Passion

I've been thinking about passion a lot lately... what it is, why we have it, how we can use it - for good or bad - and what happens when we seem to run out of it. My family and friends have always described me as a passionate person - "'stick-to-it-ive-ness' and lots of fervor"as a high-school teacher laughingly described - someone who caught a passion and kept it... willing to work toward its end, no matter the consequences... even when the consequences burned. I would say that that passion has driven me to some of the best experiences in my life, as well as some of the worst.

But more than that, I have been thinking about what it means to truly, truly be passionate for and about Christ. What it means to call Him our Friend, our Savior, our True Love. To desire to see His face, to yearn for Him with our entire being, and to have that be our number one priority - not just when we need His support in times of joy or sorrow... all the time. To desire ONLY Him, above and before all else.

I make no pretensions of being at the point where Christ is the only thing I focus on. In fact, I often find that it's a half-step forward, and three steps back. Time and again He has to remind me that He really does know what's best, and that my passion is useless if it is not directed toward what He has designed. That my passion can cloud my view and interfere with the desires He wants within me. And after experiencing and losing to Satan's blatant attacks every time I turn from God's direction, I have to wonder why it is that I still somehow think that I would possibly know better. It just isn't so.

Passion without His guidance is like "careening down a raging river of death" without knowing how to swim. You might be very passionate about surviving, but odds are that without the necessary tools or knowledge... you will probably be dead.

"You've come far, and though you're far from the end/You don't mind where you are, 'cause you know where you've been" is a line from Carbon Leaf's "Let Your Troubles Roll By," and I pray that every time I fall, with God's help I can get back on my feet and praise Him for the journey; that every time I stumble and feel as though I'm at Square One, I can look back and see that He is continuing to grow me...

But is it still possible to have joy when we feel that our passion has raged out of control and left us sifting through cold and lifeless ashes? How do we keep going with "joy in the journey" when the only thing we want to do is back out, leave, dejar our hurts and escape to lick our wounds in peace?

A friend gave me a CD with a song by Pfr called, "Wait For The Sun," and a portion of the lyrics read:

Where's the joy you've known
It seems you can't remember
All the fire in your life
Has turned to cold December
But lift your head anyhow
He's won greater battles before
What makes you think He won't fight now?

What makes me think He can't bring back my joy in full? That He won't fight right alongside me? That He can't replace my desires with new ones that glorify Him even more? That "listlessness" can and will be turned into "purposefulness"?

He can, and I know He will. Even if the only joy I can find comes from knowing I am where He desires. And even though the more I learn of holiness, the further I feel from it... I recognize that only by His grace can I come to any approximation of its depths. And that is my prayer... that my passion can be rekindled, that it can burn, and that it will burn with His light, His fire, and His love... toward a life-long goal of holiness.

The rest of the Pfr lyrics read:

Love will always stay
Somewhere in your heart
And hope will never fade
Though at times it will be hard
But lift your head anyway
God's son is returning
He's bringing brighter days

(Chorus)
So wait for the sun to come out again
Storms always come but they blow away with the wind
So wait for the Son is coming again
Winds of trial blow hard
So we've got to hang on
Hang on to Him

Amen.

Amy...

... Aaron's expression says it all.

No worries, nothing's changed since you've been gone...

I would obviously choose this over every other day in the year if only to see pink and red vomited all over everything...

Shoot me now.

Ummm... hola?

Hello. Hey there. Howdy-do.

Just in case there are those of you who have forgotten, my name is Stephanie - you know, the girl who apparently finds it difficult to update this site more than once or twice a month. :)

I've been on a... let's call it a "blogging holiday," shall we? I looked on the counter today and it said that 33 people checked this blog yesterday... 33... well, I sincerely apologize to those 33 people (okay, maybe the 3 people who repeat... lol) for the terrible, terrible job I have done in keeping up-to-date.

You know what's really pathetic, though? Even I checked my blog a few days this past month... knowing that I had yet to post... very pathetic indeed.

So... (I seem to remember saying this in the past) I will try to do better. Lacking the ganas to post, and discovering that my camera flash is broken... I'm not going to make huge promises. But... the next post is already in the works! ;)

A Trip to MinnieSOta:

My Aunt Paula was kind enough this past month to give me a brief holiday, so I flew to Minneapolis for the weekend... snow, ice, temps below zero - life was perfect... lol. I still don't understand how someone who loves cold weather as much as I do is living in Mexico... but maybe not being in the cold weather constantly is what makes it so attractive... ;)

AP and I inside her "kitchen-for one"!

The front of AP's house. I believe all the houses in this neighborhood were built in the 1930s (I hope I remember that correctly, AP), and the look is incredibly charming.
The maintenance... perhaps a little more difficult... :)

I knew that Tif and Chel had planned on coming up to see me (only an 8-hour drive, which for the Kansas crew of travelers is absolutely nothing...), and figured out from some comments that were "let slip" that Dad and Mom were coming, too... so here's a picture of Dad (without overalls, I might add) looking quite "suave and sophisticated" in the snow... ;)

Outside on AP's snow-covered deck.

This mini-trip was a fabulous getaway, and I'm so thankful for AP's generosity! And who knows the next time I'll get to see snow, so I really appreciated getting a little bitty taste of "cold weather." :)