#Forever grateful

The Advent photo challenge word for Christmas Day was #Forever. 

The first thing that came to mind was the phrase that repeats in Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus,” that “He shall reign #forever and ever.” Christ reigns in Love. Christ was God’s gift of Love. God, Christ and Love are eternal. Alpha & Omega, beginning and end. #Forever. 

The image I envisioned was something with a cross and a heart. It was harder than I expected to find the two images together, without having to worry about copyrights; dare I say it seemed to take #forever? As far as i can tell, what I found was available free on Unsplash.com.

A less spiritual concept of #forever for today was how long it will take me to see and respond to all the Christmas greetings I received from friends!! 

I decided to post just the cross and heart image for the challenge, then do this blog post with “the rest of the story.” 

Beware: The story that resulted may take #forever to tell, and I’m unlikely to finish it here. In fact, I’m self-censoring as I write!

I’m realizing it may take #forever for me to figure out what or who God created me to do and be: and where I fit in to His plans and my surroundings. 

I recently began to try to take ownership of how I am — the way my brain works (and doesn’t); and that I think too much (over analyze) and talk a lot. 

Worse yet, it became clear that part of my excessive talking happens as I’m overanalyzing. Apparently, not many people care to hear the mess in my mind that I’m sorting out.

This would be great information for me to have, except for one problem: When I don’t do the talking (or writing) to explain myself, including my thought process, I’m often misunderstood. That also happened today. (There’s actually another problem, too, but I’ll skip that for now.)

Good news is I owned it — I said, yes, it’s how I am. And I said I’m grateful for people who understand and-or don’t mind listening. (Although the second thoughts are likely to return for a while as I ponder: Maybe the ones I thought understand or don’t mind listening are really just putting up with me out of pity!!!). 

Self-doubt was triggered again when I was questioned about why I posted to social media several of the photos taken trying to capture a single image. I had my reasons, but I did not explain them in the post. 

I posted 8 or 9 photos because I couldn’t decide; plus, I wanted to be sure others in the photos could pick the ones they liked the best. Of course, I had debated this in my mind a few minutes, trying to avoid posting so many. And I was tempted to explain why I did. But I ended up just posting at the time, trying to cut off the excessive thinking. 

So, it seems like I can’t win. Because I’m also sure, if I had just posted one, someone would not have liked my choice. 

So, I guess some of the takeaways are that I can’t please everyone and sometimes seem unable to please anyone. Maybe that’s what it will take to  eventually accept that I might as well not worry about pleasing others, and instead just be me and trust God with the results!

But that may take #forever!

(And as the writer/talker keeps on going, I’ll add that I know I’m doing in this post exactly what others have pointed out is problematic. And on top of that, it’s Christmas. I wanted to stay focused on Christ and love: It’s not about me; it’s about Him! And so, once more and #forever, I cling with humble gratitude to God’s grace and love.) 

#rethinkchurch #GoodrichAdvent2020 #umcRethinkChurch #unitedmethodistchurch #ComfortsofChristmas2020