Just A Little Post ... no, wait, a long rambly one.

some ramblings for you ...

Sometime this month is my Knittiversary ... I started knitting October 2006! Maybe I'll do a short summary of what I've knit in this first year.

Speaking of knitting ... that 2nd hat? I got to the end, where I should divide the stitches into 3 groups and kitchener them together and do the icord ends, when I changed my mind. Yes, me, winging it. I'm sure you're shocked and appalled. I decided to divide into three, but do each third onto three dpns and knit points, decreasing every other row. I'm trying to keep up with the waffle pattern, but the decreases make it confusing, so I'm ... erm ... winging the waffle pattern now. We'll see how it turns out.

Many deep thoughts rolling around in my head. One of them revolves around something I heard in a sermon a few weeks ago ... that the worst thing that could happen to a Christ-following believer who listens to a false teacher is that they'd lose their joy as they turned to trusting in something other than Christ. Now I don't really think I've followed any false teachers ... I do think that some of the things I've tried to do in my walk, that began as heartfelt obedience to Christ's grace, have become ... have ... weighed me down and become my focus, although not my hopes of redemption ... and that they are, perhaps, in part why I've lost the joy in my walk with Christ.

There's a lot more rolling around with that thought, but I don't want to start bawling and typing and typing and bawling. So we'll leave it at that.

Wait, no, apparently I'm rambling on. Go figure. :-)

~ I have struggled with feeling joyless, knowing I should feel joy, and not sure why not. And I think, in part, perhaps in whole, it is because I need to reclaim Christ as my "first love" and re-claim the understanding that all things come down to Christ and His mercy. To the cross and what He's done for me.

By way of analogy, I thought the other day that I felt a little like I've been clinging to the face of a cliff. At the moment, how I got there doesn't matter as much as what next. I've always been a quitter when it comes to athletic events, and I have no real desire to go rock climbing. As a teen I had a chance to rock climb and repel and I remember standing at the top of the repelling cliff being frozen in terror. I remember the instructors reminding me what to do, how to start, and me thinking I was going to do it, but my body just wouldn't. I couldn't move. I remember the instructors starting to get a little frustrated with me because I just wouldn't start down.

I feel like God feels that way about me. I believe with all my heart that He's there with me as I hang on that cliff. I know He holds the ropes secure and I won't fall to my death. I know I'm secure in Him. And yet ... I'm frozen, not sure what to do next. I'm sure He's there telling me where to put my hands and feet.

Maybe I've been listening too much to other people. Maybe I've been so scared that I can't make out what He's saying. The Bible tells me that His sheep know His voice, and it troubles me that when I need it most, hanging on the side of a cliff, weary and frozen with helplessness, that I can't hear the simple step-by-step instructions He would surely be giving. Does he want me to let go, reach up so he can catch me? Does he want me to move a hand or foot this way or that, and He'll coach me up step by step? Why am I having trouble hearing the next step, much less acting on it?

After I rambled about that in my journal I asked Him for that one next move. The ONE thing I needed to hear / do ...

and He pointed me to an article about the core of our walk being the cross of Christ. Remembering that all things come down to that.

I'm still trying to figure out what that means to me, to make that the center of all I do, all I process ... yet another concept I comprehend intellectually but am not sure how to apply. But it rings true that I've drifted from that. I mean, I still know and believe that, but I haven't been LIVING with the cross of Christ at the center.

Bring me back to that, Lord, teach me how to live with the cross of Christ at the center of who I am and what I do.