Last night was no different.  I was reading in John 5 and was blown away by the first nine verses.  I sat there absorbing the unwritten words.

This man had tremendous faith!

This man

………………..stood up

…………………………………….and walked!

He didn’t continue to lay there looking at Jesus asking Him what He was smoking.  He didn’t say to Jesus, “You’re the Messiah right?  Yeah so you know I’ve been crippled for the past 38 years and all I do is lay here begging off people and hoping just maybe I’ll make it into the waters first.

The passage says the man was instantly healed.  The now healed invalid felt his legs strengthen, felt all atrophy leave the muscles he hadn’t used in 38 years.  Instantaneous.  And he stood up.

As I sat there on my couch soaking it up.  Wondering how my faith is.  I wrote in my journal that we know we can walk but we are afraid to walk.  We don’t trust God enough to walk.  But we know we can.

Isn’t that silly?  We know without a shadow of a doubt God is going to get us from point A to point B.  Most definitely there will be hiccups in the walk but we know with Him we are enabled to get up off our butts and walk.  Or in the least stand up and say, “God I don’t think I can do this.  I need you.”  We know that though we can’t, He sees around the corner and will be there too as we have faith, and walk.

So this is what I’m chewing on.  Where my faith is at.

Where is yours?  Are you still lying on your mat sneering at God because you believe He has the audacity to tell you to stand up, to take that step of faith?  Or do you feel the weakness and atrophy leaving your heart?

Wherever your faith is at I encourage you to simply stand up.

I Hear Dead Men is my thoughts journaled out from passages that impact me from the Bible.  Dead Men refers to the writers of those passages.

These are things that I am having a hard time giving up.  I want to hold on to them with the grip of a newborn all because they don’t seem like pride, but God is revealing they are anything but not pride.

Pride seems to have invaded my life (okay I probably should just admit I was born with a healthy dose of pride) recently.  Maybe it’s just the fact that God is opening up my eyes more and more.  I don’t want pride.  I want to live in humility.  I want to be a servant (which in one area has led to pride).

Pride isn’t always, “Hey, look at me.  I’m faanntastic!!”  It’s usually small things.  Here are some things that He’s been revealing in my own life:

Not allowing others to help me.  This was revealed to me through a message by Pete Wilson.  I can do it by myself.  I don’t need others help.  It’s just easier to do it than to wait for someone, or have to do it over again cause someone did it wrong to begin with.  When Shawn and I first were married we lived on the third floor of our apartment complex.  No elevator.  I would carry as many groceries as I feasibly could by myself up all three flights.  My excuse:  I’m gonna be a mom someday I need practice carrying a whole bunch of things at one time.  In reality I probably didn’t want to burden Shawn.  This plays into our marriage even today.  I don’t want to inconvenience him or cause there to be a burden on his shoulders – even with something dumb like helping around the house, which he wants to do – all because I love him.  However, not allowing others to help me does a few things:

1. It steals away the opportunity for someone to bless me.
2. It makes it about me and what I can do.
3. It tells God I don’t need Him.

I’m learning to give this up.  It’s difficult.  I’m naturally independent so doing things on my own is like wearing my own skin.  It’s what I’m used to, it’s what makes me comfortable.

Defensiveness.  I have been battling this more and more.  Guards go up, steel walls encased in concrete protecting me from whatever one is trying to hurl at me.  I want to protect what I’ve done, my work.  This often comes up at work.  Subtle accusations that I’m not doing my job right.  I later make comments that I’m glad I keep records of everything so I can cover my butt.  It’s more about proving myself than anything.  I don’t need to be defensive.  Whether it’s in my marriage where I have open communication with Shawn, or hard questions asked by a friend concerning decisions Shawn and I have to make, or my job.  My responsibility is to respond to questions, respond to subtle accusations in a calm, non-defensive way.  To not one-up anyone.  To let down those defenses.

