As always, thanks for attending class, but no quizzes and I'm not taking attendance , so I guess its an auditing situation ☺️☺️. We just crossed over into what is known as the Lent season , which is the forty days leading up to Easter and what is known as passion week. If I'm being honest, Ashe Wednesday really just kind of blew past me as in me being super unaware. I don't know if religious holidays is your thing or not, and I understand everything from it being great, to a little weird , or perhaps it's just the way I treat my birthdays, and it's just another day with no real meaning or significance for you☺️☺️. My constant confession is the weirdness of my thoughts and it drew me to things that we uncouple ourselves from.
The word itself, I don't believe is all that natural, because it refers to the undoing of something. It points to something or events that was once upon a time worthy of togetherness. My first thoughts were of one of my most prized possessions and it's an old time train set that I received when I was a kid, about eight years old , if I remember correctly ☺️. It was probably one of the coolest gifts that I ever got as child and it still brings a sense of adventure and a smile to my face today. It's an old school toy and it requires patience and time to set it up, but once it's there, hours upon hours of fun lays a head. I know, I know!, is this just another one of my strange off shoots to the story? And the answer to that question is indubitably ☺️ There was this one specific piece of track , called an uncoupling track, and it allowed you to back the train up into your imaginary rail yard and to disconnect the cars one from another by just using your clever engineering skills. It was just so simple to bump the cars into one another to get them to attach to one another, but could be a little bit of a chore without that one piece of track to disconnect them. This is also very similar to what takes place in life, we bump into one another and get connected, but the disconnection or uncoupling.....well....
As a kid, I never thought much about this being a possible pattern for life. We put things together all the time and often wish that they were as easily separated , by just running them over a piece of train track. ☺️☺️. We don't have to lean to far into the story to think about business decisions, such as maybe buying that time share, which sounded like a good idea at the time, but not so much ! In the long run☺️☺️. I've always been a little bit of dancing to my own drum, so following friends into doing, what just seemed like the most craziest fun thing at the time, and then ending up with an expulsion from the university in your freshman year, just wasn't on my radar☺️☺️. It's OK to out grow certain friends, some people just refuse to grow up. We all do dumb things when we are young. I want to say that's the time in life to do incredibly dumb things, because we have time to recover and start a new. One more before we get to what the audience has been clamoring for ☺️☺️. I don't know if this one counts as an uncoupling or just a simple add on and that can be career track. I want to say that it's a fifty/ fifty thing, but how many of us end up doing, what we had dreamed that we would be as a kid. I pushed around and played with the firetruck a bunch as a kid, but it didn't move me in that direction as it does for some. Sometimes we train for one thing and end up doing something completely different and sometimes its a perk and at other times a bust, and again about fifty/fifty.☺️☺️. Honestly I don't know which is worse to end up In another field, other than the one you planned for, or to have never had a passion for anything at all.
Here is one for you that may bring back a smile or some other reaction , and that's Alka seltzer. Say what?? You know what I'm talking about. First of all , you should never ever buy your sushi from a gas station ☺️☺️. Not your thing? Ok, how about that friend that went on some exotic vacation and came back and thought that they could reduplicate the curry to just the right amount of spiciness ☺️☺️. That might just be the one that you want a do over in, or just wished that when it came to what you now see as a clear case of food poisoning, that we could say that we did, but just not do it at all☺️☺️
If Steve Harvey was looking for the number one answer on the board about things to uncouple, it would just have to be that, to uncouple....couples. Yeah, divorce is the strong favorite and all time answer. One of my uncles kind of encourage me to always to see the humor in situations and while I can certainly do that, divorce is no laughing matter. Still!, there is some comic relief in just the mere thought of you confessing your undying love to someone and then just wishing that they would get hit by a bus , while crossing the street ☺️☺️. It kind of reminds me in the Bible when it talks about two different things not going together, but we make is so, as if we are putting peanut butter with chocolate together 😊. How do we praise God with our mouths and then curse the very people who are created in His image with that very same mouth 😊. It's like people who just love four letter words, they can't say F this or F that in enough times in a day to make it boring for the rest of us, and you ask the question , do you kiss your mother with that mouth, and they say, certainly!!, like Curly from the three stooges☺️☺️. I know that we come at the " uncoupling " from a broad direction of ways and it's not always as simple as infidelity. It's not that infidelity is simple, but it's one of the two acceptable reasons that God permitted, but we have add" ons"☺️☺️. How did the Jewish people take ten commandments and turn it into over some six hundred laws and a multitude of rules, mostly man made In nature?....they had add "ons "☺️☺️. Just as God's laws are unrecognizable and far from His original intent, we have done likewise with the divorce proceedings, and of course there is always a price to pay, from our sanity to our screwed up kids. If you are feeling a little off or weird, then, so am I, so should we continue?☺️☺️.
