn and I were told by Christians and by ourselves, that we need to change who we are so that we can fit in to the Christian mold. I even had an elder of a former church that said I could not be in leadership because I am to rough around the edges, and too offensive.

We lived our lives for a long time trying to keep who we are behind a wall so we didn't "offend" someone. What we have realized, is that we truly needed friends. We needed friends who saw us for the Christ followers that we were. Imperfect, not-all-together, but with a heart to follow and serve Christ and those around us.

This realization has allowed us to be free and to be ourselves. Don't misunderstand...this isn't a free ticket to behave how ever we want.

We don't need to walk on eggshells. This is a problem throughout the church. I dream of a church where we are accepted for who we are, and not who we are supposed to be. I believe we have found that in New Life. We have found some wonderful friends that appreciate and love us right where we are.

We are realizing, like Gena said, that people who are easily offended, are focused more on themselves and less on others and the Kingdom. We are realizing that maybe it isn't ourselves that are offending others, but rather the offended are not focused on the right things.

We still focus on sharing the love of Christ with others, but we now realize that we need to focus on Christ and allow the rest to be handled by Him! Thank you God for freeing us to follow You, no matter what!