how close would you go to serve God?

As I wash my hair in the shower, I begin to think of the needs in my life.  You know?  The sorta things you ask people to pray about.  I am anticipating the moment at our group's table when I'm asked if I have any prayer requests.  I like to take time, prior to the question, to think about my life:  how God is working, speaking, moving and my responses to all of that.  I like being prepared.  Maybe it's the teacher in me.  Maybe it's because I'm an only child.  Maybe it's because I'm not 'really' an only child.  All I know is that I want to be honest with them.  With myself.  I don't want my requests to be monopolized by prayers for those I know and love who need healing (yes, although an important and noble topic, I just feel there are other topics that are of equal value that need and should be addressed before the Throne of Grace).  Basically, I feel it's important to be conservatively transparent with others.  Especially when surrounded by a group of women, a group of moms, whose main purpose is to love, care, and pray for you.

I decide I'm going to ask my fellow moms for God's strength, peace, and protection for me and my husband while he's away on a business trip.  The thing I hate most in life is being alone.  I also settle in my mind that I am too selfish with my 'time' and that needs to change; I am hyper-sensitive to God's leading, but I often fail to act upon it.  The other thing I hate most in life is being out of my comfort zone.

As I sit with my group during the message, which is prior to our prayer-sharing time, I think to myself that I have already heard a similar 'message' this past week.  I've also come across numerous Bible verses in my quiet time with the Lord exhorting me to love my enemies, and love the body of Christ, and love the unlovely.  I start to feel the Lord probe, prod, and convict my heart.

And then, a thought suddenly flashes to the front of my mind.  But a thought, that at the same time, has already existed.  Just like a race car and it's fancy Doppler effect:  In an instant the race car comes and goes.  But you could already hear it coming from a mile away.  Then as the sound of that race car lingers beyond your line of sight, so too, the thought remains.

Michelle, love others without reservation or hesitation.  

I clearly remember the day.  The day I made Jesus: LORD OF MY LIFE. Through tear-flooded eyes, salty-wet cheeks, and carpet-worn knees, I cried out to my God that I would do anything He wanted me to do;  I would go anywhere He wanted me to go;  my life belonged to Him and I was giving it back.  In the words of our speaker today, Mr. B, my rededication meant I was "a thief returning what I stole."  I felt passionately with my heart that if He called me to Mexico, I'd go!  If He called me to Russia, I'd go!  If He called me to Antarctica, I'd go!  

Yet.  

I sit here.  Typing away.  Scared.  Hesitant.  Holding back.  Resistant.  To bringing some fresh baked cookies to my neighbor.  To watching the baby of a new mom so she can get a much needed rest.  To having coffee with a stressed out college girl to let her blow off some steam.  To calling a friend, and talking a while, in order to rid her of her loneliness.

Oh sure.  I'd go to China.  But across the street?  No, Lord.  My time is too important to me.  I need it more than them.  Don't you know I have a bathroom to clean OR that Annaleigh needs a nap OR that I'm so tired OR....[fill in the blank]?  You understand, don't you?  

And then God says to me, "Love worketh no ill to his neighbor;  therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.  And that, knowing in time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep:  for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.  The night is far spent, the day is at hand:  let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light...put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lust thereof."  Romans 13:10-12; 14

I am currently being challenged to love others as myself.  

Even if that means going to the ends of the...driveway.