Good Friday-How it Works for Me

And it’s a cloudy Good Friday. Good Fridays gone by, growing up Roman Catholic, I attended the observance at church. I see now it is called a Solemn Liturgical Service, but I think it was called something else when I was young. I love my Roman Catholic roots even though I am in a non-Catholic church now. I remember the Catholic Good Friday event included Stations of the Cross. If you have never attended one, it is very enriching and moving. My view of Christian staples like church services, dogma and doctrine have radically changed in the last five years. I even have different thoughts about watching dramatizations about what transpired on Good Friday. But mainly, I am so not about this being about religion. Religion as defined by me: doing things solely because of tradition and/or doing things in an effort to please God and/or doing things out of compulsion/subversion without your heart in it. What happened on Good Friday was horrific and extremely frightening, I think. I really do not want to replay it. I'm not a huge Beatles fan, but the following familiar lines from "Help" describe me then and now, and the main reason for Good Friday - I need help.  A Savior helps; he comes to Help and Help is what I need.

When I was younger, so much younger than today, I never needed anybody's help in any way.  But now these days are gone I'm not so self-assured.  Now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the door-John Lennon.

Before I knew how much I needed Jesus, when I was 21, I accepted His help.  Life happened and I took my hits and with years came a keen and desperate awareness of how much I did need Help. I have never looked back.

So, what Good Friday's event did for me and what it means to me, that’s something I do want to replay because I want and need help. Personally and publicly I would like to thank Jesus for helping me. 

Weaving

remember these?

When I started this blog I wanted it to be reflections on my prayer journal going back a few months. Whenever I reread what I wrote I am pleasantly surprised and pleased at my progress, no bragging, just simply, the journaling works! So I am going to bring the old journal entries full circle with today in this and future posts. “Only God can take my jumble of random thoughts and feelings and make any sense of them”. (July 2015)

I will be doing some scrapbooking today.  Scrapbooking, like weaving past struggles now overcome, with the present, is therapeutic. I recollect and reflect. My heart and core is “Mother” so that dimension surfaces often. My mother was part and parcel the same way. She was a mom at heart and spoke of things mother often. And she was an encyclopedic resource of child-rearing information for me. Ever get a power surge of emotion from something incidental? I was looking up the name of my favorite cologne maker, Estee Lauder, specifically “Estee”, and had a surge of emotion from the old days of picking out baby names. Really? But we have to pay attention to ourselves. From this I learned that I am not making all this up about this mom stuff, it’s just IN me.

I learn from scrapbooking. In their grown-up selves and when viewing their old photos and mementos, I see elements of myself in each of my children, little glimmers. Things they say or do, like punctuation, direct me to the origin, which is myself. Oh that is me in them, I say to myself with surprise.  And interestingly, each seems to have captured different elements of me. I wonder what would have happened if I continued to have more than three kids—would I know even more about myself through them?

Scrapbooking also is restorative. I have real estate that is my property and I rejoice that it is MINE ALL MINE and no one and no thing can take it away! That is such a good feeling and a powerful one too. I can call this Mental Scrapbooking, no Hobby Lobby purchase required. Remind yourself that what God has given no one can take away, no circumstance, no life event, no loss, no one.

Now, here's dichotomy or irony or something like that for you. As good as it is for me, I have to force myself to do my scrapbook. Why? More on that later. But for now, another quote that can apply to that dilemma or lots of other stuff too: “It's hard work... But I'm going to do it.” (July 2015) By the grace of God