Look up!

So many things to write about, so little point. Life in Lauraland was not nice today. Mother is winding me up again. Every so often she manages to crack my veneer and make me doubt my commitment to God. Imagine calmly making lunch while having your mother whisper insults at you (so the visitor in the next room doesn't hear) - 'you're trashing me and , you're so ungrateful, you're rude, you don't respect me, you're not a Christian, how can you claim to be a Christian then treat me like dirt? God will judge you' etc etc. All because I protested at her making constant jokes yesterday while I was trying to fill in a job application. Am I really such a bad person? Do I really give off this horrible energy that makes her hate me so much? The one that most gets to me is her questioning my faith, which she knows nothing about because I haven't talked to her about what I believe for years. She judges me on my church attendance, and, as churches have got it all wrong I'm stupid to keep going. :-/

Bad moods always have a tiny starting point and spiral out of control into stupid insecurities. Should I miss the immediate family that I don't live with? If I don't miss them does that mean I don't love them? If I don't love them does that make me a bad person? Being a Christian - is Mum right or am I right? How can I ever know? I suppose ultimately I can never know for sure which of us is right. In a way it's mind over matter - the more I feed my mind with God, the easier it is to distinguish between our similar but very, very different beliefs. That bit is easy, it's just a slap on the wrist and a note to self not to swallow such utter rubbish. The difficult part is learning to relate to her in a way that God would be proud of. At the moment, I'd be quite happy to move out and cut off all contact with her, it would be blissful relief, but it probably wouldn't be the right outcome. Sometimes being a Christian is so much effort. But hey, life may suck but God is ultimately bigger and better, so it's okay.

Verse of the day:

'We have this treasure from God, but we are like clay jars that hold the treasure. This shows that the great power is from God, not from us. We have troubles all around us, but we are not defeated. We do not know what to do, but we do not give up the hope of living. We are persucuted, but God does not leave us. We are hurt sometimes, but we are not destroyed...

'So we do not give up. Our physical body is becoming older and weaker, but our spirit inside is made new for every day. We have small troubles for a while now, but they are helping us gain an eternal glory that is much greater than the troubles. We set our eyes not on what we see but on what we cannot see. What we see will last only a short time, but what we cannot see will last forever.'

~ 1 Corinthians 4:7-9 and 16-18 (okay so it was a bit more than a verse, but it's a cool passage so go back and read it if you skipped it!)