I’ve daily been repenting and asking God to remove the overabundance of pride that plagues my being.  Jesus was/is the epitome of humility.  He has given me more than ever a desire for my life to be paralleled with His.  Humility is a big part of that mirror image.

He’s recently placed this verse in my mind and it rolls over and over in there:

Micah 6:8 (NIV)

He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.

In this one verse all that Jesus lived out on this earth is summed up.  This is how I’m wanting to be also.

it’s probably pretty much no wonder I’m feeling a little cattywompus.  My brain feels foggy and I feel the tentacles of depression tickling my brain, today (yesterday for you) more than the past few days, and not getting restful sleep doesn’t help.

There is much I want to say here in the format of PrudyChick.com but the words can’t seem to leave my heart to display in 1′s and 0′s.  A post that was started that I can’t wrap my mind and heart around but continue to see the data contained therein being worked out in my life and heart by God.

He is working deep.  I’ve asked Him to.  I don’t know if my will is warring against this working, causing my life to seem off of the middle or what.

In the midst of this I’m trying to live/operate grace and patience filled.  For me a lot of the time this means sitting in my cube, ear buds in, trying to ignore the noise around me.  It means a quieter Prudence on many different levels.

So I walk this walk off the middle of where I usually am.  The phase will pass.  I will feel less off kilter.  I press on.

One thing I try to be is sensitive to when God lays a friend on my heart.  This week He’s been doing that more.  It hurts to see friends hurting, struggling, wrestling.  The Lord has graciously gifted me with the gift of exhortation (encouragement).  I’m not always the best at practicing this.

This is a card I made for one of those friends.

The card is dark blue layered with a slightly lighter blue with topographic dots.  There is a vine border at the bottom and a piece of gold ribbon framing the top above the pendant.  The pendant is attached via a brad, and if the receiver wishes could remove to add to a necklace (I should probably tell her that:]).

That means for me taking intentional, well placed steps.  Steps, I know that will lead me to a door step that lead to the one place I solely in my heart of hearts want to reside.

So tonight (last night for you) with a little push from my post on prayer, and this post here which served as a kick in my bum I taking that first intentional step.  I’d bought a journal to use as a prayer journal months [and months ago, it was on clearance].  I’m beginning to journal my prayers out again.  Blank pages longing to be the vessel in which they carry my voice from my heart to His, and in turn His heart to mine.

I am going to start reading here…

Every time I’ve sought God on where I should read the voice(s) in my head has said John.  I’m unsure of the lessons He has for me written in the black, white & red; but it seems He’s taking me back to basics…for a reason.

If there is one thing I ask of you my friends, is keep me accountable.  Ask me directly how my prayer life, my intimate moments with Christ are.  Don’t be afraid to confront me.  We have gained an amazing community across cables that connect us underground and wifi signals and part of community is accountability.

I would slow down even more and cautiously enter the dusty cloud and migrate my way through.  Traveling down & up an extremely narrow road.  An adventure.  A switch from the norm & the safe.

Towards the end with each bump that would make my car sound like it was heavy laden with bass, I longed for the smoothness of pavement.  For wide, well-defined lanes.

We saw things we would have never seen had we stayed on the cushy asphalt.  Things like four deer standing in the road, then making a sudden getaway leaving no chance for paparazzi pictures.  Two cows and two calves.  Nibbling on dry weeds.

Between the curves and towering Pine Trees we saw breath taking views of the Mogollon Rim, saw new growth where fires had destroyed years before.

We were together.  Husband and wife.  Adventurers if only for a short time.

I loved this quote the moment I read it.  I tore it off the string that dangled from my tea bag one evening.  I’d already decided to write a blog about age when my birthday rolled around and I decided at that moment that it would have to be part of the post.

This weekend I’ll be 35.  No shame in my game.

I’ve never cared about getting older – my only hope is that I’m a little bit more wise than I was the previous birthday.  I hope that my life reflects more my creator than than one who tries steal my joy.

