Faith in the Dream

As you may have read earlier, I bristled for more reasons than one when I read Janel’s email that told me the new theme was going to be “Living the Dream.” What caused that bristle?
Rather than eat lunch with my boss, I told him I was feeling a little edgy and needed to go take a walk and clear my head. I needed to talk to God about where these emotions were coming from. Clearly something was amuck in my heart or I wouldn’t have reacted as I did. So I rattled off some possible reasons and waited for the voice of God to confirm the right reason… He never quite answers the way I want him too!

Well, one reason that came up was the fact that I am still single at 32. I am pretty far from living the dream I conjured up when I was 5 years old playing in my Holly Hobby kitchen. I am little bit more like Abraham waiting for a son than I am the Israelites finally walking into the Promised Land. Yet, I look at my life and the opportunities that have come my way to travel, teach and to be involved with precious people who I might not of known or grown close to if I was married and I think it could be worse.

It seems I am more prone to look at what I don’t have, rather than take notice and truly appreciate the dreams that have come true. Case in point: While wrestling with the fact that a particular man that I have loved for a long time is just not for me, I came to realize that the dreams I dreamed for him and about him really had come true. When I was sixteen I wanted him to kiss me so bad! When I was 26, I wanted him to appreciate me for who I was becoming, and I wanted him get off the road to self destruction. And in the last year and half I got all three: kisses, deep appreciation and to see him get off that wretched road. I guess that’s nothing to be too disappointed in.

See dreams do come true, they just don’t always look like you thought they would. Maybe that’s why they are so hard to see sometimes. Usually when they do come true, they are just not satisfying enough after all, which I think is a mark of fallen humanity. After all the Israelites were always right around the corner from the Promised Land, but they couldn’t get there in by the most likely route.

The route that leads us to our dreams can leave some people dead on the roadside. Yeah, I had crows picking at me. Honestly I didn’t talk to Janel for a couple days because I was so ticked off about this theme because “Living the Dream” was just so painful too me at the time. I felt like the theme was mocking me and my pain and that I was hypocrite for wanting to live like God is going to make my dreams comes true, but not really believing that he will deliver. Bitterness and hope cannot coexist together.

You either choose bitterness and accept that your dreams won’t come true or you choose hope and expect that they will, but they may not look like you imagined. Today I choose to hope - that’s truly how you live the dream.

Yup, we're back in the saddle.

I've spent the last week catching up on 3 years worth of CWP administrative work. I've gone through more than 400 email, over 8 dozen submitted articles, almost 50 author bios, updated the spreadsheet that keeps our i's dotted and t's crossed, as well as plodded through more web code changes than I care to look at in the next month. God is good. I got it all accomplished in about 9 hours with less then a dozen interruptions from two little people under 6 who needed Mommy's help. That in itself tells me the Lord is at work here!

I know some of you have been wondering why we haven't published monthly like we did during 1999-2001. The last several years have been patchy at best. I know we've lost readers and have authors who gave up on us, even though we (still) have every intention of publishing them. There's been a couple reasons.

First, in the last 4 years, I had Baby #4 and moved cross country twice while homeschooling and doing normal mommy things. Although Baby #3 was the one who taught me I didn't know anything about parenting, Baby #4 challenged every shred of order I thought I had, not to mention every ounce of energy. God taught me great lessons surrounding these events, especially the 5 months I was parted from my dear hubby while he looked for a new home on the East coast and worked at his new job. I found out just how much I don't walk on water and I needed a priority revamp. One of those was cutting back on ministry.

Secondly, it's not commonly known that I've lived with chronic health issues for years now. Although I've pursued multiple avenues for finding a diagnoses and cure, it wasn't until January of this year when all the symptoms intersection at once and we had an a-ha moment. Our 2 year stay in the Fargo ecosystem compounded my symptoms and made my fatigue almost unbearable some days. At this point, I'm well on my way to full recovery and praising God every for step! I still have days of fatigue, but nothing that can't be handled with an early bedtime.

