A quiet week

It's been a quiet week. I suppose in some ways it wasn't much different than most weeks. I'm usually at home by 7:30 from my UPS job. This past week I only worked six hours for my afternoon job. I studied for about 5 hours between Monday and Wednesday and went to Physiology lab on Wednesday afternoon. As you can tell, that leaves lots of time for other things. A month ago that schedule had me putting a lot of energy into searching for another job to fill my time. This week I was grateful for the extra time to be able to process some of what I've been experiencing and talking about with friends. I appreciated being able to write out my thoughts without having to watch the clock to make sure I'm on time for the next event.

One of the things I've been thinking about this week is the whole idea of renewing our minds. We've been studying Colossians at church and Paul tells us in chapter 3 to set our minds on and seek the things that are above where Jesus is. He goes on to say that Jesus is our life. The problem is that our actions show we really expect something else to give us life and the result is that our lives are filled with the works of the flesh. In order to stop doing those things and start being loving, patient and kind, we have to change what we are living for. So it all goes back to what we believe and a lifelong process of renewing our minds.

I spent quite a bit of time this week seeking the answer to what it means to renew my mind and how to do that. Google and a couple of friends helped me with some ideas. The basic idea is to replace my thoughts with God's thoughts. That implies that I have to know what my thoughts are, which sounds rather obvious but far too often I don't allow myself to say what I really think because it isn't the way I "should" be thinking. In addition, I don't always find it very easy to identify what I'm feeling. However, I've discovered that one of the effects of dealing with my brother's death is that many of my emotions have been magnified in every area of my life. The raw hurt makes it easier to get at what I really think - and much of the time it seems very far from the "right, biblical" answers I say I believe. The comforting thing is that I see those same raw emotions expressed in the Psalms. These are God inspired songs that he wants his people to actually sing. That tells me God is glad when I pour out all the grief, anger, hurt, pain, and longing as well as the glimpses of joy that I've been experiencing. By telling him (and myself) what I really think rather than what I think he wants to hear we can work with reality rather than a facade. And best of all, he loves, accepts, rejoices over me and even makes up songs about me in the midst of my mess.