Temperance

As I work through (and boy, do I need to take it all in slowly) Mere Christianity I found Uncle C.S was writing the words of my heart.

"One great piece of mischief has been done by the modern restriction of the work Temperance to the question of drink.  It helps people to forget that you can be just as intemperate about lots of other things.  A man who makes golf or his motor-bicycle the centre of his life, or a woman who devotes all her thoughts to clothes or bridge or her dog, is being just as 'intemperate' as someone who gets drunk every evening.  Of course, it does not show on the outside as easily: bridge-mania or golf-mania do not make you fall down in the middle of the road.  But God is not deceived by externals." 

C.S. Lewis

First off... I am an idiot and do not think drink when I see the word TEMPERANCE... I think of the character on Bones, but maybe that's a personal problem and an issue I will deal with in the week I give up TV.  

It is that last phrase that, God is not deceived by externals, that frightens me and calms me all at once.  This week I am giving up sweets, treats, and extras.  It's a little cliche but I am glad it is where I am starting because it is making me aware of the moment.  Making me aware of my own hunger, my own needs, my own life.  When I threw in "extras" I was pretty vague with myself.  I now know that for me it is all those moments I feel something and decide to turn to food to feed it.  Joy.  Fear.  Anxiety.  Love.  I feed each with carbs and chocolate.  Target also fell into the world of extras.  Don't ask me how, but you probably get it... roaming those clearance end-caps lets me turn off the world and escape.  I've found that as life has gotten crazier the Target charges have gotten more frequent.  But a little extra chub and lots of Target bags are par for the course for a new mom.  I'm not falling in the street drunk.  I'm buying cheap groceries and clearance linens so to the world I just look like another mom sucking down her soy latte decorating her house.  

But God is not deceived by externals.

I know that God laughs at it, that She rubs my back and says, "Nice try, Emily, but no clearance end-cap is going to fill that hole.  Just invite me in a little more often.  Sit with me.  Feel that hunger and react to it don't feed it.  It's a comfort to me that God is not deceived by my armor.  It comforts me that I can't trick God in to thinking I've got it all together or that I know what I'm doing.  It's freedom.  It's knowing that it is okay to be hungry.  It is okay to feel like being a mom is just the hardest most beautiful thing that you can't handle and want more of all at the same time.  It is okay when you don't have the right words for that students or you have to tell their parents a hard truth that will be good for them in the long run... promise.  It is okay to be lost and question and celebrate and know all at the same time.

Just

BE

BE LOVE & 

BE BELOVED.

I find true calm when I dwell in the knowledge of being fully known, loved, and celebrated by my Creator.  That to be fully loved, to be beloved, I don't need to change a thing but I need to simply BE, and more often than not I need to just BE STILL and stop running from the powerful love of the one who can love me perfectly.  

So today I say 

thank you 

thank you 

thank you 

to my fellow lay minister and anglo/episco friend C.S. Lewis for speaking the words that ring true in my heart today and reminding me that even when the world may be fooled, our God is not deceived by externals!