In Which Sheila is Still Shouting "Grace, Grace!"

I saw this sign in front of a detox center for legalist women...not really, but it could be true.

Tim and I love the law of God, as given through Moses. It is the legalist who is anti-law; because she insists on her own understanding of the law, she ends up misunderstanding God's law, misapplying the law, which is, in fact, to be anti-law.

Friends, to truly love the law of God is more than a mere sentiment. It is more than reading the Old Testament and feeling good about it. To truly love God's law, is to invest significant time investigating it, understanding it, and being vigilant to communicate it accurately, and apply it Biblically.

Anything short of that, is sloppy scholarship, anemic passion, and misguided stubborness that masquerades as love for God's law, and that is to be a practicing antinomian, no matter what your creed is.

The law is good when used lawfully, the Bible says. Tim and I are completely passionate about the lawful use of something so precious and potentially powerful as the law. Therefore, we are to be counted amongst those who love God's law. Legalists do not actually love God's law at all - if you are even able to get past all the scholarly sounding rhetoric, you will find that legalists only love their own perceived performance of the law. The parts of the law they have been able to keep make them feel holy. They perceive God's blessings that have been in fact given to them unearned and undeserved - as being contingent upon their own "higher standard"...their own higher level of personal holiness. The law makes a legalist feel better about themselves, and definitely makes them feel better than you.

So tell me. Which person actually loves the law? The legalist? Or the grace-girl? (or grace-guy...whichever.)

See the difference? Hands down, no further discussion, the grace-girl is the one who actually and passionately loves the law of God, because she has carefully studied and zealously guarded the intent of the law, as communicated by God, both old covenant and new.

I use the female gender simply because "I are one" - and because to get the women using the law lawfully, is to get half the church using the law lawfully. Historically, there have been powerful women who have passionately supported the gospel of grace...and "devout" women who have stubbornly opposed the gospel of grace.

There ain't nothin' new under the sun. I've seen it before, with my own eyes. A woman with a firm superiority complex becomes a willing tool of religious spirits, and that woman will oppose all emphasis on grace. (At the very heart of it, this is exactly why Paul and Barnabas were opposed...)

Acts 13 says this, "But the Jews stirred up the devout and prominent women and the chief men of the city, raised up persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them from their region."

Yeah, I want to talk to the women. You better believe I do. Girlfriend, you can choose to be "devout and prominent" or you can be the righteousness of God in Christ - but you can't mix legalism and gospel. Every time you do, you will end up expelling others "from your region" - usually, in our age of propriety, you'll do it by being the one to leave.

Here is the sort of devout woman I want to be:

"Then Paul, as his custom was, went in to them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures...And some of them were persuaded; and a great multitude of the devout Greeks, and not a few of the leading women, joined Paul and Silas. But the Jews who were not persuaded, becoming envious...attacked." (Acts 17)

Throughout history, for every devout legalista, God has raised up a leading grace-girl. I so want to be the grace-girl. I want to be persuade-able, tender towards the Gospel. I want to be God's woman, not my own version of God's woman.

(Which means, I will actively support the Pauls and Silases in my life, but that's another topic altogether...Jezebel cannot give honor where it is due, and she certainly can't stop controlling the men in her life, and she will ultimately never keep her mouth shut. She's convinced that she knows more.)

Oh my. I think I'll stop now. I've riled enough religion as it is. Few things are scarier than a woman who is devout for all the wrong reasons, who is unpersuade-able, and envious of the powerful women who embrace the grace message of the gospel.

I sort of understand. I'd envy me, too...not that I'm "powerful", but God certainly gives me every good thing I haven't earned and do not deserve.

In Which Sheila Declares

...that Joy Baher and Whoopie Goldberg are Christian-hating, screeching dolts who don't know what they are talking about....over-emotional, unreasonable women who don't know half of what they think they know.

This is one time that, if you have no idea what I am talking about, I am going to tell you to Google it.  Google "The View" and "Bill O'Reilly".

