Peeking into the past and overcoming circumstances

Over the past couple of days, I have had occasion to go through the archives of my blog. I've written over 2,500 posts; it's taking a while.

The reason I'm doing so is because a while back, someone e-mailed me, asking me to link a series of posts where I share my testimony. While looking for them, I had to scan the archives, and in the process, I found I enjoyed skimming some of the old posts.

Doing this provided me with some very interesting insights.

First, my youngest son has writing skills living inside his teenage body. Honestly, some of the posts about him and his school work that I've read (I'm just starting to scan the 2006 entries) are absolutely hilarious. I have to tag them in case he becomes a writer some day. He enjoyed them, too. There was one post, in particular, celebrating his birthday, where I shared the reality of his bad hearing (it's improved now). He thought that his friend's house had a field of "sardine" behind it as opposed to a field of "soybeans." That was pretty funny.

Second, my daughter had questions about the authority of God's word even in 2005, but never articulated them. At one time, she had a blog of her own, and one day, I made a reference to a question she had posted there. It was a question about God's Word. Her questions -- which are not easy ones -- were fairly unexpressed at the time. I remember discussing them with her, but I don't know as if we realized that we had not sufficiently answered them. That just shows me (again!) that we have to continually foster dialogue with our teenagers about spiritual issues.

Third, I feel that my blog has become boring. I feel like in the past, I thought about things more, and wrote with more focus. I feel I have become very distracted. It made me kind of discouraged to see the contrast. It highlighted to me how hard it can become to be buried under circumstances. I have often found that I wanted to write more thoughtfully about something, started out trying to do so, only to have my mind pulled away with the reality of difficult circumstances.

I won't lie. Having teenagers is hard; harder than I thought it would be. As I read the older posts, it seems that I was much more optimistic about being the parents of teenagers when they were 11, 13, and 16. Since that time, we have had issues that have left me feeling rather battle-worn. I won't say that I feel despairing at the moment, but when I compare what I've written in the past to what I'm currently writing, I can see that I have allowed circumstances to weigh me down.

That is not a good thing.

Circumstances change, but God never does. If I've learned anything at all from reading and feasting on Scripture and systematic theology, it's that God does not change. I believe that fact in my head, but sometimes, it is hard to remember when we are in the midst of circumstances that have rocked our little worlds. I have been guilty of allowing the circumstances of my life (which, while painful, are not nearly as dire as what others live with) to burden me and cause me to lose focus.

Within these changing circumstances, i.e. teenagers, children at university, homeschooled children making the move to public school, there are lessons God is waiting to teach me. But it is hard to focus on what God is teaching when I struggle with the change itself. I don't do well with change; I never have. I guess that is why God gives it to me. He wants me to focus on Him through the change.

It is often daunting.

I felt a little sad yesterday as I scanned some of my older posts because I feel like I was more focused and stronger. If I was a stranger coming to this blog, and read the current entries for a few days, I think I'd be bored silly, or think I was a nut case.

Part of the sanctification process is enduring struggles and taking away lessons from those times. That involves looking up; I haven't always done that. I have struggled with maintaining a vertical vision rather than a horizontal one.

When my husband heard I was scanning my archives, the sassy fellow made a comment along the lines of "re-posting old material is the first step to quitting blogging." Wasn't that cheeky of him?

No, I'm not quitting blogging. But looking back is instructive. Not to pat my ego or cause me to feel bad, but to see where I have been and where I am going. What I write is so much a reflection of what's going on in my head and heart. It was good for me to see those old posts, not only for some good laughs at my 13 year old's sense of humour, but to see my need to keep looking up.