Confession 2

I have thinking more about confession, and trying to put it into practice. It is very difficult and not entirely pleasant. It is much easier to justify my sins to myself, blame them on others, blame them on being pregnant, or say they aren't that bad - I haven't really hurt anyone with them. Then when I admit that I am as bad as I have discovered, it is easy to sink into guilty despair and shame. So what is going on? Why is confession not the victorious beautiful occurrence, like I previously described?

So far I have identified two reasons, closely linked, but separated for the sake of examination: pride and mistaken identity.

Pride has often been called the root of all sin and I don't think I can disagree with that. It is so ingrained and so pervasive in my life, even if it isn't the root of all sin, it is definitely connected to all kinds of sin. Aren't the justifications of sin in the first paragraph just dripping with pride? Pride often shows itself in my life by me wanting to be in control - of situations, of people, of myself, of what people perceive about me, etc. When I am not in control, I give in to fear. This ties in with the second reason.

Some of my deepest fears are of not being accepted or valuable. When I give into that fear, I am forgetting who I really am in Christ. Jesus says that no matter what I do, or how I think, or my service to the world, I am loved by him. I am valuable to him. I have a place in his kingdom and a place of service that is a perfect fit for those gifts he gave me.

 When I forget that I am loved, I will instead give into guilt and despair - which are forms of trying to maintain control. When I forget that I am loved, I will hide my sin, denying its harm, which is a form of pride. When I forget that I am loved, confession is impossible because I need to maintain my image, even if it is just to myself.

However, Godly confession reminds me that I am loved. Then confession becomes beautiful because it recognizes that I am as bad as I fear that I am, but that I am loved in spite of being that bad. Not just "toleration" sort of love, but a love that casts out fear, gives freedom, and provides a sense of worth outside of myself.

All this is on the God and me relationship side of things, but I want to mention a connection to my relationship with others. When I remember that I am loved, I can love others. I will not place judgements on them. I can use charity and grace to interpret what they say and do. And I can apologize for the ways I have come across, even if it was unintentional. When I am living in a state of confession, I can extend to others the grace God has shown to me.

As an authority figure, I can create an atmosphere where confession is safe because my love for my children (or others under my authority) is not based on their performance. As a church member, I can be welcoming and accepting of visitors and congregants who are not like myself. As a wife, I can give my husband the freedom to make mistakes and not have them haunt him. As a sister and daughter, I can be a listening ear that turns conversations to Jesus' love. As a human, I can be vulnerable, but not a victim.

Confession that recognizes God's approval of me will change the way I perceive the world; then allow me to redeem little portions of that world through the grace of Jesus. I am so thankful that God doesn't wait for me to get my life in order, but uses my sin and confession to show others who He is.

Food Adventures

As I have said before, my child is a rather picky eater. He likes his baby food. He likes most fruits and vegetables (as long as they are pureed) and he like jelly toast and cookies. (This isn't really the entire list, but it gives you the idea.)

However, the day of his eighteen month appointment, he ate an entire fish stick without being coaxed or fed. He didn't want more than one, but he ate that one without a fight. Then he ate a French fry with relish - sweet relish, that is. (He has been eating French fries for a while, but has never wanted anything on them.) And to top it all off, he ate and ate green peas - not pureed. It was a good night.

Also within this past week, I have discovered his incredible delight in peanut butter. We have had PB&J's and PeanutButter Banana sandwiches and he has always made sticky mouth faces, so I assumed peanut butter wasn't his favorite thing. But one day, I had peanut butter on my apples and gave him a slice, just to see what he would do. He loved it - chewed off the peanut butter side and asked for more. He wanted some the next day too. Today, I offered him apples and peanut butter, but he was not as interested in the apple as he was the peanut butter. He didn't quite lick off the peanut butter and ask for more, but pretty close.

He then turned down a homemade chocolate chip cookie... I am going to say that was because he was so tired.

Maybe, just maybe, he will be eating something besides baby food by the time he is 18.

Confession 1

All through Lent, we prayed a daily confession. Although I don't have it completely memorized yet, I can almost say it without looking. It has been a great source of encouragement and conviction. And it has gotten me thinking about confession a lot.