Just watch.  See what I'm talking about.  Gah.  I never watch The View.  It would be knowingly killing off my own brain cells to watch that show.  But I saw the segment with Bill O'Reilly on Fox News tonight.

Wooooooow.  Can you say "morons"?  Oh-em-gee, (I can't even do those phone text abbreviations when I TRY to do them) give those women some medication.

They do make medication for that sort of thing.

5 Tips for Beating Fatigue. No, I'd rather call this - Dime Day, in which Sheila Gives Her Two Cents, Five Times...

I am reluctant to call this post "5 Tips for Beating Fatigue".  Why, I don't know.  It sounds too all-knowing, I suppose.  So, this is "dime day".  This is where I give you my "two cents worth" - five thoughts, worth two cents apiece equals a dime.

I've read many articles about overcoming tiredness.  I've read a couple of whole books about dealing successfully with fatigue.  The articles especially sort of sound the same, and I began to wonder if the writers don't have "google syndrome"....you know, where you google something and then write about it.  Everyone starts to sound like everyone else on the world wide web.

Can't tell you how many times I've figured out that someone just googled something, and then thought they had the tiger by the tail, becoming a Mr. or Mrs. Let Me InformYou....a veritable fount of wisdom.   "The whole context of that  is thus and thus." 

Whole?  Really?  Hoo boy.  I've even seen people google their theology.

"Let's see what "research" I can do on grace..."

There is a hollowness to googled information, or any information merely "looked up" and not lived out...it lacks flesh and bone...it is two dimensional....and it doesn't ring true to the discerning ear.  Ask any high school English teacher or any college professor.

So yeah, Mr. or Ms. Google-It.  It may have been a lot of years ago, but I did read the book.  I've invested several months or even years into what I am saying - not sure how long it took you to google it.  Thanks but...I sort of knew most of what you are saying before there was google.  But I appreciate the....tip.

Obviously, there is a place for googling for information.  To be able to google for fuller, deeper resources on your subject is a fantastic time saver.  I love seeing all the books out there on, say, French interior design.  Or Swedish.    And so long as you are not pretending to have done actual research, by all means, google away, and tell me what you found!

That said, I didn't google any of this stuff.  Rather, I have lived it, and am still living it, however imperfectly.  Without further ado, here is your dime's worth!

1.  Drink plenty of water.  You'd be surprised how tired you feel when your body is slightly dehydrated.  Trust me, you can live in a state of mild dehydration, and wonder why you feel so whipped.

2.  Do something happy!  Do something you enjoy - each and every day.  Intersperse your work with small pleasures.  I schedule my happy interludes - right into my day.  My days can be pretty intense, between home schooling a challenging teenager, and ministry, and life in general.  My days can be extremely routine in their intensity.  That is a combination that makes for bone tiredness. 

So, when I make up my "to do list" each day, I write down and schedule in things that please me.  Every single day.  I don't just let it happen, however it happens, whatever it might be...I know exactly the things I want to do this week, and I plan them.   I plan them according to my whims and moods for the week. This is important.  This week, I plan to knit, bake some bread, plant some lettuce, take off to some thrift stores, and readreadreadreadread.  I keep a long list of small things that bring me joy, and when  I am stuck or peevish, I pick from the list and just do it.  This one bit of advice alone is worth ten dollars, not just two cents!

3.  Work.  Believe it or not, (most of you believe me, I know) this is key.  Don't spend the majority of your time doing whatever you feel like doing.  Avoid that sense of mid-life entitlement - or empty nest entitlement.  Or "the kids are finally all in school" entitlement.  Or "I've worked for years, and now I don't have to" entitlement.  There's lots of ways to feel entitled to slack off.   But it won't infuse you with energy. You were created for work - work that glorifies God.  Spend your day accomplishing!  Work and work some more, and work most of the day - and schedule in the things you enjoy around the edges and little breaks in your day.  Keep the big picture in your mind as you work - know that what you do in your work fits in with your dearest ideals and objectives.  Tiredness is not your enemy...mind numbing boredom is.