Ultimately though, it's been a time of learning and spiritual growth for me. God has been helping me hone my understanding of him, the church, ministry, what believers need to know and a dozen other things. All in all, it's been a exercise in humility. I've learned how much I don't know about God, how I can't single handedly fix the church's problems or mentor the world. Yes, I've almost learned to enjoy humble pie. Well, maybe only on alternate Tuesdays...

In the meantime, Liz has been doing an incredible job corresponding with our authors and keeping the admin work to a minimum for me. I couldn't do it without her. Right now I'm working on a more efficient way of handling incoming articles so the burden doesn't fall on either of us exclusively.

Please pray for us over the coming weeks as I add the issue archives and work on rebuilding the bookstore. We have some wonderful articles that haven't been online for several years. I can't wait to share them with our newer readers!

Please note as well, that I'm going to be doing a lot of behind the scenes code updating so those who are signed up might get extra ChangeAlarm alerts. I'll try to keep editing the main page to a minimum, but their will be extra messages. Thanks for your patience!

The Beginning

When you publish 4 times a year, 12 to 14 articles only go so far. Liz and I have realized this for awhile. Life only has so many hours and extra CWP issues have been crowded out by dinner, school work, moving, dirty toilets and other day to day life things. By adding a blog, we hope to be in touch more often and in a more personal, yet meaningful and motivational way.

A blog is a great way to share behind the scenes details that don't show up in the magazine. Things like, Liz didn't want to talk to me for 2 days when I told her I felt God wanted us to publish an issue with the theme of "Living the Dream." She did battle with God about why she felt that way, settled it and we're still good friends.

Or the tidbit about when I realized the impact of what dreams are all about. The opening line of God Finally Reached My Husband by Muriel Larson, "I had no idea that Saturday in October that my daily prayer for 24 years was about to answered" made everything jell. Although difficult, Vera Clark was living a dream each day of those 24 long years she prayed for her husband. Her dream was to see her husband saved. Having it finally happen was icing on the cake!

Most of all, we're not stuffy editors who live perfect Christian lives. We're human and have faults enough to convince anyone in our acquaintance! We just want to encourage you to get back in the saddle if the 'horse' of life has bucked you off. We hope to share pictures and thoughts that will do just that. Who knows what you might find here in the coming months... In the meantime, enjoy the latest issue!

You're very human CWP Editor,
Janel

What is living with passion and love?

Living with passion and love for Jesus Christ is the mission of The Christian Woman's Page. It sounds wonderful! It's what every Christian should long to achieve. But what does that look like in real life? How do you live it? Pretty good questions huh? Have you ever thought about that yourself?

For me, living with passion and love for Jesus means that you start consciously choosing to do what Christ would have you. No matter how hard, gut wrenching or easy, you put your heart into your best effort to do what is Biblically correct as you understand it at the time. Now that doesn't mean just because you want to you're immediately going to succeed. And it doesn't mean you're going to be right either, but it means you have done, to the best of your ability, what you thought God was calling you to do. Being passionate and loving also includes being humble. That's often the hard part.

Being humble means that when God reveals truth to us, we graciously admit we were wrong and then move forward. For some, humility is the hardest thing they will ever accomplish. I know for me humility didn't come easy - not that I have a corner on the market even now. Some weeks I feel like I'm living more of the Galatians 5:19-21 life. You know the one that Paul condemns? {sigh} But we all grow in grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit transforms us. If we're making the effort to grow and seek him, God will honor that. Within weeks, months or years, we'll be able to see the flaws in our previous thinking and make better choices, balanced with more grace and truth.

God knows I've failed more times than I care to admit, but it was a start. More importantly it was honest. We are sinful, but God meets us where we are and leads us to where he wants and needs us to be. We will fail, we will succeed. All God wants is our very best effort with a heart that longs to serve him. When we give that, it is passion and love.