The purpose of confession is not validation - trying to make myself feel good enough to move on with life - or penance - trying to make myself feel bad enough to stop doing whatever I am confessing. The purpose of confession is repentance - seeing my worth as Jesus sees it and turning from my sin because he has freed me from it - which is better than validation or penance.

But confession without repentance is futile, just like repentance without confession is empty. I have heard repentance and faith emphasized all my life. It was tied to doing what was right and when you messed up, saying you are sorry, and stopping doing what was wrong. The only way we could stop doing bad things was by repenting of it and believing Jesus. So what was meant by repentance is similar to what I mean by confession, but the confession I am learning about is deeper than just what I do, think, or say.

The confession I am learning about is a confession of who I am, not in vague terms, as in "I am a sinner" but more specific definitions of my personality sins. I believe each personality has certain strengths and weaknesses, virtues and sins. These virtues are the things God commands us to do that we do "naturally," as in we don't have to work hard to do it. Some people don't seem to have to work hard at getting up early to have a time of devotions. Others see people in need and immediately have compassion on them and know how to help. On the flip side, these personality sins are those that certain people struggle with again and again, often with different manifestations but not always. Some people get angry very quickly; others can't seem to stop gossiping about others.

Part of confession is identifying those personality sins. Admitting that I am like that - not trying to justify it or brush over it. Instead of saying that I get angry only when I am tired and provoked, confessing that I am an angry person and loose control more often that I would like to admit. Or instead of saying, I am reaching out to people and sharing needs so others can pray, I need to confess that my words are more often gossip and destructive people's reputation.

God has been showing me some of these personality sins that I struggle with, and probably will struggle with my entire life. I know that God is perfectly capable of completely changing me but because I believe he works with us in sanctification, the change will probably not be immediate and will probably have many other manifestations. That is why confession is so important. It reminds me that I need his help to change me. Although I can choose not to act on impulses, only God can get rid of those impulses, and he can only do that as I allow him to work in my life - through confession.

This is only the first part of my discoveries about confession. I hope to be able to put more into words as I learn more.

News

 Eamon is 18 months, 21 pounds, I don't know how tall,  and three of his canine teeth have made an appearance. He is still drooling like crazy and biting on everything, so I think the last one is about to show itself too. That means 7 (almost 8) teeth since the beginning of the year.

He also has another ear infection. After having a cold for two days and having two horrible nights, I should have guessed, but his panting and wheezing were throwing me off. It was pretty rough for a few days, but he is doing so much better now that he is on antibiotics.

He still is very picky about his food. He usually sleeps from 8:30 pm to 6:00 am in his own bed. He walks, tries to run, and climbs on everything. He is quite good at getting places he wants to get, and getting things he wants to get.

He "talks" up a storm, but very few words are intelligible. However, he is pretty good at communicating his wants and desires, and displeasure when he doesn't get those things. He is generally pretty content and very snuggly. He has loved going to our libraries these past few weeks. "SO MANY BOOKS! Let me pull them all off the shelves," he seems to say. His favorite books are about animals, especially lions, gorillas, and dragons. However, he does like his truck books and "I Spy" style books too.

He has been pretending to be creatures at various times. For example, he will eat like a lion by grabbing all the Cheerios on his tray and stuffing them all in his mouth. Or he will be a monkey while I am trying to change his diaper by wiggling and beating on his chest. He surprised me the other day while I was trying to get him to take a nap, he looked at me and roared, then rolled away rubbing his face into the covers. I asked him what he was doing, and he just roared at me again before grinning real big. I discovered he was being a monster, like Max in the Wild Things book, so I reminded him that even monsters got sent to bed. So he laid back down, and eventually fell asleep.

In other news, I am 21 weeks and still haven't gotten any belly pictures. Part of me doesn't mind because I am not feeling very photogenic, but the other part of me want to record and compare to other pregnancies. Also, I finally took down the Christmas wreath on the back door (everything else has been down for a while) and decorated for spring/Easter. We decorated eggs - a few hard boiled ones, but I decided to blow a few and decorate them with ribbons and such.

For Easter, after church, we went to my parents house, took a walk in the rain, and tried to get better 18 month pictures of Eamon. Eamon got 5 mini M&Ms before bed to celebrate. Thomas and I had Chocolate Chess Pie.