The Ripple In My Heart

A ripple is working its way to the surface of my life and that of my family.   

The calm exterior facade is disrupted by the pain emanating from within.  Irritation, frustration, anger, old wounds and sensitivity to...just about everything as well as the ease of offense; is bubbling to the surface.  

Stress causes us to see the reality of our own lives and honestly...it is not pretty.

Our lives have been shaken and completely disregulated.  I can almost image the quaking that the earth feels, as after-shocks under the surface.  Everything is shifting and unsettled.  Icky. 

 I feel as if our family is standing on various slabs of regret, grief and isolation.  Independent.  

Our family units are very important systems like the mobile over the crib of a baby.  The baby reaches up and wacks at one dangling teddy bear...the entire mobile is impacted.  

A healthy unit is a framework of individuals whom are responsible for their own feelings, attitudes, behaviors and choices and to the other members.  It is a difficult task.

It is so important then for the sake of our family that we as individuals "get a grip" on ourselves knowing that our lives do impact others.  

We do not have the right to be individualistic nor do we have the privilege of thinking of our selves. 

 It is not about us.  It is impossible to "do" it on our own and not our job to fix ourselves and our families.  

However, it is our job to surrender our selfish rights to God and ask Him to make us more like Him.

Those sins bubbling to the surface through stress?  A  bringing to light....needing to be confessed and repented of, dealt with and healed.  

Simple, but terribly difficult.

"What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?  

³² He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?  

³³ Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies.  

³⁴ Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.  

³⁵ Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

  ³⁶ As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;
    we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  

³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,  

³⁹ neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8