A monthly to-do

I didn't intend for it to take me a month to post about the current happenings with the Burks couple, but for some reason it just worked out that way.

Maybe it was because of my frequent lack of desire lately to continue a blog. I guess I feel like I use other ways on a daily basis to get updates and update others who care to read my FB status on what's going on in life. Therefore, this feeling leads me away from the blog and to other things.

But one thing I have been spending time on and a topic I have been thinking a lot about recently is from a study I have been doing on Esther. The topic of restraint.

During the time that Esther was being prepared to meet the king who would decide if he liked her enough to make her queen, she never took more or asked or expected more than what was suggested of her. She presented herself in such a way that showed more of who she was and the beauty she already possessed without tons of fancy gold jewelry, fake lips and a skin tight dress.

She was the Esther that God had beautifully and wonderfully created her to be. And it was that genuine real-ness that no doubt and more than likely led the kind to "love her so much that he crowned her queen over Vashti".

There is a lot of fake in this world. It is easy for people, women in particular, to get caught up in the who and what and how much and what does it look like on me of appearance and social gossip. It is easy to find a way to blend in and feel accepted, just like everyone else is doing.

I don't think it is wrong to want to be accepted, there is a level of healthiness in wanting to feel comfortable around the people that you like and are friends with. But for me, I don't want to feel I am compromising who I am to short myself of being the person that God has so uniquely and purposefully created me to be. In a place where it is so easy to act like you are just like everyone else, I sense that my heart is striving to find a way to stand out and sh0w those around me that I AM different. But it can be a complicated tight walk to show enough level of restraint to say how you feel and what you believe, and do it in such a way that is not making others feel you are comparing yourself against them. Or that they are wrong and you are right. It's not about that. Beth Moore asked the question at a conference I went to recently, "Do you want to be right, or do you want to have a relationship?" That was a powerful question for me as I seek to find a way to witness to those around me who I feel have been caught up in a way of life that I cannot pretend is the same as what I have grown to believe.

And so as I continue this journey of learning what it means to show Godly restraint, in many aspects of my life, I am finding that He is showing me other awesome things in His word along the way.