I’m in Proverbs. And I’ve had so many tweaks to the conscience that I don’t dare mention them all here. What has captured me most is the pattern that most of them are written in: WISE/UNWISE. He who *does this* is blessed, he who *does the opposite of this* is not.

And with that pattern filling my mind, I submit to you my list of Jen’s Proverbs for her 39th year:

The one who listens to her physical limits finds health and vitality, but she who works out like she’s 10 years younger than she really is will be doomed to screaming muscles, high doses of ibuprofen and potentially debilitating knee injuries.

The well planned menu brings joy to the family dinner table, but Little Ceasar’s for the third time this month causes children to go on hunger strike, but the dogs will be happy.

Find a system to keep you organized and nothing that needs attention will escape your notice. Ignore it and you will forget that your Secondborn has exams the day you scheduled her to have her braces removed.

A husband finds delight in the joy of his wife. She who makes herself and everyone around her tense will ruin every romantic evening ever planned.

Just enough, just in time, will come to the faithful when needed. But a selfish wench purchases above and beyond her immediate needs.

Being on sale is not an instant justification for buying that ridiculous do-dad. Wisdom considers how often it will be used, how many will find use for it, and quality (manufactured as well as aesthetic) before deciding to drop a couple hundred.

Calorie counting benefits the nerdy dieter. But a failure will stop tracking at 7:00pm when snack attacks hit consistently at 9:oopm.

It’s ok to care what people think of you enough to be considerate, polite, and a blessing to others. It is not ok to care to the point that you are not yourself, or you compromise your values.

That’s it for now. But it’s only January…

What are your proverbs?

That is the struggle. It is the struggle to die to the false self. But this struggle is far, far beyond our own strength. Anyone who wants to fight his demons with his own weapons is a fool…

…The encounter with Christ does not take place before, after or beyond the struggle with our false self and its demons. No, it is precisely in the midst of this struggle that our Lord comes to us and says, as he said to the old man in the story:  “As soon as you turned to me again, you see I was beside you.”

-Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart

I picked up this book recently, after having it on my To Be Read list forever and a day. I couldn’t even remember who recommended it or why I thought it would spark something in me.

And if I had read it when I first heard of it, would it have the same impact it’s having now? Because it’s definitely having an effect.

He is beside me, whether I cry out or not. He waits for me to drop my ridiculous attempts at fighting off both the depression and his cure for me. He waits while I am working myself silly, fighting like a child and not the warrior I am.

Wednesday night, during our small group exercises at church, we were asked to share the burden of our heart. I shared a little about this depression, how I’m managing, waiting for His freedom and healing to come permanently. Maybe I am waiting for the wrong thing. Maybe what I should be not only waiting for, but helping to hasten, is the day I just accept that this is my thorn in the flesh. If what I desire more than anything is my encounters with Christ, maybe I should stop trying so hard to get to the place where I don’t need him?

Food for thought.

In the past few weeks, I’ve been turning over the concept of happiness versus joy. Can they exist one without the other? Can a person FEEL happy without having lasting joy? What of joy…can you feel like a miserable depressed wreck of a human being…but deep down be anchored in joy?

If you look up official definitions, they are the same thing: one the synonym for the other. And in our every day language, we tend to equate them. So, while I’ve been tossing this around in my head, I’ve tossed myself into a bit of a conundrum.

I don’t FEEL happy. Depression is like that…gives you a ton of feelings that may or may not be real. Learning to process those feelings is what managing and overcoming depression is all about, I suppose.

Learning to accept or reject a particular emotional state based on factors other than the emotions themselves? Well, that’s downright difficult. And the effort alone is enough to make most people just give up which ties into the hopelessness of it all. “I’m down, I’ll always be down and getting back up again is so exhausting and difficult that I’d rather just stay down.”

So you see, when I use happiness and joy as synonymous I tend to get tied up in knots. Because I’m a freak, apparently, who can separate the two. “I feel unhappy, but I HAVE joy.”

Happiness is an emotion. Joy is a fruit of the spirit. Happiness might be elusive to me, but joy is present. Happiness may hit me as my perception of circumstances allows, but joy anchors me, and springs forth from a source that is perfect, strong, and never ending.

If only I would let it do that more often.

This year, I’d like focus on just that: allowing the Father to root me in joy.

It’s all over the news this week, and the more I follow the less I can say.

Please, consider giving to victims of the Haiti earthquake. Compassion International has made it so simple, you can even fire off a simple text and have a ten dollar donation billed to your cell. Ten dollars. I almost spent that much on one run to the nearest Starbucks for me and some office mates yesterday. Not much of a sacrifice for me, when you think about it…but if all of us were willing to give up just a little, the pain and devastation in Haiti can be alleviated a lot.

Don’t want to give through Compassion? That’s ok. The Red Cross, World Vision, Doctors without Borders, and many many other reputable charities are all accepting donations for aid. Please, though, show wisdom in the organization you choose to donate through. Unfortunately, there are reports out there of donation scams already.

Don’t even have ten dollars to give? THAT IS OK TOO (I’ve been there before, too). Your powerful, spirit filled prayer for the people of Haiti and the relief effort will go a long way in His hands.

Eirene,

Jen

This is a week of change in my household. The public schoolers got to ease back into their week through a series of delayed starts and early releases. Fourthborn returned to preschool, which hit her like a ton of unpleasant bricks. I headed back to my first five day work week in what seems like ages, and we are all motivated but sluggish. So the week is both kicking my hindquarters AND dragging on forever. On the home front, Hubs had a week of self-discovery: He discovered that he is, in fact, capable of home repairs he previously felt incompetent to do. He also discovered that his tolerance for kitchen laziness has it’s limits. Who knew?

I’ve had a few self-discoveries of my own. Actually, I should say that I’ve postulated a few new theories about myself and am waiting to see if they are confirmed by consistency. Some of them are downright silly, almost borderline “mind game” rather than self-reflection, like the theory that decaf won’t actually kill me. Or, related to that, there is no jewel for our crowns awarded for being able to tolerate the largest doses of caffeine. So I can stop trying to have the largest, most sparkly rock awarded. Truly.

But others are deeper. Like the theory that I’m so accustomed to my stress levels that I have to retrain myself how to relax. Or, my inability to admit my maximum workload must stem from the fear of abandonment/rejection I live with most of the time. If I can handle anything and everything life throws at me…well you can probably imagine the rest. Oh and how about starving my martyrdom syndrome? Is that even possible? And if I succeed, will my physical body drop a few pounds as well?

I’m postulating that the answer is yes. Baggage is heavy. I worked so hard at the gruntwork of unpacking and dealing with most of it during my recovery that I might have overlooked that OTHER trunk in the OTHER corner of my head and heart that was filling up with current life-stuff. The same way the dishes get out of hand on laundry day.

The good part is that I don’t have to figure this all out today, or even on my own. Sometimes when I feel like my personal brand of “crazy” is overwhelmingly deep and wide, I have to remind myself that I have Someone who knows me that deeply. He formed me in my mothers womb, he knows the number of hairs on my head, he knows my thoughts before I even think them, he sees them from “afar off” as the Word says.

So, while I might feel “afar off” from myself lately, I don’t particularly feel lost. I’m ok with he and I taking some time together to go over some things. I’m not fond of change, and he knows this better than most…but I am fond of trusting him to show me what needs to be changed, in what priority, and by what avenue. Experience tells me it could get ugly and difficult. But it also tells me there are exciting days ahead. Days of wonder. Days of him showing his strength and my weakness. Days of awe at the work of his hands.