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Attitude

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company… a church… a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past… we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you… we are in charge of our Attitudes.

— Charles R. Swindoll

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Walking with Snakes in Each Hand

I don’t remember the last time I wrote about a dream. But this dream I had last night was so vivid that I need to write it down. I also have a good idea what it means, but I want to save my own interpretation for another day.

I found myself out in the desert. It wasn’t like a “desert” what people think of—like the Sahara with mounds and mounds of sand. Instead it was the typical American west-type of desert—which is also something I’m not all that familiar with. But in my dream the desert would be like something you would see in Utah or Arizona (again, making an assumptions of what I’ve seen in pictures and video) where you would see typical desert-like grass and flora along with a few large rocks carving out the open canvas. In my dream I could see ravines and trees tall enough where a hint of the canopy could be seen from a distance.

And this is where we begin. I walked toward one of these ravines. In my right hand I held a snake. I knew I had the snake because a friend of mine wanted me to carry this snake to the ravine. I don’t recall the reason why other than what I can gather is the snake’s home is in that ravine. At this moment, I didn’t know if the snake was poisonous. The snake didn’t bother me much. I just held it and it wrapped itself around my arm and partially around my body. If I had to take a guess, it had to be at least six feet long.

As I kept walking, I found another snake on the ground. I’m not really sure why, but I picked this snake up with my left hand. I must have figured that the ravine was home for snakes and I should take this snake back. I knew this snake I found shouldn’t be trusted. I remember keeping my guard against this snake (but I didn’t pay attention to the snake in my right hand).

There was a ladder going straight into the ravine. There’s no way I could go down this ladder with both snakes in hand. Since my obligation was to bring my friend’s snake into the ravine, I’ll ditch the snake I found. I tried remove the left snake off of my arm, but it got caught on my wrist watch (which is strange because I haven’t worn a wrist watch in over a decade). The snake hung over the ledge and I kept shaking it off. I knew this was anger it and so I shook even faster to get it off of me faster. It just didn’t want to get past my wrist watch. The snake turned and I knew what would happen next. I struck my arm and dug its fangs straight into me. At that point I dropped my friends snake into the ravine just so I could remove my wrist watch. Both snakes fell off of me.

Despite being bitten and in pain (though, I don’t recall bleeding, just two bite marks in my left arm), I still felt like I had the obligation to see that my friend’s snake made it just fine in the ravine. I descended by ladder. Once I got to the bottom, I found both snakes. It looked like the snake I found was going to attack me again, but my friend’s snake came to my “rescue” and ate it. I didn’t stick around to see what would that snake do next. I found myself afraid and hurt. I made my way through the ravine.

I found myself in this weird cave. It wasn’t a completely closed cave. There were openings at the top where the sunlight peered into. I wasn’t alone. It looked like it was occupied by campers. I looked for help. I worried if I didn’t treat this snake bite I was surely going to die. I found it weird that I recognized people in my dream but I don’t know who they are. I just knew that I knew them (but in reality none of them look familiar to me). When I asked for help, they saw the wound but didn’t do much about it. I think one person called 911 for me but didn’t bother helping me in any other way. I kept looking for help to get this wound treated right now, but no one acknowledged the emergency.

I don’t really remember what happened next. I just know that no one really cared.

Odd.

 

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Patience is Love

There’s this reminder on my phone that says, “Write: I can be patient with her because Jesus has always been patient with me”. I put this reminder back in November of 2013. And here I am nearly 10 months later finally getting around to that reminder.

At the time I wrote that, I thought I just needed to wait through the time my girlfriend was oversees teaching in Spain. I consistently prayed for her every single day that God will show her what He always wanted to show her. For the most part, I prayed those things because I thought it was the right thing to do—that she wanted a break through in live and mature with the Spirit in ways (I thought) I may already have. When I look back on it, I may have prayed that prayer with a bit of selfishness because I really wanted her to get to the same place in life that I am at so we can get married and live happily ever after.

Day after day we would talk. Day after day I would pray with and for her so that she would surrender her independence and look towards Him at the start of every day. The trials, tribulations, and hardships that I had to hear week after week broke my heart. More than a dozen times I wanted to book a ticket to Spain just to be there and help her out any way I could. I felt helpless. All I could do is pray (which I am remembering that prayer ought to be our first response and not our last).

I called onto God asking Him what I ought to do during this time. He repeated the same words even prior to her leaving. He tells me, “Be patient.” That is all. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s so funny. Despite all the good I can strive for, I still succumb to habit. I already wrote a story back in 2013 of what happens when I do not obey God’s commands. His commands are out of love. His commands are love. They are to be obeyed to protect us. But it’s so hard to follow especially when He tells us to wait for the things that we want most. (Oddly enough, when the one thing we want most is God, there’s no need to wait for that.)

During this time of growth and maturity not only in my girlfriend’s life but my own as well, I find myself putting on that clothes that looks like patience but I really am I trying to speed up the process in my own way. As if I said that God’s way isn’t good enough. His way isn’t fast enough. I can really do things faster. I’d like to say I still had all that right intentions, but that fallen human part of my self just wanted to move things along and take things back into my own hands.

I constantly repeated these words whenever I found myself not getting what I want when I wanted it: “I can be patient with her as God was patient with me”. These words came about in my daily spiritual walk with God when I wanted to strive to be more like Christ. It just hit me with a ton of bricks that God has been waiting for me all my life and I can do the same with her. And when she came back from Spain, I thought all the waiting was over. I thought we can continue to move on in life together through God.

Patience wasn’t exercised as it should have been. Our life through God wasn’t happening as we wanted it. God was there, but we weren’t doing things through Him. So now we find ourselves in a place where we mutually agreed that in order to get ourselves back on track with God we need to give each other up for an arbitrary number of weeks. When my friends ask about it, they wondered if we were on a “break”. I prefer not think of it that way. I like think more like we’re “fasting” the relationship. Every time I think about her (which is a lot), every time my heart aches because I’m apart from her (also a lot), I lift her up to God in prayer for protection and love. We both wanted this. We both want to meet each other again through God’s heart. And it is in God’s timing—His growth in us as we  are apart—that I believe it will happen.

And this goes back to love and patience. Somehow I find myself back in 1 Corinthians 13:4. I started to read—”Love is patient, love is kind”—stop! It felt like the Spirit stopped me before even finishing that verse. He tells me those are the two things I need to hold on to during this time of fasting. I cannot forget that love is both patient and kind. Yes, I find myself waiting yet again, but I also found my emotions flying back and forth. I remembered how she treated me the last week before we mutually made this decision. I could have harbored resentment. I could plan and plot what I ought to say the next time I see her about how I felt leading up to all of this. But doing this is childish. I shouldn’t be led by emotions because they are not constant. I no longer need to be controlled by my emotions. I am more mature now and I can put away these childish ways ((1 Corinthians 13:11)).

I need to remember that love is first and foremost an action. I am not patient, I am to be patient. I am not kind, I am to be kind. I think I heard it from Tim Keller (and I’m sure there’s a passage about this somewhere) that when you start doing these things of love, you’ll become these things of love. This love is completely separate from the emotions I feel. It doesn’t negate the emotions, the emotion is real. But I can keep those emotions under the control of the constant and loving God.

I pray that we both grow through God during this time. There’s a God-shaped hole in my heart that needs to be filled with God alone. I try to fill it with the world—whether it’s new shiny things, a successful career, or intimate relationships. But I want the both of us to truly seek God and only allow Him to ever fill that hole in our hearts. I pray this in His Son’s Holy Name—Jesus Christ—amen!