Boundaries or chains

Ouch! Is the first thing I said when I looked at our after Christmas shopping finances. Wow, why is it so much fun to spend that we ignore the warnings. The phrase, "Your Cup Runneth Over" is playing over and over in my head right now. Not only did the spending run over, but I can't help but think about how blessed we are. To have the money to buy any presents at all for our family is a blessing. To have a warm place to live is a blessing. I could go on and on. So why isn't it enough? Why are we always wanting more? I don't have an easy answer to the age old questions, but I can tell you what I struggle with and with that how I know God can help.

I am a person with sort of obsessive/compulsive disorder. You wouldn't believe it if you saw my life though. Most people categorize those people to be neat, clean and always on schedule. Well that is what a want in my life. In fact if my life is not like that I give up on all of it. If I can't see order then I don't even try. My brain is always wanting to make lists. Always! I want to organize everything. I can spend an hour or more at a Walmart, organizing the 5 dollar movie bin. I love doing it! But my house is always a mess. Because my brain can't figure out how to keep it clean, so I don't try. If it was only me in this house I would have everything in a perfect spot and it would never get moved. But I have never lived alone. I grew up with 1 brother and 1 sister that would move or disturb my stuff. A mom who didn't clean either and a dad that was extremely organized but was never there. I couldn't find any peace in my life. No plan that fit. No drawer big enough to hold all the messy stuff so that the rest of my life could be peaceful and organized. No one showed me how I was supposed to organize or clean up the messes. I look at a messy room and want to clean the smallest part first so that I have one organized part. The problem with that is that I make the rest of the room messier by organizing that one drawer and never have time to get the whole area clean when I focus on such the small details.
But as I get older I have learned some great things about myself.
1. I do much better if I have a deadline. Although I tend to procrastinate until close to the deadline.
2. If there is a list to follow I can follow it. ( But I do tend to always want to update my lists and make them prettier.)
3. I absolutely do very badly if there are no boundaries. Boundaries are necessarily!

We learn about boundaries often in Celebrate Recovery. Many people need boundaries to function. Life without boundaries for me, always leaves me in chains. If I don't have boundaries with my money I will end up chained to a loan company or owing the bank too much. If I don't have boundaries with my food, I am chained to my addiction. I am constantly struggling for freedom from my addictions and my habits that bind me to a life I don't want. But what I am learning is that if I want freedom I will have to apply boundaries. The idea of limiting myself is scary though. What if I do without? What if I can never get what I want? What if I feel trapped? These seem like silly questions! But these silly questions have kept me from enjoying freedom for so long. They have kept me in a comfortable madness state, too afraid to move because it is scary not knowing what will happen. But I know the truth! God is my creator, He formed me and loves me and wants the best for me. I have to truly trust Him with those feeling of doubt and fear. He will break those chains on my wrist of addiction and habits that I don't want. But I have to trust Him and do what he says. And He is telling me to apply some of those boundaries to the issues I have dealt with for so long. You see even the boundaries will fail me at some point. I will fail me, my house and drawers will always be over flowing with junk, but He can still give me that peace that I seek. The organization my heart seeks. And may this next year be a year of cleaning out the old junk drawers and making room for the good stuff that I have really longed for. Like a healthy lifestyle, that I can spend more of my time enjoying life instead of eating. That I can teach my daughter to love her life too! And I long for organization in my household. That I will have a place for everything and know how to stop clutter before it begins. And with my money, that we will stick to our budget and then have the funds to truly give to God and his people when he asks me too. I could do so much with that money if I applied boundaries.
2012 goals
make and stick to the budget and have our emergency fund accomplished (Financial Peace University)
lose 60 lbs by applying a food plan and working out.
start and maintain Joslyn's preschool schedule
Find a way to organize the house, especially Joslyn's room and my financial paperwork.
Teach Joslyn how to keep her room clean.

These are some of the goals I am setting for myself and I have started making boundary lists( I can't help it) to follow! I hope that you find some peace in 2012 also! What are some of the boundaries you have set or goals you have set for 2012?

Here comes the whale!

As I'm looking back over the past year, my eyes have been opened to the gentle guidance of my Father. I was questioned many times on my families decision to move to Chickasha and leave my church family and friends. Sometimes I would cry and think I have done the wrong thing. But, I know that God is leading us through a drought and teaching us valuable lessons of his grace and providance along the way.

I was being a Jonah. Thinking that a move to the country would solve all of our problems. I was insecure about being a mother, struggling from financial burden, and mourning the loss of control I had on everything. My world was crashing. So what do you do when you have lost all control? I decided it was time to move. I was sure that Chickasha held the answer!

You can never run farther than God. You can run away from God, but he is always there. Waiting for you to open up to Him and knock down those barriers you build between you and Him. Turns out, I didn't run away from my problems like I thought.

