Updated Blogging Site

Hi everyone!

First I want to let you know I am SO grateful to each of you for reading my blog these past few years, you are each a great encouragement to me as I learn and grow in my love of writing.

I also wanted to let you know that I have moved my blog to Wordpress as it has some features that blogger does not have at this time. My hope is that you will continue to follow me on my wordpress site.

To follow me on Wordpress do the following:

1 - Go to http://www.jennyrain.wordpress.com/

2 - On the right side of the web-page there is a link that looks like this:

3 - Select "Click here to subscribe" - a dialog box will pop-up asking you to verify your email address. Enter it and my blogs will be sent to you just like they are currently.

I also update my Facebook and my Twitter accounts regularly to reflect my blogs, so if you follow me on either of these sites, you will also stay updated on my blogs too.

www.facebook.com/jennyrainschmitz

www.twitter.com/JennyRain

Again, thank you SO very much for your readership - you are each such an incredible blessing to me!

(new site)

Jenny

Love and Respect: A Generational Thing?

Relationships. Love. Respect. Confusion?!?

This morning's theme seems to be relationships. Not suprising considering I fell 200% clueless on how to navigate this thing called marriage that John and I have entered into.

Bryan Redding Photography

As often happens when I am confused about which oar to row next, Divine Timing shows up with a radio broadcast, weblog, email, or twitter that meets me where I am.

This morning I "just happened" to tune into Family Life today with Dennis Rainey and Bob Lepine. They were interviewing Susie Davis, author of Loving Your Man without Losing Your Mind, and her husband, Will. I can relate to a title like this!




In this broadcast Susie talked about the necessity of women to respect their husband and how on some occasions we need to pick our hill and die on it, and some occasions we need to just "let it roll." She spoke of one time she was baring her soul to her husband and he "appeared" to be the dutiful listener, completely engrossed in her confession. And then he spoke,

"Honey, would you go to the store and get some bread?"

I laughed out loud when I heard this talk because sometimes it feels like this at my house! And I'm sure if you ask John, he would probably tell you that I do the same thing to him too.

Planetary Rotations and Displaced Travelers.




Sometimes it feels as if my husband and I are living on two different planets, the only problem is that somehow I landed on Mars, and John landed on Venus, and as of yet, there are no transportation vehicles between the two! Truth-be-told, I think both of us feel a bit out of our element.

Maybe it is just because both of us are GenXers and the morning broadcasts seem to target Baby Boomers? Yep. That has to be the problem.

So I brushed the morning show aside and walked into work.

Upon opening my inbox, there was a post from Kem Meyer (a blogger I follow regularly). Kem is just starting a series called Making Love Last. She will be covering the following topics in the coming weeks:

Love is a verb (8/15-16)
The art of loving you more than myself (8/22-23)
The expectation trap (8/29-30)
The love triangle (9/5-6)

Oye. So perhaps I have some things to learn in the coming weeks about love and relationships.

These are my questions about relationships...

1. I know that Ephesians 5 says "husband love your wives. wives respect your husbands." However, to me - to love me is to respect me and to respect me is to love me. It seems, if you ask my husband - the two are interchangable too. Is this respect thing just generational?
2. The morning shows I listen to are great - very informative and insightful. The only problem is this, at some point during the show, they stop connecting with me. I begin relating more to the "Mars" side of things and less to the "Venus" side. Again, is it just because I'm of the generation (GenX) that has broken all the rules or is it that something in me - as a woman - is not working quite as it should?
3. Is my need for respect normal or is it just a result of some of my "baggage" from the past that still needs some healing? In other words, once I'm fully healthy (haha - as if that ever happens!) will I then think in terms of needing "love" vs. "respect"?
4. Are love and respect terms that are synonymous? Is this whole thing just a semantics issue?
5. WHY isn't anyone MY age talking about this issue?!?!

Design Spotters

I love design spotters.

Design spotters have this knack of finding a few pictures of re-designed rooms, creative crafts, and inviting environments for me to step into for a moment. They can take a space that looks drab and uncomfortable and re-create it into a warm and inviting space. They can take a website that is overloaded with random images and connect it with cohesive graphics. I look forward to seeing the innovations they find each week to share.

