Today is my birthday . . .

And I turn 41.  I had all these plans for the year of the fortieth.  Some of it was the usual garden variety stuff, like lose a ton of weight, yell less, spend less, forgive certain people (for real this time) and become a mega volunteer. My other goals were more serious and spiritual in nature.  I wanted to get to know God intimately, to pray and study everyday, to grow in patience for the sake of my boys and to become a better Christian as an example for my unbelieving husband.

I thought these plans were well laid because the year of the fortieth was also a big transitional year for me.  My youngest son would be joining his older brother at school by attending full day kindergarten (the best thing ever invented aside from sliced bread).  I would have all this time!  I could finally become that Super Mom that I just knew was residing underneath all that real mom stuff.

Ha.

To be perfectly honest, those first few weeks after school started I was lost.  With no one to parent, no one watching me, no one around . . . I found myself in bed, a lot.  I don’t suffer from depression usually and I’m a big self-starter.  I love a clean house and I love to cook.  Grocery shopping (without kids of course) is no big deal.  I am a natural homemaker so this lack of drive and lethargic attitude was alarming to say the least.

Then add my loving husband to the equation, who came home every night those first few weeks with the most dreaded of all questions on his sweet lips, ‘What did you do today?’  Um, ‘Laid in bed’, is not exactly the response you should give a hard working man after a long day at the office, so I evaded those questions as best I could by getting angry and defensive.

Just to help you understand my head space at that time, here is an excerpt from my diary dated August 26, 2013:

I’m miserable.  Imagine reading Shane Claiborne’s The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical while sitting in a smoky Las Vegas lounge as a sea of people wash up around you with all their own palpable misery.  We need God so badly and we need a better way desperately.  But I am not ready to deal with the “we” part yet.  I need to figure out “me” first.  I need to re-evaluate where my life is headed and how I can make some drastic changes.

Here is an inventory of my misery; over weight by at least twenty-five pounds (a result of sin; gluttony, emotional turmoil), distant in my relationship with God (tangled, misguided priorities), plugged into the world’s economy instead of trading it for God’s (materialism at its fullest), lacking in love for the better part of mankind (how can you love others when you clearly do not love yourself?), not having a servant’s heart (if its all about me I am not even noticing what you need), not having enough patience to treat the ones I love the most with respect and kindness (unhappiness will do that to you).  Over all, I seem to be lacking in the fruits of the Spirit.  I need to engage the Holy Spirit and find myself made new in Jesus.

Well, that’s all fine and good but I’ve tried to change all this before.  I’ve been on countless diets, I’ve made vows not to spend, I’ve tried to treat the kids better and show love to the people around me but it must never actually reach my heart because I tend to find myself back at what I would consider to be square one . . . the first day of the rest of my life . . . again.  I am weary of these false starts and scared of not finishing the race.  So, I need to re-evaluate my strategy. 

Yeah, I was a mess.  When I finally got my feet on the ground (literally), I decided to come up with a game plan.  I heard someone once say that goals without a plan are just dreams.  I needed to get me some plans made.  My plans went like this; pray first and always, allow humanity to break my heart and consciously climb down the ladder of what the world would call success to practice being the least.  Hopefully, I will then find myself in a genuine place of change. A couple of things I know; God will do the changing in me, I just need to surrender these areas to Him.  I know I can do NOTHING with out Him and boy do I know that first hand.

Here’s the deal, I will not move unless God prompts me to.  I will pray and wait on Him for all things.  I will keep my eyes on Him throughout my day and keep up with His Word daily to hear from Him.  I will also continue to read the many Christian books that come my way because I get a lot of encouragement, guidance and perspective from them.  I am turning into a learner again and as I learn new things I am realizing that I need to unlearn just as much.

My spirit word for the year 2014 is SEEK.  Therefore, desperatelyseekingsally.com is born appropriately on my flesh birthday but hopefully born of a spiritual nature.  I guess as of today I would say that I am a woman seeking God amidst a hectic life as a wife, stay-at-home mom, homemaker, friend and fellow sinner.  A woman who acutely feels the pressures of the world but who also has an overwhelming desire to dump the world and serve only Jesus. I’m a woman who struggles with duplicity, who must get up every morning with fresh hope and a fresh start or just plain give up.  But for me, giving up is not an option.  I am “all in” with no back up plan.  All my eggs are in the Jesus basket and I am very comfortable with that, even though there is a lot of learning and unlearning that needs to be done.

This is my journey and my struggle, my joy and my pain.  I hope to be as transparent as possible so please remember that I don’t have all the answers either and that I am not perfect by any stretch of the imagination.  God is definitely not finished with me but instead He is working me over using mundane, ordinary circumstances, normal children, difficult people and an average marriage.  Does this sound like you too?  Then join me and let’s do this thing together.