Finding the Balance

So, as I've told you in my last few post, I'm exploring my faith more and more. I'm so excited about this "new chapter" in my life. It's opening up alot of avenues to go up and also forcing me to take a look at some areas of my life that may have been questionable.

One of the biggest challenges I've come across is I really feel out of balance these days with some of the hats I wear. I have to take a line from one of my favorite movies "The Women"... "Who are you, what do you want?" I am woman hear me roar, but I am also, wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, etc. etc. How do we combine all of these roles to come up with our best self that we can be? Questions, questions, questions...

Now, you may notice that I stopped posting about my Love Dare Challenge. It was due to the fact that I had a dirty little secret I was keeping from my husband. I've no doubt in my mind that God put a shiny little mirror in front of my face a few Saturday mornings ago and said "How can you do this, if you are not sharing your whole self with him?" I spent the day very quiet, avoiding my husband and crying several times. Now, just so no one gets the wrong idea.. the secret was that we really needed to tighten up on our finances. I felt like telling him would make me a failure somehow because we have to drastically change our spending habits. ( I took a major paycut last fall!!! but tried not to change our lifestyle any)It finally came bubbling out of me later that evening in big gulping sobs. I was so scared that my husband would be disapointed in me and yet, when it all came out he was the exact opposite. He made me promise that I would not bear that burden again alone.

So, here I am, ready to start all over. I've spent the last 2 weeks, examing myself and the roles that play in life. I am now confident that I have gained some of the tools necessary to work towards finding more of that balance.

To Wine or not to Wine

In the past few weeks, I seem to have gotten more excited about re-discovering my religion. I've made more consciouses efforts to pray daily, had talks with God on my way home from work, joined a Women's group at my church, and a few other things. I did it because it felt good. I felt like it was where God wanted me to be, and the more I discovered, the more I saw every day little miracles happening all around me that I knew was God at work.

With all the excitement and new discovery, there is always some questioning of oneself. Was there anything that I was doing that wasn't Christian like? Was there anything that I was doing that might cause some of the women in my group to frown down on me? I feel like I always put my best foot forward for the most part in being a good wife, mother, and worker. I keep a clean house, take my grandma shopping every Friday, and tuck my babies in at night. Over the weekend, it hit me when we went to my cousins 40th birthday. I very gladly took the frozen fruity drink that was handed to me when we walked through the door Saturday night, in fact in the course of 4 hours, I took 2 more. I wasn't drunk, did not act immoral, did not do anything to embarrass myself,most certainly did not drive my family home, etc, etc. All that being said, it gnawed at me when I got in bed. Was it right? Was God frowning upon me for doing it? The longer I laid there, the more items that crossed my mind. I had dropped the "a" word earlier at the party, and possibly the "b" word, joking around. I had cleaned my house spotless earlier in the day, however I had simply shut the door to our bedroom, assuring myself that no one would be in there but myself and my husband, and while I had made the bed that morning, there was a towering pile of laundry to be put away in the floor and the dust bunnies under the bed had baby bunnies. My mind was racing at this point, almost to the point that had my husband not been snoring next to me, I would have jumped up and started cleaning like crazy.

Sunday morning in church I still pondered my questions. Now seriously, just who the heck was I going to ask? The sweet little old lady who sits behind us in church or my pastors wife who sits in front of us? So, I decided that I would put the question out there to you all. Is it morally right for a Woman of Faith to have an adult beverage socially? What do you think crosses the line when it comes to the behavior of Christian women? Do you ever have questions regarding your faith that you feel you can't ask anyone for fear of ridicule?

Have a beautiful week. I am anxious to see your answers!