It seems in the last few months God has really been teaching my heart to be grateful for each day He gives me.  To be thankful for each morning I continue to squint my eyes open as I reach for my phone to turn the “Get Up!!” alarm off.  He is causing me to realize that each day He allows me to be present on this earth, is a gift.  It’s hard some days, and others…..
…………...…….others are a joyous song.

On a sunny July afternoon God gave me breath.  Breath that would one day long to speak out for Him.  One day He will take that breath.  How I spent those breaths in between are what matters.

As I mentioned I’ll be 35.  (Still no shame in my game).  No anxiety is resting in those numbers as they count up from 34.  Sure there is some, “oh wow I’m gonna be 35. oh wow I’ll be 40 in five years.  oh wow my mom had teenagers by the time she was my age.”

So………here’s to 35 (and 40).  May I prayerfully be wiser and more like Him.  May my faith continue to be like that of a child though I approach middle age.  May I never be too old, to become younger.

I’ve been also challenged – by GOD – to appreciate life and the gift He has given us in it. (I share more on this tomorrow)

To inhale life is to appreciate those moments – the good and even the bad.  Realizing they are all gifts from God since He has chosen to give us the breath that exists in those moments.

So here is my You:Create:

I’m not sure I’m 100% (or even 80%) happy with it, and new ideas are jumping off the diving board to begin swimming of mashing this into a new You:Create for a different day.  We’ll see.

No, at one time they were spent outdoors.  Inhaling the scent of Pine Trees and sap.

I grew up on a quarter of an acre in a house that was surrounded by towering Pines, tangly Manzanita, and stinky Juniper.  I grew up with a tire swing made from a old backhoe tire inner tube that swung from a tree that also contained a shifty tree house.  My summers were spent there.  In that swing, playing on the hand-me down monkey bars, playing in one of two creeks that “ran” near our house.

My brother and I would ride our bikes on grated dirt streets, and pretend to have found “diamonds” after crushing left over pieces of tile with a rock.  Pretending that the Pine Tree on the corner of our driveway was a puzzle tree because the bark looked like pieces of a puzzle.

My summers were spent in the library for the weekly reading club.  They were spent under a sprinkler attached to a hose that would shower refreshment on young skin.

My summers were spent amidst saw dust as we’d help on one of my dad’s job sites.  Picking up nails.  Carrying 2×4′s.

Now those days are gone and I wish I’d taken time to enjoy them more.  To allow the effervescent drips of the sprinkler to splash my skin longer, to appreciate the time in our tree house or spinning round and round in the tire swing.  To allow the taste of sweet, wild strawberries fresh from the vine to linger on my tongue a little bit longer.

So today as I sit in my cube and recycled cool air causes my skin to pucker in goosebumps I’ll appreciate even that moment.  I’ll sip an iced coffee, and for a brief moment feel the rush of air break across my face and through my hair as I ride in that tire swing once again.

I’ve been reminded of this the past day or two.  Little nuances in my day that hurtle me back to wanting to be a pray-er.  This morning just recently as I read and commented on this post.

My desire is not to just say I will pray but to actually take the steps to doing it and then doing it.  To not leave the prayer in the skillet on the back burner to get cold and crusty.

Prayer is not only meant to share my heart with God but makes me quiet my heart and listen to His.  While it is important to take petitions to His throne (wow that is such an amazing thought and privilege) my time there shouldn’t be spent trying to get a cart full of items through the express lane.

I want my life to reflect my prayer life.  Listening to His voice as I raise up mine in praise & petition, and allowing my heart to be paralleled with His.

Interestingly, a synonym for request is invitation.  As I pray it should be an invitation to God to speak to me, to align myself with Him.  One doesn’t give an invitation to a intimate moment only to demand all of attention of the person being invited.  Invitation is giving, serving, and in the art of prayer – receiving.