Color Me New

It has been such a life changing experience being married(and it has only been a few months!) Being married challenges you in many ways but two for me in particular. The first is that is shows me who and how I really am. I thought I was such a good person before XD Now it is like seeing my true reflection for the first time.  I see my true desires, my selfishness, my deepest hurts, my longings. And these things do not just affect only me now. The second thing is becoming one with someone. I never fully understood what it meant when the Bible says "the two will become one" Even at the wedding those words still rang a little hollow, but I understand now. When two people become one it is no longer MY hurt feelings, it is ours. If I am self conscious or demeaning or hurtful I am not just hurting myself I am also hurting James because we are one. And likewise for him. When one of us is damaged we are both damaged. If  I have negative thoughts or use hurtful words or mistreat my body I am also doing all of those things to James. That is a hugely sobering thought. No wonder those few who learn to truly become one with someone are such amazing Christians. They have been tested by fire and emerged still being one. The ugliness of divorce become even more horrible after being married because you realize that because you are one person there is no way to separate two people who have become one without painfully destroying the other person. There is no way to make it 50/50. Someone will always pull away with more and both people will forever carry scars and pain. Marriage is so much more powerful than I realized.

Color Me Alive.

There seems to be more going on in the world now than ever. You cannot get away from the news and there is never anything good in it. I choose not to even listen to it in any form because you can never believe even half of what it says. I was reminded Sunday of how much suffering there is. There is staggering amounts of pain, sickness, hurts, and injustice. All of this goes on every second and yet we obsess ourselves with our little problems. We riot, petition, and cry injustice about gun laws, security, and lack of freedom, but in looking only at ourselves we purposefully ignore the true injustice going on all around us. America is just as lost as India. Europe needs the Gospel as desperately as Africa. We live in a culture consumed only by our own  wants, but this is not what Jesus suffered for. We could have pursued all of these things regardless of whether he died on the cross or not. How, especially can we as Christians pour so much of our time and money and resources into getting our wants and trying to make our own lives as comfortable and self interested as possible when in doing so we almost literally have to step over people headed for eternal separation from the only thing that matters? Maybe I will always have the government watching my every move? Good! Maybe in monitoring my every word and move they will experience the Gospel. Maybe I will never be able to carry a weapon. It only shows that only Jesus is my true protection. We want so much to be the keeper of our own lives with safety and security and resources and yet when those resources run dry then we want to turn to Jesus our back up plan. But only when all else fails us. This is not true Christianity. I do not care to have a safe, financially secure, passive life. Not when I hear the hearts of the rest of the world crying in my head to have this same Salvation that I have. I can never forget what Salvation tasted like for me when I felt it. It was the sweetest thing I have ever known. I cannot forget how it felt to once be lost and hopeless without a purpose or reason to live. Now I have both a reason to live and a longing for the life that follows. Death no longer exists for me, only a new life to follow this one.