My pre baby life consisted of staying busy enough to not have to deal with my insecurities and codependency. I had just learned through Celebrate Recovery that I was a codependent. I knew that I was dependent on my ministry. But I didn't have the courage to stand up for myself and just quit. I was afraid that if I quit my ministry and stayed in the church that I might be looked down upon or be judged. I also felt that I wouldn't be able to quit fully and would drag myself back into the same predicament when I started feeling out of control. Please don't think that my church would have looked down on me. I love that church, and all my problems were because of my codependence. Codependence is an addiction to people and the reactions of them. I wanted so bad to get better and I knew that taking a break from ministry was the only way for me to seek God for my acceptance and not people. When I moved to Chickasha, the first thing I did was get involved in a church and start serving. I thought, it won't be like it was in Moore. Well, God brought a whale to devour me and make me stop. It didn't feel right. God was telling me that I wasn't supposed to be at this church and here I was back at the confrontation again. I couldn't run away this time. I had to face my fear of confrontation and tell this lovely church that I had made a commitment and couldn't keep it. The old me would have stayed and suffered. So I prayed and sought council and then wandered in with the heaviest heart. And just like God did with Jonah, when he repented, God was merciful. I went in there and told them that I wouldn't be able to fill my commitments and the pastors said we know. I was like what do you mean "you know"? God had prepared their hearts too. He had told them that I would leave and that eventually they would find someone to fulfill those commitments. I was in shock and was humbled. Sometimes I forget how Big God is! He had it all worked out. So I ended up at another great church and had to do the right thing and tell them I couldn't get involved in ministry for a year. And although it has been hard, I am actually learning to get my acceptance from God.

The second thing I was running from was my insecurity about being a mother. I had always wanted to be a mom, and when it finally happened I was scared out of my mind. Seeing how big of a mess I made with my life, I was sure that I would screw up Joslyn. I was so insecure that when I would take her out around people, anything they would say would knock down my security. "She sure spits up alot, is she colicky? She is kicking her legs a lot, she might be constipated." I was able to take little remote concerns and blow them out of preportion. Instead of trusting my instincts. I actually got to the point that I didn't want to take her around people because of the way I would feel for days after. Well, since I had moved too far from the people I knew, now I had to deal with my insecurities alone. Well that has not been easy. God brings in another whale. This whale is actually a person. She is a person in all honesty that I can't stand. It seemed like everywhere I went in this new town, she was there. Why can't I stand her? Because she personifies my insecurities. She is a struggling mom, I have this fear that people will see me as a struggling mom. When I see her I am drawn to the fact that she doesn't always put her child first, and I am so afraid that people will see my selfish side, that I won't always do the best for my child. She is an outsider, I am so afraid of being away from the crowd. I need that acceptance. So much so that I struggled with making sure that Joslyn always looked proper and when something would go wrong, Like a blow-out diaper, I would be disappointed in myself. She is sloppy, I am a closet slob. Only those who really know me know my mess. I will wear myself out making sure the place looks decent for visitors and not be able to enjoy their company. ETC...ETC. So slowly but surely I am facing these flaws of mine and having to learn compassion for her and me. We are not perfect and when we hide our flaws we give up that opportunity to have God fix them. Sometimes He shows us that our FLAWS are actually connections to others. When other people see our vulnerability, they let down their guard and God can come in. I think its better to be flawed and reach others for Christ than to pretend to be perfect and reach no one!

So the last Ninnevah in my life ( thing I was running from) was my finances. Or should I say my inability to control them. John and I have been running from our financial burdens since the moment we said I do. We fell into every pitfall that you can fall into finacially. Credit cards, home mortgages, refinance, loans, and finally bancruptcy. I thought that if we moved to Chickasha that we would actually be making a better change. Our rent went down substancially, but our fuel and wear on the cars went up. It didn't matter how much John worked, we never had money at the end of our month. Suddenly, we had diapers we had to buy, formula, baby food, and doctors expenses. Although I knew that money didn't grow on trees, I was used to a habit of spending money when we had it and not saving for the future. So God's whale for us was poverty. I don't mean true poverty, because even at our lowest moments we were still richer than most of the world. But I mean, not knowing where the money was coming from to pay the electricity bill, how we would buy baby food, and eating rice and beans. I had to learn how to make bread, because we didn't have any money to buy any. We accepted food from church and family, and I had to tell people that I couldn't go anywhere because we had to save the gas for John to get back and forth to work. PLEASE dont feel sorry for us! I am not telling you this to make you feel sorry for us. Everytime, we had to ask for help, or turn down going somewhere, God was humbling us. For the first time in my life I had to look fear of rejection in the eye and say it doesn't matter what people think of me. the love of money had always controlled me. I am so grateful!! The biggest thing is that my husband is right there with me. We rarely communicated about money, unless it was to fight about it. Most of the time, we didn't even fight about it, we just conceeded to each others wishes so that we wouldn't have to be the bad guy. So finally after 10 1/2 years marriage we are communicating about money. We also have a plan to learn how to handle money. I recomend Financial Peace University to everyone. We are learning how to make a budget, how to save and plan for the future. We also have both agreed that Joslyn will grow up knowning all that we have learned so that her future is not full of money mistakes. I will forever be grateful for the lessons that God has taught us during this time.

SO like Jonah, I ran away from the task that God had set before me. And I encountered hardship along the way that I probably would have avoided had I made the changes God's way. But because of God's grace and mercy he brought Jonah and me out of the whale and taught us valuable lessons. I know though that had Jonah not run from God, his story wouldn't have been in the Bible. God can use us, runners or not. Some of us have to encounter a few whales along the way, but it does make for a better story!