my thinking...

So yesterday as I watched our son bounce around on the bouncey thing at the indoor winter fair, I got to thinking how so often I question my faith and yet the moment someone doubts it I'm very quick to defend it.

Seems a bit of a dichotomy to me.

Talked abit about that with hubby and he said...but you are like most folks who question their faith. They don't question what they believe in, they question their own personal faith. and it's like...its so true. Somehow I always wonder if maybe I'm fooling myself. If what I think is personal faith in God is just somehow...not really.

I see how often I fail in my faith. I don't pray enough, I don't delve into God's word enough, I'm easily distracted at church at the best of times and now having a child to mind doesn't help, I don't do enough for other folks, I don't witness enough and so forth. I struggle so much with sin in my life. If I fail in all that...then how can my faith really be real? Make sense?

So it's a bit of a conundrum. My faith is often it seems the size of a mustard seed, which God tells me is sufficient, and yet God's word also tells me that faith is active and moving and such like.

Anyways, these thoughts possess me.

I offended my dog.....

Yes, I did.

I totally offended her.

Instead of spending 45$ to get her professionally groomed I decided I could do this myself. (boy the confidence of the unproven).

First I bought some clippers for about $50.
Then I warned her. :) yeah..like that tells her anything. :)
Then I gave her a good brush out and CUT out the worst of her tangles and brushed her some more, all the time warning her that this wasn't the end of it. :)
Then I gave her a bath. AND made her stay clean. (she wanted to roll in the dirt, and hide under the canoe) She was offended.
Then I walked her so she could get good and dry. By then the urge to roll subsided and the heat dissipated a bit so no more canoe hiding.
Then I started to clip her.

NOTE: I have NEVER clipped a dog before in my life.

NOTE: it didn't take Sassy long to figure this out.

After hitting snag number three Sassy bailed on me permanently. She left the main floor of the house, she HID in the basement. I found her, and said, okay lass, here's a cookie, you are a good girl. We're all done. She forgave me... but not the clippers. Evil eye they got! We called it quits for the night.

IN the morning, I'd had time to rethink my approach. I scissored the nasty areas.
THEN I clipped very slowly and from different angles.

She's shorter (in the hair).
She's trimmer (not neatly though).

I made some errors, which hopefully I won't repeat next time. :)

AND we survived.

My neighbours (Bob and Audrey) both said you can tell she's been clipped, doesn't look too bad! :) Aren't they gracious folks? :)

I should take a picture... but it's late at night and I'm not convinced this girlie will pose for me at this hour. and the lights not good now anyways. :)

Anger part two

Okay, now that I got the whole anger thing out of my system, I have to admit, getting angry left me with a feeling of...okay...I"m angry...this is not a good thing. And that I thought to myself, is anger such a bad thing?

I get angry. Sometimes it seems like it doesn't take much to make me angry.

But as I thought about it (it was a good way for me to keep my mouth shut during coffeebreak), I realized something important I think. Anger makes me change. It spurs me on to change something in
1. what I am doing
2. what I am thinking
3. how I communicate with others

For instance. I HATED how my devotional and spiritual life was going. I felt disconnected from God... but hey...lived without changing, until one day I got good and mad inside myself...and started journaling during devotions. That didn't help with accountability though, and I wanted/needed some way to be accountable. Jim was pushing me a bit do a blog. Thought it would be a good thing for me.

So I started a blog. Just family stuff at first.

Still hadn't figured an accountability thing out though and was feeling frustrated about that. That somehow leads to me feeling angry about it, so thought to use my blog as a way to develop some accountability. Is it a real accountability? Well, not really. No one calls me on it if I skip a day, but it's visible to me. I know that my hubbie reads my blog which forces me to think before I write, because I do want to think about what I read, and what I write is usually what I think.

So anger changes things. It changes how I act toward my family (cause I get angry when I act in ways I think/know/am learning aren't as biblical as they should be). Forces to think of alternatives, or to figure out how to do things so I don't feel annoyed about whatever, forces me to have an "attitude check" when I need one, forces me to say GOD HELP!

So here I've gone from thinking of anger as an enemy and something to be avoided at all costs (meaning bury it within, lie about, and don't discuss it), to thinking of it as something that can be used as a vehicle of change. Hmm..... interesting that.

Gives me more to think about.