Pondering. On life and God.

Right now I'm at Barb's during my lunch break, eating left-over pasta and using the Internet. On the way here, I squealed my tires around a tight corner. Other than my purse, sitting on top of some boxes in the seat next to me, sliding into my head, it was super fun!! Sometimes a girl who owns a Mustang just needs to take a corner a little faster here and there.

Those of you in the blogging world might be wondering, "why the sudden influx of blogs?" Well, it's because my life and debriefing buddy is still overseas and me being an extrovert and verbal/written processor, needs an outlet.

When I started blogging I told myself I was not allowed to blog during periods of emotional instability. That is why there is sometimes long gaps in my posts. But in a moment of weakness today, I thought I'd share some things I've been thinking about over the past few months...

I've been pondering an idea about life. Do some things just happen? I believe God knows all and although we have free will to choose what we do with our lives, He knew what we'd choose (although this is hard to wrap the mind around). He's all knowing. I also believe that God does not "react" to things, why would He need to react? He already knew it would happen. So nothing is a surprise to our God.

The question is, does God always have some big huge plan in everything that happens in our lives? Or are some things just circumstantial, the effects of other people's lives rubbing off on us, or just life playing out?

I get stuck on these questions. If God does have a big huge plan for every single thing that happens to us, then are we wasting all these opportunities to learn or grow? Does he hold something back from us until we figure out what he's trying to teach us? What if we never get it? We will always be without the thing he thinks we need to be without to learn the "lesson" he has for us? And why do these "lessons" always seem to be hard, painful, and uncomfortable? Or are the lessons also good things but when it's good we don't notice it as much?

I guess you could say the opposite could be true. If God doesn't have a super big reason for everything bad that happens to us, then it's the same for good things. Good things just happen and are out there. For some reason, it's easier for me to believe the good things are direct from God and the bad things are just life. Maybe it's easier to believe because I don't feel like I deserve the good things and good things don't always happen to me (although God did give me a good thing in my super wonderful amazing and handsome husband!!). But how about all those little things that happen? Like having enough money in your budget to make it to the end of the month, or getting an unexpected refund check, or going to a meeting where your favorite cookies are available on the very day you were craving them. Are those things from God or just life?

There might not be an answer to these questions, but these things I wonder. On some level, I'd like to believe that the hard things are specific occasions God has set up for us to learn something, but when I believe this, I get afraid that I'm not learning it so the hard thing will last for a really long time!! Or at least until I get my slow wits about me enough to figure out he's trying to teach me something and learn it.

Is God all about just trying to teach us lessons? I feel like God is the only place in my life I can go without fear of failure and if I believe that I can fail in how I do a relationship with God, then where can I go? And where did these feelings of failing and never doing good enough come from? I feel like I can never do things quite good enough. I'm never putting my full effort into it, I'm slacking, I'm capable of more. I always feel like I'm failing. I could do better at my job, could keep my apartment cleaner, could make myself look better, could workout harder and run faster, could cook more often, could eat healthier, could be nicer to people, and on and on. Underlying everything I do is this feeling that I could be doing it better, more quickly, sooner, with better quality, more often, or less often. And after a while, it all just makes me tired.