Birthday.

I love birthdays. I have made that clear on here before. I think they are really special and I love to celebrate them. In my house I like to have a birthday week. I think I may have mentioned that on here once or twice before. I embarrassingly really love my birthday. I have joked with some that it is my favorite holiday. But I am not really sure if I was joking. This is not a surprise for my husband. I love presents. Gift giving and receiving are my love languages. Receiving gifts makes me feel really special and loved. There is something so sweet about someone taking the time to think about you and go out of their way to buy you something pretty. It doesn't matter to me if it is big or small. Expensive or cheap. Handmade or bought. It is the thought behind the act that is so special to me.  I am lucky to have a husband that understand that part of me and let me just say...he is a great gift giver. This year I had been planning out my birthday for about 6 weeks. Yes... 6 weeks. What I mean by planning is, I have been scrounging the internet for the most perfect gift a girl could get. Before I tell you what I am going to tell you please know that what I am about to say has nothing to do with these items, I think these items are really great and they will probably remain on my wish list for a really long time. The point of this is not the "stuff". 

So....here are a couple of the things that I had picked out.

You see, for weeks before my birthday I have been obsessing about these things. Things. They have consumed me and filled a lot of my thoughts. Oh how I hurt knowing now that these things were invading my heart and my mind. They were creeping in and trying to steal the throne of my heart that belongs to God and God alone. Let me back up a little bit...

God has been setting my "mood" or "setting the stage" for my heart to be changed or refined again. Sometimes we need to be sifted and refined to get our feet back on track.

A about 3 weeks ago Beckham came to in my bathroom with these words "Mommy don't be mad." This is never a good thing. He continues "don't spank me. It fell." My thoughts which quickly turned into frantic words of "what do you mean don't spank you, what fell?" He led me to our guest bath, my heart sank because I just knew. He lifted the lid to our black potty and beneath the murky poopy water I caught a glimpse of my beautiful and treasured iPhone4. I had no words just ears blazing with fire and frustration. I sent him to his room with a swat on the hinney and told him to not ever come out again. Well at least until I come get him. I wrap my hand and arm tightly in a grocery sack, dip it into the nasty water and bring forth the ruined poppy dripping iPhone. Ugh! In that moment I no longer have a cell phone and not even a house phone. No means of communication. I was devastated. I mean I guess if I really needed someone I could turn on my car and use my on-star. But wait, all of my contacts went swimming in my potty. Great. I spent the next 7 days moping and throwing little temper tantrums like a 2 yr old would over not getting goldfish before bed time. It is insane our a simple little device seems to connect you to the whole world. Or really how your whole world is connected to this little device. Phillip scolded me several times about how selfish I was for wrapping my whole mood around such a thing. He showed me how I was so devastated over the fact that my phone was ruined, my phone of all things. There are way bigger problems in this world to be devastated over like mothers being forced to put their children up for adoption because they cannot feed them. Children and families and villages in Somalia dying because there country is suffering the greatest drought they've experienced in decades. Now that is devastating. I heard his words but my callused heart wouldn't absorb them. They only made me more annoyed. The day comes where I get my new phone. It was like Christmas. The next day I left for a Beth Moore trip with my church. I was so relieved to get away from my life for a night. 

That night at our girls pajama party our pastors wife led a little devotional. It was good. It was perfect. It was spot on. She read Psalm 51. If you are not familiar with that Psalm it is the Psalm David wrote after committing adultery with Bathsheba. The main theme that night was "How's your heart?". Ouch that got me. My heart was so unclean. Why was it so much easier for her simple words..."Hows your heart?" to break me, then my husbands honest rebuke? I will not ever fully understand but what I do know is that in that moment my heart broke. I felt burdened, heavy and ashamed before God for my ugliness. My heart is wicked and I needed Jesus to fix me then.  I need Jesus every day but I really did that day.  I need God to have mercy on me, I need him to wash my sins away. I began in my heart to pray Davids prayer. I felt a shift. 

The next day at Beth Moore there are so many brilliant things that she talked about that day that was perfect for me. I felt like God was speaking right to me. I will have to write a whole 'nother blog post about that. I was rocked that day.  I began to feel alive again and new. On the bus home God spoke to me. I had been praying over the last 24 hours for God to change me. Change my heart. Put my feet back on his path. Break me again. Rip off this flesh like a bandage. All while praying this I was still battling the consumption of the things above. I was flipping through my phone and looking at these beautiful presents I had picked out for myself. I was about to send them to Phillip to remind him that my birthday was exactly one week away and if he was going to get me something he needed to buy it then so it would be there in time. (Just typing that and hearing it out loud this week as I have confessed it out loud to Phillip I am ashamed) But in that moment I clearly hear God. I don't mean that I heard him audibly what I mean is that I heard him changing my heart. He was showing me all the things that my heart breaks for, well until I got consumed by these things. Again, let me say that these things are not bad things. I think they are great. The enemy however, will use anything he can to devour you. Even good things. He will use what ever it takes to get your heart to not love God and commune with him daily. The enemy used these things against me. I had a tiny crack in my heart and he slipped in. I knew in that moment that if I want God to reign on his rightful throne in my heart I needed to surrender to mySELF and that meant, for me, giving up my birthday. It meant to lay down my presents and give my birthday to someone else. I was to receive nothing from Phillip since he was the one I expected it from the most.  God knows how much I love my birthday. He knows how much time I have spent over the last couple of week planning it. He was there with while I was scrounging the internet for hours. He knew that it would take me giving it up to get my attention. God is so good. I am so so so thankful that he loves me enough to get involved with me. He cares about us and he cares what our heart is worshipping. We were made to worship God and God alone. Not the silly little things of this earth that a fleeing. When our heart is not right with him, he takes the time and effort to meet us right were we are at, shake us up, sift us out or rip us up. It is painful but where there no pain theres no gain right?! To God be all the glory.

To be continued...................