THE DIET - Part I

I am hungry.

Mr. M Moves In

It has been a LONG 3 years.

Because that is such an understatement, I am going to say it again.

It has been a long 3 years.

And actually longer than that.

I just found OUT that Mr. M was drinking 3 years ago but he had been drinking for a couple years before I found out.

So, it's been a long 5+ years!

I told Mr. M he could move back in when he got a year sober and finished his 4th & 5th steps:

#4  - Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves
#5 - Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs

Well, he got his year sober and did steps 1-5.

So he moved back in.

The transition didn't happen over night though.

When he had several months sober, he started spending one night at home.  Then after a couple more months, it was 2 nights.  Eventually we hit 3 and then even 4... he would spend the whole weekend.  So we didn't go from cold turkey to moving in.  

But I was surprised to find that it was still nice to have those couple days a week as a "pressure release valve".  Getting away from each other was nice and a way to keep us in the "honeymoon" phase of his recovery.

When he moved back in, all bets were off.

He suddenly wanted his end table back.

He took up half the bed and wrestled away the sheets.

He took back half the closet.

He started bitching about my messiness (he is the neatnik of the family).

We started marriage counseling (we need it!!!).

We were doing pretty darn well, in my humble opinion and it was all good until THE DIET.

Calorie counting, hunger, detoxing from bad eating (and diet cola) and trying to be a loving married couple do not go together.

More on THE DIET coming soon.

Politics & Jesus

I have actually been thinking and re-thinking about my stance on my faith and my politics.

In my state there have been many gay Marriage acts up for voting over the years.
So far, the "conservative" vote has prevailed.
I have always been on that side.

I believed that gay couples have most of the same legal rights as married couples and can't marriage just be lieft the way it was originally conceived and defined, for hetero couples?

As Gay Marriage has been repeatedly been voted down, the gay community (and increasingly, the non-gay community) has begun to see the Christian community not for its awesome values and loving heart but for its "hatred" and political power (putting Bush in office etc.).

Don't get me wrong, I am a Christian and my views have not changed... Biblical truth is ALWAYS true... it does not change "like the shifting shadows" (from the book of James in the Bible). And I believe the Bible says practicing homosexuality is a sin.

But more and more I am believing that being a Christ-follower is LESS about politics and more about just following Christ.

As Christians LOVE others and SERVE others and LIVE OUT Christ's commands in a quiet, loving, obedient way... our ACTIONS will shout out the difference and we will not need to shout our our beliefs.

Jesus (when he was on earth) focused on LOVING sinners... we never saw Him getting involved in politics of the day. He just went about His business of loving, saving, and healing people.

I think Christians more and more are perceived as HATERS who are AGAINST things - Although I know this is the agenda of anti-Christians, to make us look this way, they do not need a lot of help, we do it to ourselves.

Specifically with the gay marriage issue:
#1 - It is VERY difficult to have a logical non-Biblical reason for not allowing gay people to get married... and since most Americans do not necessarily believe in the bible any more, this is a tough pill for more Americans to swallow. "Gay marriage is wrong because the Bible says so." Many responses now-a-days would be "So?"

The Bible says it is wrong, therefore Christians say it is wrong, but people who do not believe the Bible cannot be expected to think or feel this way... their "right' and "wrong" are not absolutes and do not come from the Bible.
#2 - Some gay couples may look & act more loving than many hetero couples.
#3 - Sadly, hetero marriages can no longer be said to be "forever" with divorce and remarriage rates being SO high now,
#4 - Sadly, "Christian" marriages do not look much better than secular marriages with divorce statistics,
#5 - All denominations of Christians are being lumped together and even Christianity itself is being lumped together with other religions (mormons etc.) in these conservative issues which make use harder & harder to tell who is who - CONFUSING for non-Christian. (Heck, it is confusing for the Christian community!!!)

#6 - While I may believe the practice of homosexuality is a sin. I am a sinner too. ALL people are sinners (if I'm human, I am a sinner.) Jesus died for ALL sins and sinners... Jesus has redeemed ALL sinners and loves us all and offers us all forgiveness and wholeness and a way out. THIS is the message I would MOST want the gay community to get from me and my fellow Believers; LOVE. Period.

I am beginning to think that perhaps we (as Christians) should back of from the political arena with a lot of Christian issues and simply LIVE it in an uncompromising way.
Let the dark be dark... let it become blacker and blacker and then let the LIGHT of God shine even brighter in that darkness ("And they'll know we are Christians by our LOVE.")

Let "this little light" of ours shine in the growing darkness!

Does this mean Christians should stop running for office? - NO.
Does this mean we should not vote our conscience? - NO.
Does this mean we should just allow ALL manner of evil to occur? - not necessarily (although it already is occurring... and We - Jesus' Church - just look like we are HATERS).

For example, abortion is not just a sin, it is also MURDER.
This is not just a morality issue.
If we lived in Germany during WWII what would our call have been in the slaughter of millions of innocent jews and disabled and political criminals?!?...

To quietly love Jews and hide them and smuggle them out?

or to stand up against evil and risk our own lives to save them?

Was this about HATING the Nazis or about loving the Jews???

And what about slavery?
As Christians, this was about the value of life and human worth in the eyes of God.
It was worth a civil war and an underground railroad... it was not just sin... it was about LIFE being sacred.

This is the way I feel about abortion... we need to do with abortion what we should have done with slavery & the holocaust.

But I would err on the side of being lovers who are FOR Christ and FOR people and Christ-followers FIRST and protesters and marchers and "haters" who are "against" abortion last.

Again, I have not necessarily "landed" any where yet... these are just things I have been ruminating on lately.

Love & Peace.