This may be the wrong direction, but think about some social setting that you have been a part of, and some how and for some reason you became disconnected from the group and the longer it goes on, the more unlikely it seems that you will return to whatever it was. I don't know if I would consider work as a social setting but it is to some degree. Imagine being out and away for some time, could been a health thing, pregnancy, or maybe you fell for that grass being greener on the other side thing and they were nice enough to take you back.☺️☺️ Now!, when I said think about some social setting. If your first thought was your yacht club, then you are excused, and just leave before we laugh you out of the building ☺️☺️. I think sometimes in these moments we have a tendency to down play our worth to the group, but we also down play the value that the group brought to the table as well. These two things and the positions that they represent, make it hard and harder for us to walk back into a room that we were once so comfortable doing. We could just call it an * incidental uncoupling☺️. We didn't mean for this to be the summation of the story, but for some reason, it became that. It could be a change in schedule and boy! Am I fighting that one , myself right now! It could be a conflict in your schedule, something unforeseen , and I would hope that it's not that You just lost interest or got lazy and didn't want to continue to put in the work. After all, these social settings make up a part of what is our circle. Now I can't say to what degree. They may just be people around the water cooler at work and you discuss sports or a dirty joke that you may have heard somewhere. May be your group is a mom group with preschoolers or toddlers and they give you advice about how to stay a float , when all of the demands of motherhood is giving its best shot at trying to drown you☺️☺️. While it's highly unlikely, it could be golfing buddies who help you keep your relationship with your spouse fresh ☺️☺️.
Regardless of the setting or the situation, being out and away for a while can make it daunting to reconnect....or is it just me?☺️☺️. I was a brutal teenager. Every horrible thing that you can say or think about a teenager, and it was me. I knew every damn thing. Strong willed and rebellious, and there weren't to many boundaries and rules that I couldn't disregard by just taking one deep breath and going for it ☺️☺️. Looking back, I'm not proud of any of those accomplishments , nor would I suggest them for anyone else☺️☺️. I never did drugs, nor a heavy drinker, but boy! did I find plenty of other troubles to worry parents over. Again!!price of tea in China☺️☺️. Well, when I was seventeen, I met Jesus Christ and yes it was at a personal low time and a time of desperation. Just like a lot of people, I thought that having Jesus in my back pocket was better than an Ace up the sleave, but not so fast☺️☺️. My misinterpretation of who Jesus is took me by surprise. If you think that having God means that there is smooth sailing ahead...think again ☺️☺️. I'm not anything special or extraordinary, so I'm just like everyone else, and I wanted God to fix my screw ups without there being any consequences for my actions....News flash, that doesn't work that way either ☺️☺️. I guess I was a Burger King Christian and I wanted it my way...extra onions, hold the pickles ☺️☺️. When I , to my surprise found out that it didn't work that way , I went to get my burgers from the clown with the two all beef patties and the special sauce ☺️☺️, turns out it's just thousand island dressing☺️☺️ . There were just a ton of misunderstandings that I had about God, maybe it goes along with being new to the family, but not getting that, I put on my track shoes and decided that I would figure things out for myself. I will spare you the details of how it was kind of a do over of my teenage years with just a lot more intensity " screw ups"☺️☺️. If there is a silver lining here, I would just love to hear it....keep your pants on☺️☺️.
That hot summer's July day, when I met Jesus, I made a coupling, that could never be uncoupled. I didn't realize it then, being new and all, but as far as God was concerned it was* irrevocable. Sidebar, being * discipled is super duper important. The connection with God transcends all other relationships and couplings and it's not something that a judge can decide, who gets what☺️☺️. It's the strongest coming together of all times and God has personally stamped it with His personal guarantee " until the end of the age". See , this is what true love looks like. He doesn't care where I had been or what I had done or how long that i had been gone. He just wanted me back, and to my dismay, He's been waiting for me with open arms. It truly doesn't matter how long it's been since you have called His name. It doesn't matter the guilt and shame that you may field. It doesn't matter about what horrible things you may have done. He already knows, and He loves you and is waiting for you to come back home. I can promise you that your conversations with Him, will be way better than anything around the water cooler, from your mom's group and yes even your golfing buddies ☺️☺️. As I said before, being away for a while can be daunting, but don't let doubt keep you away from the person that created you and knows you better than you know yourself and there should be some scary comfort in that☺️☺️.
I don't know about you, but I'm so thankful that God is not like us. See we can couple with a person as in a spouse or some friend group, and then life happens and we can change our minds about who we are coupled with , but God isn't like that and He will never change His mind about you or how much He loves you and how valuable that He thinks that you are. We will often discount ourselves based on what we have done or the places that We have been. Collateral damage is a real thing and I have hurt people that I never intended on hurting and I'm so thankful for forgiveness and grace, and you need to come and get yours in the arms of a loving Father. We think that we are to far gone. We think that no one could ever love someone like me and especially after I did......you fill in the blank, and it just doesn't matter to God. God is going to throw a huge party at the end of days, some will call it a wedding feast, and I can tell you now that the guest list is just full of what use to be the worse of the worse. Yep!, thieves, prostitutes, murderers, swindler and even some of those lying politicians made the guest list☺️☺️ . What about you? There is always room for more. Jesus said many rooms and I'm taking Him at His word.
The worse of the worse are just people who pushed past their doubts and insecurities, and trusted that God truly loved them for who they are and exactly at where they were, and that He wanted them in His family. We all need Jesus whether we know it or not. I know that for myself, the biggest obstacle for getting to know God and to be with Him, truly with Him and not some shadow or illusion of being with Him was my pride. Even today, it is still an ugly monster that I have to beat it back with a baseball bat.☺️☺️. Someone recently said to me, if we aren't trying to kill off and put to death the sin in our lives, then it will most definitely be doing that to us ....just think about it for a second. I will leave you with this thought today. There is power in prayer, don't ever doubt that and just never stop doing that. If you need proof of that, just look at my life. It's not perfect, but I'm only here because someone prayed for me. Thank God for moms and prayer warriors. It can be as simple as" God help me "! And if it's sincere, God will honor that. The connection with God is a life time coupling!!