Anything design fascinates me because designers have such an out-of-the-box type of style. They just see the world differently. A good designer can take five unrelated objects and make them work in a room and that fascinates me. A great designer can take seven disjointed graphic elements and combine them on the same page to make it pop.

Designers are cutting-edge. They tend to be on the forefront of what is coming and rather than following a trend, they set it. Designers (or those who "catch" good design) inspire me!

Here are the latest design-spotters I'm following... If you know of any other great design bloggers, message me.

Absolutely Beautiful Things
Brown Button
Delight by Design
Design Lovely
Green Wedding Shoes
Luphia Loves
Haven and Home
VT Interiors
The City Sage

And my all time favorite Design Blogger is:

Swish and Swanky

Oops, I did it again!

I break things.

It is not intentional, this breaking-of-things, it just sort of happens. I am not sure if this is a newly-developed skill set or if it pre-dated being married, but this inclination to invite disaster seems to have insidiously endeared itself to my being. If you invite me to your house, beware, something may be shattered, fractured, totaled, torpedoed, demolished, or incapacitated-beyond-any-hope-of-recovery by the time I go home.

This propensity to provoke catastrophes baffles my husband.

My disasters begin upon the eruption of muffled yelps and cacophonous melodies. This most often occurs between the hours of six and seven a.m. As my husband comes running to the sound of the alarm, I am often found standing and shouting at said-broken-device while [water, smoke, fill-in-the-blank-item] pours out/drips out/shoots out of it. It does not occur to me to turn said-broken-device off.

"Seven years that shower-head has functioned fantastically. Less than two months in the house and you have broken it?" he responds to this morning's "rearrangement" of the shower-head from the shower wall to the bathroom floor.

"I don't understand. I have used the sink-sprayer for over seven-and-a-half years without fail. How exactly did it break this morning?" says John the morning the kitchen-sink-sprayer's head popped off without warning, shooting water throughout our kitchen.

"It's just inevitable honey," say I, "You married me!"

Most days he just walks away shaking his head. I am not sure he realized this tendancy for trouble was a part of the "I do's" we said in May.

I wonder who fixed things before my husband came along?

If this proclivity to pull-to-pieces has pursued me persistently since birth, I wonder who followed me to fix the foibles of my formative years? It did not seem as if stuff was ever broken during my growing up years.

Thankfully, my dad and my step-dad are both very handy, so whatever was broken tended to be repaired quickly. Even mom knows her way around a tool-box and has been known to repair toilets, patch holes in the wall, darn holes in clothing, and re-paint wall scrapes. My family knows how to fix things and thankfully it appears as if my husband does too.

I like people who can fix things.

For a chronic-breaker, it is very comforting to have a fixer around! Reflecting on the "repair-men-and-women" in my life this morning, I found myself grateful for the Ultimate Repairer who has fixed and rescued more times than I probably even know.

Like a potter shaping and reshaping the clay, my God-Who-Repairs has used the bumps and bruises of my life, the broken and shattered pieces of my mistakes, choices, and efforts to mold my life into something that is becoming quite lovely. I have never felt "broken" as my Divine Fixer has worked His repair-magic, though I know that I have been.



This Gentle Fixer has somehow smoothed out the scrapes and scratches - many times - without me even knowing He is working. I have never felt as if my broken-ness disqualifies me from receiving His Love. Quite the opposite in fact, for it is as I have brought these shattered pieces to my Divine Healer, it is those places that I have seen Him most lovingly work out something glorious.

I am so grateful that though I break things, there is One who sticks those broken pieces back together again.

God made my life complete when I placed all the pieces before him. When I got my act together, he gave me a fresh start. Now I'm alert to God's ways; I don't take God for granted. Every day I review the ways he works; I try not to miss a trick. I feel put back together, and I'm watching my step. God rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes. Psalm 18: 20-24

God, you are our Father. We're the clay and you're our potter: All of us are what you made us. Isaiah 64:8 (MSG)

Negative Nan will you Please Go away!

