Backwards Design

I remember being a child and idealizing adulthood.  "When I grow up...I will...drive a Porsche...or stay out as late as I want...or have 20 children...go to Disney every year...or have ten puppies..."

Abruptly you realize that:
 8Your red minivan "loser-cruiser, grocery-getter" is not a Porsche. 
*Staying out late is overrated and create bags under my 40 year old eyes.
*Three children sometimes feels like three too many. 
*The lines at Disney are killer. 
*One dog gets on my every last nerve (especially when the snow starts to melt...)

In the midst of a normal day-in-the-life of overwhelming adulthood, I yearned for a simpler time when laundry was magically done and meals were provided.  (Could jail be an option?)  I realized that I was a cranky, unhappy adult.  I was not behaving like a loving, blessed mother and wife.  Reality hit me~the grass really isn't greener on the other side~now I get it!  There was something in my reality- tv life that was way outta whack...I was not loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, or full of self-control. 

Much to my dismay, I figured out, it was ME!  I wasn't congruent~what I believed on the inside was not what I was living on the outside!  There was a gap between whom I was and whom I should be.

 2 Timothy 3~describes the terrible state of the human condition:
In the last days, with strong language~consumed with self, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient, ungrateful, loveless, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, rash, conceited...having a kind of godliness, but denying its power~have nothing to do with them.

  OUCH!  That hurt.

Solution?  Backwards design ("Understanding by Design~Wiggins and McTighe, 1998).  It is an educational term, but I think it applies...(my husband is an educator, so I know many million dollar words and acronyms!)  It simply means:

~BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND.

I don't want to have regrets or waste my time pining for what I do not have, not an easy task...

So, upon this new year of new beginnings, Ralph Waldo Emerson says it best:

Finish each day and be done with it

You have done what you could.

Some blunders and absurdities,

no doubt crept in;

Forget them as soon as you can.

Tomorrow is a new day;

Begin it well and serenely

And with too high a spirit

To be encumbered

With your old nonsense.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

LiVinG OuTsIdE WhAt'S InSiDe

Victim.

We are products of our environment.

Hurt by others.

Emotionally abandoned.

Those that should protect us don't heed the responsibility.  Sadly, they don't even realize it.

We are desperate for affirmation from someone, insecurity grows and we are uncomfortable in normal situations.  We blame people for their normal lives.  There exists hate, jealousy, fear, and obsession over losing that person, even though their perfect lives make us so mad inside.
We are too embarrassed to admit it.


We don't experience our own successes and give into the feelings of worthlessness.  We long for the love that they have, but don't accept it.

We victimize, in subtle ways...DARE we admit it?  We twinge inside, we are aware something we are doing is wrong, but the emotional need it too great to purge the ickiness we are carrying out.

We punish others for their positives (jealousy) and their resources they have no control over (family and friends).

We create problems and entangle others emotionally so they feel compelled not to leave us.

Unfairness.
Conflicted over guilt of the circumstances we are creating that muddy the waters, fear grows and then we step up our unhealthy game.

But, inside, we live in dark shame.  Dare we attempt to overcome this?

***Congruence is the state achieved by coming together, the state of agreement.  Wikipedia.  Webster's Dictionary says HARMONY.***

I remember the moment in time where it was time for me to end the inner conflict and fess up to the emptiness inside.  I stumbled across these words.
 

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.  I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,  I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.  
Phillipians 3:12-14


You cannot believe something to be true on the inside and live something else on the outside and expect that you will have peace...