4.  Push through.  I am befuddled at the women who simply stop when they feel tired.  You have reserves of energy you have not begun to tap, if you normally stop when you feel tired.  If you push through the tiredness and keep working, the vast majority of the time you will catch a second wind.

And did you know you have a third, fourth, and even sometimes fifth wind waiting to be called upon?  Unless you are  sick or extremely sleep deprived, you  have energy reserves that are begging to be tapped.  Your human body has energy rythms that rise, peak, and drop off...only to rise, peak, and drop off again...and again...all in one day's time.  Next time you feel tired, try pushing through it.  You'd be surprised how conditioned we are to take breaks when we are weary! 

You can rest tonight.  And we can all rest when we're dead.

5.  B-complex vitamins.  Liquid form only, taken sublingually.  Wal-Mart sells a brand that runs about $6 or $7 dollars (versus twenty-something for other brands in health food stores) and it is the same thing as the very expensive liquid B's.  Works for me, anyway.

Well, I want to tell you to get sunlight, and to repair your strained relationships, deal with your emotional issues, and address your thought life...but I've limited myself to a dime.  Next time, it'll be "dollar day", okay?

In Which Sheila Chats About Medical Science and the Gospel

The jury is in.  We have proof that "as a woman thinks in her heart, so is she".  Medical science has verified what the Bible has always told us about the heart being the seat of choice, imagination, and emotion.

And every emotion releases its own chemical into the bloodstream, for health or for harm.  There is not a thought you can think that does not carry with it an effect on your body.

It is no mystery where migraines and fibromyalgia and back pain comes from.  First the cause, then the effect.  We are literally making ourselves sick, bathing ourselves at a cellular level in negativity, criticism, and depression.  The chemicals released correspond to the emotion.  The emotion corresponds to the thought.

I take it a step further and deeper.  I say:  your every thought is conceived from a basis of what you believe about God.

Bottom line.

After spending hours reading over the groundbreaking work of neuroscientist Candace Pert, and digesting the research of Dr. Caroline Leaf, I am jumping up and down in a frenzy of cross-application.

The poet Robert Frost said that intelligence is a feat of association.  God has wired my brain to make connections across seemingly incongruous ideas.  I can get revelation into the ekklesia when I read about sea turtles.  This ability to connect is both a blessing and a curse.  It sometimes makes me darn near inscrutable when I try to explain where I am coming from.

Friends, you are so what you think about.  You aren't merely becoming what you choose to focus on, you already are.  You already are who you are going to be.  The only answer for every woman is to repent - changing our mind should be a way of life.

The only hope for change in the life, is a change in the mind.

I'll say it again:  Lady - change your mind!

You better be stuffing the good news of the gospel into your brain, beginning day before yesterday!  You better be about the full time business of renewing your mind, else you become a jaded, cynical woman who cannot change her mind to (literally) save her life.

No wonder the devil gets upset when grace is fully and purely preached.  What we believe about God is either the truth that sets us free, or clever lies, posing as truth...lies that imprison us.

Scientists have isolated and named the one thing all negativity springs from:  fear.  God has always known this.  He said, "She who fears has not been made mature in love." 

Oh, how He loves us!  How He loves us, oh!  He surrounds us, and He is love and grace and mercy.  He requires nothing from us that He has not first provided for us in Jesus Christ.

If you struggle with the  doctrines of grace, you struggle at the core.  My heart breaks for you.  When, when will you tire of the veil that shrouds your spiritual understanding?  When, when will you properly diagnose your relational dysfunction, your physical disease, your utter weariness of soul?  When, when will you be honest?

See, your brain is "always watching you".  Your brain knows what you actually think and believe.  Sounds a lot like the Bible when it says, "No man knows the thoughts of a man, save the spirit of man that is in him..."

Whenever your life is at cross purposes with what you truly think, whenever you invent your own version of events, every time you pretend, the heart knows.  Go on and spend the rest of your life justifying it or covering it up - it will come out in another form, usually pain in your body.  The only remedy is to wash your mind clean with the Word - making what you think line up with the only sure plumb line in the universe:  God's thoughts.