Negativity ruins my day.

This week I had a conversation that was so negative, once it ended I felt like I needed a shower. It irked me because I did not realize I was into the morass-of-mumbling until well into the talk, but by then I could not extricate myself from the conversation.

What struck me most about the conversation was the commanding tone of the other person:

Do this...
You must remember to do that...
If you do not do that, then this....

The results - according to this conversationalist if I did not "do this or that" were absolutely catastrophic. If I did not take full responsibility for doing this or that, then the worst-case-scenario would happen.

The conversation was full of fear and control. Anyone who knows anything about control knows it is one big ILLUSION! The more we try to control things, the more we make ourselves crazy because we soon realize that we cannot control anything.

The conversation also caught me by suprise because the conversationalist was not a person I initially expected to display these traits. I am learning that often toxic negativity comes in packages we least expect! Often those "packages" are sugary sweet to the touch on the outside, but "dead men's bones" on the inside.

Out of the mouth the heart speaks.

I have a really hard time with negativity. This trait is probably difficult for me to be a part of because I have worked diligently to change my own negative behaviors. It is something my family is guilty of and it is something we as a collective unit have tried to change in the last five years, but in order to "fix" it and begin changing things in my family, we had to deal with some of the heart issues.

As this conversation proceeded, I felt sorry for the heart-issues this individual must be suffering. I heard the pain in the words that were not spoken and I felt the weight of oppression that was being carried. I began wondering, "Is negativity learned, or is it genetic?" I thought about all of the therapeutic techniques and medications that are available if the negativity is based genetically on depression or anxiety (which was the case in my own life), and began wondering, "Knowing that there are so many possible solutions to a negative mindset, why do people persist in walking around with something that is killing them from the inside out?" I do not get it.

Negativity is one-part choice.

I know - first hand - what it is like to walk around with negativity battering the insides of your brain - I did it for thirty-six years. As the people who helped me out of the pit said, "Jenny, that is thirty-six years TOO long to live with that!" I listened and my life is so much different now because I dealt with the anxiety and depression that had ruled my life for far too long.

Each part of my healing journey involved choice.

We simply cannot heal a negative mindset without first choosing to get well. EVEN if our anxiety, depression, and negative mind-set are physiological and/or bio-chemical imbalances, the first step to getting well is choosing to get help. The second part is choosing to "take the medicine" that the helper advises. The third part is choosing to stay well.

I chose to listen to my body as it was telling me, "I'm hurting. Help me!"
I chose to begin counseling and stay in counseling, even through the hard parts.
I chose to dig through God's word and see what He said about healing and our minds.
I chose to pray daily and then listen to what God had to say.
I chose to make myself accountable to community and share my struggles with others so they would know how to come along side of me.

I know that I still have bad days - my hubby will tell you that! But the overall cloud that once wrapped my brain in darkness has vanished. The negative thoughts and the toxic anxiety that used to wrap around me like a wet blanket, causing me to need to control every aspect of my time and space have found somewhere else to roost (Elvis has "left the building" so to speak). I am learning to love every day that God has given me and have found many reasons to be grateful.

Negativity has lost its home.

Once I stopped making negativity "home" in my physical house (my brain & body), my life began to change. Once I began making choices that honored God's "temple" (my body) - which includes Spirit, soul, mind, body, heart - I began stepping into healthiness.

Perhaps this is why my heart breaks over this negative conversation this week. I see the inner turmoil of this individual. I see that though external circumstances are feeding the negativity and keeping it alive, circumstances do not determine our mind-set - We do (with God's amazing Grace working through us).

1 Thessalonians 2:12 We exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.
Colossians 4:2 Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.
Ephesians 5:1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.
Luke 1:47 And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.(KJV)
Rom 12:2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
John 16:24 Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. (KJV)
John 16:33 These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. (KJV)
Acts 13:52 And the disciples were filled with joy, and with the Holy Ghost. (KJV)
Rom 12:12 Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer; (KJV)
Rom 14:17 For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. (KJV)
Rom 15:13 Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost. (KJV)
Gal 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith(KJV)
2 Cor 10:5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
Phil 4:4 Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice. (KJV)

Speaking from our Heart

People speak the things that are in their hearts (Lk 6:45 NCV)

What is in your heart today?

