Emotion.

I was watching Gone With the Wind tonight until my internet connection slowed, and I took it as a sign that I need to go to bed.  I had a sufficient amount of time in watching it though to rekindle my love for Clark Gable.  Oh, what a man.  He's kind of a jerk, but deep down he has a good heart.

Anyway, as I was watching, I saw a little plaque in the movie that said, "Do not squander away time.  That is the stuff life is made of."

I spent the last few days in the Milwaukee (and Madison) area, and returned to the flatland yesterday.  There is so much running through my brain: excitement, anxiety, curiosity...it is a complete salad bowl of emotions.  I am ever-thankful for my friends and family that are willing to walk alongside of me as I make this next transition in my journey, and I can't stop thinking about the idea of time. I am so so so thankful for the last (almost) six months, and I am thankful for the ways that God allowed me to use my time. 

It is quite tempting for me to shove all of the different emotions I'm feeling aside, and just keep trucking along, but I don't think that this is what God wants from us.  I beat myself up sometimes because I am a deeply emotional person, but I forget that this is how God hard-wired me.  Not everyone is as emotional as me, but everyone feels.  I mean, Jesus cried.

We read that verse as a family tonight (and if you haven't...John 11:35 is where Jesus cries because one of his friends has died.  He was moved by the way the people around him responded.)  Jesus was an emotional dude.  Sometimes I think we picture him as a happy-go-lucky man that floats around from town to town in his clean Birkenstocks and clean white robe.  He got upset!  I'm sure he missed his family.  He wasn't excited to be crucified and humiliated.  And he allowed himself to feel all of those emotions.  I'm so thankful for this because it helps me to feel my own.

This week is a holy (set apart) week.  Not just because people call it "Holy week", but because it is set apart.  So many things happened in Jesus' life, so many emotions were running through his mind this week.  I pray that you and I make time to sit and feel them as he did.