Heart Surgery

Before Thomas left for Siberia, I prayed something like this:

God, please help me to be diligent with my time. I want to go to bed at decent hours and get up before Isaiah so that I can read my Bible in the morning with as little distraction as possible. I know that if I am not disciplined to go to bed at night, then I won't make it in the morning. Please help me to do what I know I need to do.

And He did! Imagine that, God helping me to do something that I'm pretty sure brings honor to Him since it helps me obey. So first I want to publicly (sort of ) praise God for helping me to obey Him. I didn't mention this before or during Thomas' trip because I didn't want to try to keep this goal just because other people knew about it!

And the last 2 weeks have been pretty intense in reading and studying as well. In addition to regular reading through Galatians with the help of good ol' Luther, I also listened to several podcasts, usually by Mark Driscoll.

[Note: I realize that there is probably some controversy about Mark Driscoll and his style of preaching and teaching and such among some of my friends, but I must say that I have benefited greatly from some of his messages, so we'll just go on from there. I'd be happy to talk about him with you personally, but that's not the point of this post.]

So, I was listening to sermons from the series that he was preaching through I and II Peter, the Trial series at Mars Hill Church. I could recommend several of those sermons to you, but rather than going into details here, I'll just tell you some basic principles that the Holy Spirit is applying to my heart (hence the title Heart Surgery because that's what it feels like today).

Pride--that pretty much sums it up actually, though it plays out in different areas.

• How do I take correction? Um, yeah, that's a whole post in itself! Can we say DEFENSIVE! Not a good sign when you want to grow in humility.
• Can I lovingly agree to disagree with someone over nonessential issues? This might be a little bit better than the first, but I can't always discuss this very well at all.
• Submitting to my husband? Ok, again this could be another post, and actually this is where I'm going to camp for the rest of this post (so no more bullet points)

While Thomas was away I was responsible for planning what our days and weeks would be like. How would we fill our time? What would we eat? Where would we go? When would I go to bed and get up? You get the idea, you're smart people.

Now Thomas is back. I'm thrilled! I love having my husband home! But I'm not in charge any more. (Not that I really was to begin with, but it sort of felt that way.) Now I don't just consider what I want to do or when I want to do it, since of course Isaiah just wants to go outside all the time, he doesn't really contribute to the rest of the decisions being made.

Let me see if I can explain this better. I think that my husband makes good decisions and leads our family well. My discontent is certainly not with him personally. Oh no, it's much worse than that. I feel myself being discontent with the role in which God has placed me as wife, the one who obeys her husband who's obeying God (and therefore she's obeying God). Again, Thomas has never ever "lorded it over" me in any way. He's a wonderful, gentle and supportive leader. But there's that whole curse after the first sin thing. Part of women's curse is to want to rule over their men. And I really feel that right now.

I find myself thinking Why does he want to do it that way? Humph, I could do it so much better! And other such foolishness.

And God is working on my heart. I'm excited to realize that I can worship God in my every day activities because I have been regenerated (see previous post). Now I'm learning (again and again and again for the rest of my life) how I can worship God by fulfilling my role as a wife and mother. I am learning about respecting and following my husband, even when he's not around!

I am learning to be content with the position that God has created for me, to be who He created me to be, and to enjoy it! I'm sure that I'll post on this again from different angles, but I wanted to get some of this out of my head and receive feedback if you'd like to give it.