They are not your thoughts.  You have to get outside yourself to think a God-thought.  Your first reaction is usually not a God-thought.  Your opinion is usually not a God-thought.  Your finest effort on your finest day is not His way.  The heart knows, each and every time you fall short of the glory of God.

Medical science proves that we must be washed, day in and day out, Sunday in and Sunday out, with good news.  Dendrites don't form strong and true any other way.  A topical sermon here and there, brushing up against the gospel but rarely grasping it and examining it at life-long-lengths is not enough to form even the physical connections across synapses, much less a transformed soul.

It's why you are okay one day, and not okay the next.  It is why you hurt.  You haven't lingered over what is true, lovely, and of good news to you.

The jury is in.  You must understand how very much you are loved.  It will be health to your bones.

In Which Sheila Declares

that the grace of God is where she has staked her claim and it has so been worth it and that's that...and that the sun is shining, and, for the first morning in months she awakened without so much as an ache anywhere in her body (much less everywhere in her body). This makes no sense to her natural mind...

...and, just now, she has received some of the best good news of her whole life. In The Top Ten List Of Best Good News Of Her Entire Existence. Maybe even top five. (I'm not even stretching the truth, here, friends.)

And that she'll See you in Harvest Church! She is happily and hummingly off to prepare for worship...

For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men,
teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age,
looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,
who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works.

In Which Sheila Only Has One Thing To Say...

Come join me at the table

Righteousness is not something that grows in us. We grow into the free gift of righteousness, by grace through faith. I am all the "holy" I am supposed to be, at this very moment, because I am in Christ Jesus, who is made unto me...well, just everything I need. Good works are what I do for the sake of my neighbor, not to merit favor with God. God is pleased with Christ Alone.





Yeah. I think that is the one thing I wanted to say.

In Which Sheila Thinks of Spring and Redecorating...

Look at this lovely master bedroom. I do not like the lack of color, but I love the natural light, the seating arrangement, and the small table and chairs by the windows. I could easily do this sort of set-up in my own huge bedroom, once we get our home office out of it. When Sarah gets married, her room becomes my office. My very own. I can't wait to blog it - complete with pictures. Special request: if you run across any pictures of interesting and beautifully designed home offices, please do send them my way. I've already started my idea file...but don't tell Sarah.


Beautiful, amazing table and chairs. A most unusual shape and design. I have never seen anything quite like this before.

I wish my foyer looked like this. Very, very doable - installing a shelf and pegs below it. I could do without the little horsey, but I love the pops of yellow. I'd have to make sure I also get the perfect tote bag - just to hang there and look capable and colorful! Form meets function here...
Today, I stepped out and inexplicably came home with a pot of hyacinths and a pot of daffodils. I do this every year, when the days get the grayest. I don't plan it...it just happens. Every late-January, early-February, I end up needing spring flowers. And so it was today.
Nothing short of the use of my super-powers stopped me from coming home with a pot of tulips and an entire succulent garden on top of the hyacinths and daffodils. I really, really wanted three or four of the succulents, simply because the pots were clay instead of tacky plastic, and the pot colors were so unexpected and fresh. I needed to take a bunch of them home and make a new centerpiece for the dining room table out of them. My mind was thinking something about wooden trays, pebbles in soft muted tones, and a clusters of those tiny gray-green plants in the orange-toned pots.
I am loving the color orange these days. Also inexplicable.
We're expecting snow here in east Tennessee this week. This fact gives me a mild case of cabin fever. Gardening books work wonders, as does a trip to the plant nursery. What do you always do, this time of year, to cheer the winter gray?

"Practitioner of Contentment" ~ OR, "How Sheila Got Her Groove Back"

I guess if there were to be any initials after my name, it would be "PC" ~ Practitioner of Contentment.

There really is no other phrase that has so consistently, over decades, defined my essence. I am typically happy, and cannot abide the cynical person. When life hands me dirt, I'll make a mud mask and come out with a better complexion than ever. When life hands me lemons, I'll stick 'em in my bra. Ahem. (Nah...)

