Recently we lost a member of our police department. While attending his funeral, I was amazed to see how many lives he impacted. After he retired he got a PHD and became a counselor to those in uniform who were dealing with the many emotional difficulties they face in their line of work. Even before he was doing it as a career, he still looked after his own during his 20 some odd years of law enforcement.
It made me think, how much of my time do I spend intentionally making a difference for others? I have always believed that if you are living your life only being inconvenienced by yourself, you are probably living a pretty selfish life. Phillipians 2:3 says "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves." We weren't created to be self serving human beings.
It's really easy to do something for someone if it's not an inconvenience to you. But if that is all you do, what does that truly say about your character? After thinking about it, I will go out of my way to make sure the person I am helping out doesn't feel as if they are inconveniencing me because I don't want them to feel bad. It makes me realize there is such a stigma about it that people feel like they are walking on egg shells to ask for help.
I am making it a point in my life to be inconvenienced for someone other than myself more often. What things do you feel you can be more intentional about in your own life to make a difference for someone else?
So I have to admit, I was nervous about starting my own blog. I used to love writing and then it just became something that I simply didn't make time for. A new friend, Claudia MacPherson inspired me to start one just from reading hers. There is so many times God puts things on my heart and I think, ah I want to share that. So for my first blog, I want to share something that really helps me with my walk with God. I have been a Christian my whole life. I pretty much knew knew since I was a kid that I needed to read my bible daily. That doesn't mean I did it, I just knew I needed too. Recently, my husband and I realized we were complacent in our walk with God. I had been working full time, my husband works full time as a firefighter, and with our young son, things were busy! We didn't realize how complacent we were until I got laid off from my job after over 8 years of working there. Little did we know, it was the biggest blessing in disguise. I really didn't even want to work full time. Once we had Eli I wanted to only work part time. However, we didn't think we could make it financially for me to work part time. None the less I was still devastated as I loved the people I worked with and I loved what I did. I was a civilian employee at a police department and law enforcement is such an exciting field to work in. I was out of work for 2 months before getting a part time job at my church. It was 5 days a week which wasn't great for getting childcare but I was excited to work for the church I grew up in and called home. It was actually a pretty boring job as a receptionist, not anything like the fast paced job I left at the PD. And surprisingly, doing not much of anything for 5 days a week was a hard transition for me to make. I read a lot of books and started getting into reading the bible daily. I knew God had a purpose for me being at the church. It's hard to read the bible, let's be honest. It can be boring, and sometimes I have no idea what it means. I read anyways. It amazed me how much I got out of it. I felt like it brought me closer to God and for the first time in a long time, I no longer felt complacent. Instead of my priorities being about myself, getting into the word gave me the ability to be able to be sensitive to what God was putting on my heart. I can't tell you how many people it has brought into my life and the clarity for direction it has given me. I left the church in January because the PD called me and offered me a part time job as a civilian investigator. To say I was excited is an understatement. As a full timer, this was a job I had eyed and wanted to do, but never said it out loud. In fact, when you are laid off and hired back, you are only aloud to go back to the same division you were laid off from (I used to be in records). However, I had this awesome lieutenant and he worked hard to get them offer me the part time job in detectives. I look at myself now and I can see I am much different than the person I used to be. So in closing I wrote all of that, to say how important it is to get into God's word. I would like to say it's easy and I continue to do it daily, but I would be lying. I still have to work at it and make time for it. Having a relationship with God isn't always an easy thing, if it was, wouldn't more people do it? It's a journey but one I have found is oh so worth it!
