Getting Real With It

When I write the rest of the world shuts off and I transcend into my mind.  My mind is constantly filled with restless thoughts.  Lately, my mind has been cluttered with a combination of good and bad thoughts, heavenly and earthly, healthy and toxic. 

I feel and see the spiritual struggle within me.  Satan's battle for my flesh and God's battle for my heart, the ultimate prize in the end being my soul.  Heh, I'm the prize....the prize?

I never struggle with my identity in Christ.  I know that I am forever saved, loved, forgiven.... My struggle is for my identity here on earth.  A silly worry for those who are mature in faith and maybe not so silly for those who don't believe in the concept of God.  I'm speaking as someone who is in love with God, has great faith and is still alive...here on earth.  And this is my struggle, I am still very much human.

When I was baptized 6 years ago, I was to die to my flesh...take up "my cross" and be reborn.  I was, that day...but I keep finding that dying to my flesh is a daily task, sometimes hourly for me.

I think that for me, being a young (relatively speaking) writer/artist/mom/wife/human, that the need to be accepted and loved by the majority IS important.  At what cost though?  For what good is a man if he gains the world but looses his soul?  I get this scripture, believe it, long to live by it.  I remind myself of this passage almost everyday, replacing the word "world" with, drunkenness, sexual immorality, apathy, carelessness, etc, to relate to my daily temptations.  The truth of the matter is that these things that Satan tempts me with leave me feeling pretty shitty....leave me feeling like I'd rather die...so why don't I?  Spiritually speaking?  Die to my flesh...how does/can someone ignore their natural needs to be loved and accepted.

My Christian friends will say, "well, pray Stephanie, ask and ye shall receive." BLAGH!  Well, sure guys, easier said then done.  I do.  Does everything have to be a spiritual attack? Can it be that God made me human and that I'm not perfect.  No matter how much I pray, how much I read scripture, how long I spend time with God, it will not make me perfect, it will not make me stop feeling my imperfect feelings.  Let's get real.  I believe and am okay with God letting me be imperfect so that I can seek him to comfort and correct me, teach me and walk with me.  God, let's us fall so He can pick us back up... if we ask.

Where am I going with all this?  I'm sitting here asking myself.  Lets see...my identity...here it is...I am okay with being a sinner and a Christian.  A Christian Sinner.  Which we all are.  (Heresy!!)  I'm not saying that I'm okay with sinning, I'm saying that I accept that I am a sinner and that I suck and that I am still accepted by God.  And that should be enough for me.

Maybe it is.  I'm not fully convinced though.