Day 2

Okay, so technically it’s just 6 minutes since I stopped writing Day 1, but it is now Day 2, so I can start a new post! As I write, I’m sitting at our cousin’s house in Tacoma, after being gone from home for 10 days while James has had face-to-face time in Portland for seminary. I love these trips on so many different levels, and this time was no exception. But I have a lot of jumbledness in my brain, probably because of a lack of routine, so I’m going to write things down in list form to try to make sense of thoughts I’ve had prior to and while on this particular trip:

- Gift of health
- Story of redemption
- Frailty of life
- Smallness of the world, especially among believers
- I hate my car
- Immature faith communities
- Discipleship- messy, slow, misunderstood, and ignored
- Treadmill
- To work or not to work
- Gymnastics team
- Stages of the journey
- Biggest loser
- Flag page
- “7”- round two
- Ice packs
- Slavery and human trafficking
- Connections
- Tattoo
- Furthering relationships with M, S, R, L, C
- Kitchen makeover
- Courage
- CYT and camp
- Selfishness
- Trappings of cyclical poverty and ignorance
- Co-op or no co-op
- Children, both mine and others

After thinking on this list today, (it's now 11 pm again), I keep coming back to the idea of steward vs. consumer . . . I know, random, and seemingly not at all related to the above, but then you've never been in my brain! Very simply, a steward is an administrator while a consumer is one who squanders. I believe I am responsible to be an administrator with what God has entrusted to me rather than be a squanderer . . . but am I? Obviously I want to be. No one walks through this journey of life asking for things or acknowledging their things so they can turn around and exhaust, deplete, devour, or waste them (all synonyms for consume). No, we'd much rather hear that we managed, oversaw, had concern for, and were responsible with the things given to our care (all synonyms for steward). So I need to take a deep gut-check look at whether I really manage the things in my life well or whether I actually consume them. And by things in my life, a partial list includes: kids, hubby, home, God, stuff, food, family, friends, neighborhood, education, dog, cars, community, creation, church, people, talents, money, ministry, . . . and it could go on and on.

So, this is going to be my focus during Lent. I'm going to "give up" my rights of consuming (which is so prevalent in America AND the church), and I'm going to take a good hard look at what it means to be a steward and what it means to be a consumer, then apply what I learn to different areas of my life. I'm going to actively see what God has to say about it. I've heard for years what others have to say (or not say) and frankly, I'm tired of everyone else's opinions. I want to go to the Source, because He's the one who gave me all the "stuff" anyway. Hopefully by the end, I'll have some sort of grid in which I filter my life through so that the jumbledness that is my mind, is maintained and administrated well by this steward, rather than destroyed and exhausted by this consumer. Maybe if that happens, the things that occupy my space and thinking and priorities will become things that have great "Kingdom of God" value rather than "Kingdom of Abby" value.