Begin!

May the words of my mouth and the mediation of my heart be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.  Psalms 19:14 (NIV)

Back in 2014 I vividly heard God while I was in prayer. His solitary word answer has proved to be a much bigger challenge than I expected it to be. 

I asked “Lord, what do YOU want me to do?” I had been struggling with trying to find my worth after leaving a company I had worked at for over twelve years.  I have brought home paychecks since I was almost fifteen years old, and not having an avenue to make my own money left me feeling as if I had no structure and no purpose anymore. If I didn’t bring home a paycheck, was I really valuable in my own home? I certainly didn't feel valuable in my own eyes. After I left the company in 2012, I sought out different avenues of ways to make an income.

Fast forward to 2022 and I have found way too many ways to avoid doing what God told me to do that day back in 2014. These avenues have had temporary satisfactions for me, but still there has been a longing in my spirit to do what I heard God tell me I was to do. 

Psalms 127:1 says “…Unless the LORD builds the house, the builders labor in vain….” I keep trying to build my own house. I keep trying to pave my own way, yet the end result is just keeping busy and distracted from what I know God is telling me to do. I still doubt that I am qualified or gifted enough. I keep thinking my gift is to please other people, that in some way it will bring me glory. But as the verse at the beginning of this article says, may the words of my mouth, in my head, in my heart be pleasing in HIS sight. May the mediations of my heart be pleasing to Him.  Please Him is all that should matter.  He is the One that gave me an answer as I prayed. Why is it, I find it hard to think He wouldn’t give me the gift to fulfill His desire for me?

Meditation is described in the Cambridge dictionary as “the act of giving your attention to only one thing…  Oh-My Lanta!  I have so many squirrels running around in my head, I can hardly keep track of them all!  Giving my attention to only one thing seems like an impossible task. 

Recently my friend in Pennsylvania and I started reading a book together. Okay, full disclosure here, she has read the entire book by now I’m sure, and I’m still on chapter two. Anyway, we are sharing our insights from the book ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear. We have both downloaded the workbook and the example pages of how to create and stick to habits that we want to form, or develop. Today, some of the examples set me back on a path I need to stick with. I have this notion that to do what God has told me to do, I have to dedicate so much of my time, that I no longer seem to have. Instead, I just need to create a habit of setting aside five minutes a day.

God put it in my heart much longer than eight years ago that I am supposed to write. But eight years ago, I distinctly asked Him what He wanted me to do, and I very distinctly heard Him say “Write”.

I have written in the past. I’ve kept a journal since before I was married, and I have three blogs! I have an old computer that I can’t give up yet because it has the beginning outline for a novel buried inside. But since 2014 I’ve allowed the enemy to rob me of motivation, creativity, and confidence to put the words in my mouth (or my head) to paper.  I’ve dabbled a time or few, but it’s not what I know He wants from me.

So I begin again. I begin to create a habit of writing, even if for only five minutes. Thanks to Kate Motaung and her Five Minute Friday community, I’ve written a couple of times. Thanks to James Clear and his book Atomic Habits, I now can begin to create a habit of writing. He says to make a goal of writing for an X amount of time. For me I’ll begin with five minutes and if I go for longer, great! Some of these I will post here. Others, I may not. Even so, I will begin to write again.

Click the link here to see the post back in 2014 http://howellblessings.blogspot.com/2014/07/getting-real.html