So you can imagine when, quite suddenly, in the past three years or so, I discovered in my own thinking all the dreaded cynicism I have always disliked in others. Upon a brief but very prayerful investigation, I had a massive revelation: I was a compensatory optimist.

Was.

Good for me, for all the mud masks and lemon enhancement. It was far better for me than giving into the pessimism that was forever sitting there, lurking and sulking in the corner of my soul, bound and gagged while I worked so very hard to compensate for its existence. But no one...no one...can compensate forever. At some point, things have to get painfully honest.

I first thought it was hormones. No...hormones only have the power to unmask a woman's inner demons. They bring just enough physical vulnerability to render you unable to hide what's really there. When, oh when, will we understand as His beautiful women, that this isn't a bad thing? We finally get to deal with our stuff - if we are wise.

I thought it was transition...an emptying nest, and all that. No. Transition happens.

I thought it was the stress of raising teenage boys. That was a red herring, for sure.

I had been working all these years to be optimistic, to compensate for that innate pessimist, sitting all tied up and fuming in her chair in the corner of my consciousness. Simple as that. And a pessimist's image of herself and her world is completely connected to her image of her God. My concept of God, with all my book learning, was off. All it took was an overwhelming dose of real life, and the influence of a few cynics, to reveal the weakness in my own understanding.  That sulky pessimist wriggled out of her ropes, tore off the gag I'd so carefully kept on her mouth, and she got up out of her chair and wreaked havoc in my head.

I tried to ignore her. She wouldn't go away. I wrestled her to the floor, and put her in a headlock, but she never tapped out. I sent her back to her chair, and quoted Scripture at her, but still she was there...larger than life.

She represented a belief structure. She is what I thought about God. "See, God has this low-level frustration towards you", she would say. And I'd send her back to her chair, and put the gag back on her. She'd always get loose, now and then. When others would testify in church of the work of God in their life, she'd sniff, "Wonder how long that'll last??" I'd stuff a lemon down her throat to shut her up. When I'd get caught up in wonder at anything, when my faith would begin to take flight, she was quick to pull the wings off the butterfly, and remind me of all things Real.

Worms. Never. Change.

She assured me that when I sinned, I was opening up myself to all sorts of Bad Things - nevermind the finished work of Christ. She swore that when I behaved, and only when I behaved, I was in His favor. She implied that it all depended on me, and how well I could compensate for my flaws. She withdrew from anyone and anything that challenged her control.

She smiled primly, all tied up in her chair, when I chose all the Right Things. She flexed her firm muscles in high self esteem when I jogged, did all my crunches, and ate organic food. She whispered to me that my body is a temple, after all. She particularly enjoyed it when I studied the doctrines of grace from her perspective. Man, did she know her Bible. Problem was, every time she showed me a passage, every time she quoted a verse, she was wearing this silly veil on her head. Consequently, in seeing I didn't perceive, and for all my hearing I didn't understand.

This arrangement worked for a very long time. Until I became too weary to compensate for her existence, and too tired to always be fighting with her, repeatedly returning her to the chair in the corner of my mind. It was either kill her or let her reign, with all her cynicism and unbelief.

I am happy to say that the word of God is alive and powerful, and sharper than any sword. It is able to divide and discern, and it discerned me. It discerned me openly. All things were suddenly naked and open in the eyes of Him with Whom I had to do.

And it was....allright. God....loves me. He turned His back on Christ at the cross so that I could look straight into His glory all the days of my life. Jesus bore my sins, He carried my sickness, and the punishment to obtain my peace was all...all...upon Jesus.

That chair, in the corner of my consciousness? Empty. That innate pessimist? Gone.

I'm yet a Practitioner of Contentment. I'm still making mud masks and playing with lemons. The only difference is that I'm not compensating for anything anymore. I am what and who I am, and "by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace to me is not in vain."

Stella got her groove back one way, Sheila got her groove back by grace through faith.