A very long blog about wanting to quit….

This blog is supposed to be 95% gratitude, 5% life stuff. The last log I put in was all about accountability and not giving up. So guess what the last 2 weeks have been? REASONS to give up. It seems that is normal though. You make a commitment to something to follow through and run the race, finish strong, and accomplish a goal and what happens? Obstacles, barriers and other delightful fun items life throws at us to challenge our resolve. What did I call it? Determination?

Whatever…. Today I have no determination. Today I want to ball up and cry and just not do work this hard anymore because it is hard and I hurt and worse yet I might let someone down. Didn’t I talk about this already? There is a good side to that, accountability, and a bad side, self-doubt and believe it or not self-worship. In reality if I am beating myself up over letting someone down, that is more about me than it is about them.

So what is this blog about? Self-absorbed criticism or could it be something else? Could it be a way to ‘talk’ through back to gratitude? I have a great friend who is as close as a sister and she started praying lately for those who persecute her. Worse yet she began thanking God for the experiences.

There are bible verses about this. Jesus actually said pray for those who persecute you. There is also a country song, ‘I prayed for you’ by Jaron. These two approaches do NOT line up by the way. One is I pray for you to ‘get what is coming to you’ and one is I pray that God shows you the same mercy he has shown me. He also said we should be thankful for everything because God uses everything for our good and his purposes.

Not let’s get to reality here, no one is intentionally persecuting me. That hasn’t happened much sense Jr high/high school. Yes I got bullied, A LOT by the way. However there are most definitely things in my life that are extremely difficult right now. Why does it often feel that things work out really well and positively for some people, where as I have to work extra hard for just the bare minimum. Of course is that the truth or is it more of a focus problem?

The other item, being thankful for the horrible awful things that happen? Seriously? Why would any sane person do that? Isn’t that what we really challenge God with? If you loved me God you wouldn’t let this happen. Life would be full of blessings not pain, people would be kind and no one would get horrible diseases or disorders that ruin everyone’s lives. Why would I be thankful for anything that is terrible?

None of these justifications to not do what Jesus asks us to do are probably the whole truth. Almost everyone who has much of anything, which I know of, works really hard to get there. What I am seeing is their end product, not their beginning. Also in reality horrible awful things in the world are mostly a result of horrible awful choices people make.

This blog, this is part of my new beginning. Am I willing to pray for and even bless the situations of my life that I don’t like or people that I don’t like? Am I really willing and able to count my blessings for a whole year? No, actually make that 2 years right?

My youngest son, who has a real reasons for giving up in his life by the way, has been very tired and frustrated as well lately. Last night as he was getting ready for bed he was telling Scott and I that he might be pretty frustrated today because of several different things. Of course being 18 the things that are frustrating him seem trivial in our adult perspective, but they were significant in his. (this would have to be a whole other blog – perspective) I advised my son ‘Westin when you are standing at work washing dishes or at school and thinking about these things that are not fun, make your mind remember all the great awesome gifts you have been given in life and focus on those instead. When you do that it chases away the frustrations you face, or at least makes them more bearable.”

This morning as I face one of the issues that has been dragging out over the last few weeks and put an enormous amount of stress on my life (another blog – weight you should carry and weight you should loose) I need to take my own advice and remember everything I have listed in the blog.

1) BE GRATEFUL: What I told Westin and the reason behind starting this blog, counting my blessings that I have had in my 49 years of life. I have next to my computer the 5 steps I am to take to start each and every day, the first is write/share 3 statements of gratitude. To be honest some days I am better at this than others, and lately, of course I have been horrible. All I have focused on are the things that have gone wrong and how for other people all this seems so easy. The truth is, I don’t see in their homes at night when they cry to their spouses, or pray frustrated prayers or go through sleepless nights. All I get to see is the end result or that which they let me see. Truth is most of the time we don’t let people see the struggle in the journey, we share the victory moments not the battles. Or maybe that is all we choose to see – outside of reality TV- still isn’t that a good thing? Isn’t that the epitome of gratefulness, remembering and focusing on the victory, on the blessings, on the beauty? If our focus is on the battle, not the win, do we not set ourselves up to loose, to give up and quit? We run the race to win, to finish to rejoice! We don’t run to fall down and never get up again. So let me then change my focus and remember why I have started the journey and all the blessings that have come my way, into my family and my faith because of it. Practice what I preach and focus on the blessings.

2) PRAY FOR THOSE WHO PURSECUTE YOU: Well then, how in the world to do this one? Well I start by asking the Lord to help me do it and to help me do it with a right heart and mind. Not something I can do on my own, it just is not. This is a Jesus prayer, and I am NOT very Jesus sometimes. That being said (another blog – a heart like his -) I have seen this in action, in my life and in the lives of people I love. This is a lot about forgiveness and faith. When we truly pray for those who are the source of our struggle, or at least those we see as the source of our struggle, so many things happen. We see them differently, they change from being a problem and a hang up to being a place of forgiveness and personal healing. Even if they never change we do and the power they had over us fades away.

3) IN EVERYTHING GIVE THANKS. Being thankful even in the horrible things brings us to a place of where we can see eternity and God at work behind the scenes in miraculous ways. I have seen this in my life in crazy powerful ways! I know in reality what it means when God uses EVERYTHING for our good and his glory. My faith has grown in these moments like it never ever could have in times of blessing. It is the struggle and the battle that makes the victory! It is the race that wins the crown! We don’t grow without pain, we don’t win without a fight we don’t know miracles unless what we go through is bigger and more awful than anything we have seen before! It is the storm that makes the blessings real! I never seem to really learn a lesson unless the process has cost me something. Without fail the cost was something that needed to be removed to be blessed anyway.

4) THE END RESULT: So here I am at the end of the long blog about wanting to quit and I don’t want to quit. Instead I want to run! I am moving now from this page and writing out this blog/prayer and going instead to meet with my God and count my blessings, pray for the people and thank him for the battle and all that he is teaching me in it. This is the point of blogging for Teresa M Cleveland. An online journal about a journey/race that is meant to be won.

Teresa M Cleveland
Traveler.