As followers of Christ we are promised that our outward behavior does not determine our identity, but rather our identity in Christ determines our eventual behavior. Thank God! This is a very reassuring reality for me because I often struggle with the "behavioral aspect" of my faith walk.

I have learned however, that my behavior and my words provide a pretty realistic indicator of how healthy I am in Christ, and perhaps how submitted I am to God in some areas.

There are times when I struggle with the words of my mouth.

This week, on a day when I was particularly tired, I was sassy with my husband to which he responded, "Grumpy-Monkey!" and made a face at me. Immediately upon hearing John's loving confrontation, I realized I was snapping at him and began the process of internal self-correction so that he did not become the object of my impatience again.

I do this because I love John. I also do this because I love God, I know that I am in Christ, and with that new Identity I bear responsibility for how I behave in public and in private. I have learned that it is no longer my name alone that I carry with me, it is also the name of my Beloved, Jesus Christ. Now that I am married, my behavior also reflects on John and though I know (and John can attest to as well) that I am not anywhere near perfect, God honors as "perfect" my attempts to display self-control as a fruit of His spirit working through me.

Psalms 51:10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Often I find my prayers circulating back to this scripture. I do this because I know that I have historically been an expert at verbally-fire-bombing friends and then realizing my mouth has gotten ahead of my brain.

Daily I have to leave my attitude with my Father in heaven so that my words and actions do not intentionally or unintentionally hurt those around me. It has been a life-long healing process and though I am much better than I used to be, cut me off in traffic and my mouth starts running faster than the speed limit!

I value my friends because they risk holding a mirror up to my behavior.

The friends who have made the most impact in my life are those who are willing to give me the hand and say "Stop" when I am behaving in a way not befitting to a follower of Christ. People who have risked stepping into a situation with me to say, "You know, I hear from your words that you are angry, but I still love you anyway. Is there a better way of communicating so we do not continue to hurt each other?"

It is these friends that demonstrated that real love, Christ's love living through us, is for keeps. That just because I may say something careless does not mean the relationship will disintigrate too. They have showed me that if I value the relationship, I will also honor and value them by watching the words of my mouth.

They have challenged me to realize that I carry Christ with me wherever I go and people are watching how I behave - because they cannot readily see Christ-in-me through any other means than my words and actions. It is these friends who have given me the courage to face where my heart was bruised from difficult life-events and much in need of healing and find the road to health.

I have made the choice to find this healing and pursue it.

Healing did not find me, I had to seek it out and be committed to working the program of change. With God's help, I have learned that living the Christian life is not just about getting my way in life, it is about giving away my life. Especially when it is inconvenient. Especially when it is painful as it is often in those times when I want to be sassafras Sue, when I want to spout off rather than submit to God that I am growing the most.

What are your words saying about your relationship with Christ and your investment in the lives of others around you?

Keeping first things first: Psalm of Reflection

As I was pondering Revelations 2.4-5 today (I seem to be running into this scripture a lot this week - yikes!), my prayers turned into a psalm

Psalm of Reflection

I love you Lord for you saw my pain
You did not leave me where my feet would slip
Instead, you reached out and delivered me to a smooth pathway

People watched how you rescued me.

They saw your hand lovingly restore me.
They observed your redemption in my life.

Now I am new.
You have brought me to a good land.
This is a land of promise and here you allow me to rest secure in You.

May my heart ponder Your goodness all of my days
As I reflect on the good path you have chosen for me.

May others see Your goodness and stand in awe of You.
May I be found faithful in all my ways

May my life be a reflection of Your abiding Grace and Love.

So as I have been reflecting on Revelations 2 and pondering what God might have me to learn through the scripture which states "You have lost your first love," I realize my heart's desire is to keep God first in my life. Some days I do this better than others, so for today, I simply ask that God honor my desire, meet me where my will is presented to Him as a gift, and help me get the rest of the way to Him through His abiding Grace.

How thankful I am for God's goodness and love to me today.