Saturday, July 16, 2011

my heart and the bad

Another baby! Baby P was born yesterday at 4:40pm. SHE - *I totally thought she was a he for the last 5 months in utero* - is a big ol' thing with a double chin already. We went to visit last night and I went back today and got to hold her for a bit.

Being around these 2 new babies lately has gotten me thinking...and feeling...pregnant women don't bother me, I can talk with them about pregnancy and birth. Being around new babies and new mama's? Hard. I didn't read up on how to care for a newborn and don't have any practical experience. On some level I want nothing more than to be a mother of my own living baby. But I know that will not provide me the satisfaction that I think it will. It's just an emptiness that I have now...

I've been reading old journals. We're getting ready to move and have unearthed a couple boxes that have been tucked away. I'm tempted to throw them away... The names have changed, the prayers haven't. 7 years ago someone pointed out the issues in my heart, my actions were seemingly negligible but my heart...rotten and threatening to infest my whole being.

My heart. These days I feel like it isn't capable of anything. Constantly filled and emptied. Maybe that means it's capable of a lot. Maybe I'm trying to fill it with the wrong things. What if it has to stay empty of all the bad so that the good can flow through?

The bad...this summer I have been challenged to discern "the bad". Guess what? Often the bad is not something that most people would consider harmful but I'm finding that I place too much importance on innocent things. Translated - the bad is not drugs or alcohol, you know, obvious, the bad is shopping or food. It might even be just spending money, even on other people...I find myself looking for some satisfaction, some way to fill the emptiness. But all of these things provide no satisfaction. They are a finite fix to my infinite empty.

Thus says the LORD, "What injustice did your fathers find in Me,
That they went far from Me and walked after emptiness and became empty?
Jeremiah 2:5


Jesus said to her,
“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,
but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.
The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
John 4:13-14