Where is your heart?

Our Daily Bread
When I was a child, an uncle would come up to me and pretend to grab my nose off my face.  He would stick his thumb through two of his fingers so it looked like he really did it!  I would run to a mirror to make sure I still had my nose!  Yes, that is silly, but I still do it today to little kids!  hehehe

Looking in the mirror to find you nose is one thing.  Looking in a spiritual mirror to find your heart is much more difficult in my opinion.  It can be difficult to take a step back to clearly see what should be important to you and what is really important to you in practice.  I admit that I sometimes work too much.  I sometimes spend too much money.  I sometimes play too hard, like drink too much.  I sometimes go to too many movies.  I can even do too much at church.  Are these things wrong?  Not necessarily in and of themselves, but they can be if we use them to avoid doing the things that God wants us to do.  They can also be wrong if we do them with the wrong attitude.  I think we all have read the New Testament stories about the religious leaders that do many good things for show in the Temple, but Jesus warns them of a having rotten souls!  Yikes!

Where is your heart?  What is important to you?  What should be important?

Lord, I want to follow my heart, the heart that you gave me and speaks to each day.

Simply Saturday
It has been an interesting week.  I got back from Kansas City last Sunday night.  Had a temporary crown installed on a back tooth on Monday.  My mother arrived in Columbus to take me to my eye surgery.  She had a surprise for me.  She bought a car.  It was a surprise to say the least.  I had my cataract surgery on Tuesday. I recovered Tuesday and Wednesday while having a nice visit with Mom.  We had sort of a weird D1 class on Wednesday.  Choir practice was great on Thursday.  I had a restful evening at home last night.  I worked on my walking buddy's new laptop, wrote out Christmas cards, worked on my mens chorus music and did some D1 reading for next Wednesday.  Whew!  I am taking it easy today.

In addition to all of that, I have been talking and texting with my new friend on a daily basis.  That has been very special to me.  Where is this friendship going?  I don't know.  It is too soon to tell.  We are both committed to finding out!  That is very nice.  We will keep talking.  We will take things slow.  We both agree on that as well.

So what is it like to meet the man of your dreams?  I thought I knew when I met my ex partner.  We had 11.5 years together, but did not build a sustainable relationship that would last the rest of our lives.  I wish him well and hope he can find that special man.  What I learned the past few weeks is that you may or may not know if he is "the one" when you meet him.  My new friend and I were able to start opening up to each other almost immediately.  It was cool that the physical attraction was definitely there on both parts, but it was not the most important thing.  Being together when we can and getting to know each other before you start having deep feelings and a physical relationship should be the solid foundation of a lasting relationship.  We are both committed to those things as well.  Regardless of what happens between us, I thank God for meeting him and the special way he makes me feel when we spend time together.

The coolest part of this new friendship is that I feel like God has been preparing me for this for the last 4.5 years.  He has been preparing me to meet someone like this special man.  I am having some "wax on, wax off" moments almost every time we talk!  You know what I mean from the original Karate Kid movie?  The student couldn't see why doing menial tasks would ever help him learn karate.  I couldn't see how going through some of the things I went through would ever help me with my future relationships.  I thank God for those lessons.  I will do my best to have more faith in the future to trust God even more during these seemingly menial tasks!

Let go, my friends!  God will catch you and hold you in his loving arms!