FlowerDust.net | Anne Jackson

something gross about me you didn’t want to know

when i get nervous, my feet sweat.

your turn…share your grossest quirk!

flushing my phone down the toilet

as long as i’ve been able to, i’ve been getting email on my phone. maybe four years or so? i dunno.

i’ve always felt this sense that if i wasn’t in the loop or didn’t know something, the whole world would come crumbling down. what if someone left dirty comments on my blog? i can fix that from my phone. what if a friend emailed me an urgent prayer request? what if….?

chris and i have done a lot of traveling over the last month to see family before we move to nashville. on these trips, i haven’t cracked open my computer. i don’t even keep my phone with me all the time. and you know what? i haven’t missed it.

i have over 20 unread emails in my personal account. and another 44 that came in over the weekend that i read last night and haven’t responded to. and i’m learning that nobody’s died and no wars were started because i haven’t responded.

lately, i’ve been pondering ditching the email and data plan on my phone. sure, i’ll lose some cool things like my GPS/google maps, twitter, and google reader…but it’s been sounding really good lately.

part of me doesn’t like spending the extra 50 bucks a month to get all that i “need.” part of me knows i have low self control and low self esteem to boot so i am always feeling the compulsion to check my phone and see if i’m “needed.” part of me realizes i’m setting an example for people around me of how i respect and honor those i’m with.

most of me has been cherishing the time away from my phone and in front of my husband or friends totally focused on them instead of the “buzzzzz….buzzzz….” chris saying, “can you please put your phone away?” has happened too often and i’m sure for every time he says it, he isn’t saying it the other ten times.

so really…i’m thinking of going back to the basics.

have you ever been tempted?

EDIT: As of lunch time, I took the plunge. I canceled it. Only voice and text (and only a handful of people have my number so I don’t get pinged with texts very often). I’m excited to see what this freedom brings!

the trap of freedom, part 2 of 2

yesterday i asked if we can become trapped in our freedom…trapped by our desires and ability to indulge.

around the time i hit twenty years old. i was making a ton of money working for a trendy, upscale dallas dot com. i had a great loft, a mustang (convertible), was in on the young professional social scene.

i also had around a hundred thousand dollars in stock options that would be turned into cash as soon as the dot com went public, so i began spending it like it was already mine.

but then the dot com folded.

all i had left was my car (which i missed payments on), my loft, and a good 20k in credit card debt.

i remember driving down elm street to where i lived, right off of downtown, and for the very first time in my life, thought the only way to solve this terrible mess was to kill myself.

i kid you not. i remember the intersection i was driving through when i thought that. it would be sooo very easy to jump off the top of the building where i lived and end it all. because i saw no way out.

the only thing that kept me from doing it was the fact my grandfather had just passed away, and my family was already a mess from his passing. i couldn’t bear to see my dad grieve the loss of his dad…and know he would have to deal with the loss of his daughter.

i was trapped.

but i knew i had to do something.

eventually the mustang was downgraded, i moved into a one-bedroom, 500 sq ft condo with my best friend julie, and began aggressively paying off my debt. it has been eight years since that dark time in my life. almost every month since the day i turned 21, i’ve been working out the best ways to pay stuff off in spreadsheets. (see, i told you i like spreadsheets).

it has been a slow road to freedom, but we’re getting there. as of july 1, we will have no credit card debt at all. we still have a few thousand in medical debt (thanks to bladdy) and car payments, but to not be shelling out $350/month to credit cards will be amazing.

as our bills have been reduced by not eating out often, spending as little as we can on groceries, not having cable or internet at home now, not getting tattoos, and other stuff…we have been able to give more away. to our two compassion kids, to an amazing rescue center in haiti.

looking at money in a whole new way has been an amazing path to freedom.

i have never felt more free in my life than when i give. or, than when i was in africa realizing the responsibility chris and i have to serve others with our freedom.

i have never felt more free in my life.

if you feel trapped, try giving. even if you don’t think you can…you can.

just try. and see what happens.

the trap of freedom, part 1 of 2

this past weekend, chris and i went to his hometown of kansas city for a quick trip to visit his family before we move to nashville. on the itinerary was a trip to westside family church…the church where i received my call to vocational ministry six years ago, the place i fell in love with the body of christ, where i loved and dreamed and had my heart broken, only to love and dream again.

dan deeble, who is the senior pastor at heartland community church, was the guest speaker. dan began sharing about what we, as the church, could do if we served together. he told a story of a time he was in washington dc with a friend. he had stayed in a fancy hotel, had eaten an amazing steak dinner, and on a walk back to his hotel, had a homeless man in a wheelchair approach him.

long story short, after going through his internal conflict of “oh crap, if i would have only made it twenty more feet, i wouldn’t have to deal with this” and knowing what he needed to do, he offers to take the man to a local burger king. on the way, the homeless man stops in a print shop and gets fliers for the ministry he is starting for the homeless. dang. a brother in christ. he is totally humbled. dan and the homeless man continue on to eat and head back to the hotel.

the homeless man stops about twenty feet from the hotel — the same place he had stopped dan earlier. he knew that there was an invisible barrier…of wealth and of class…preventing him from going further.

dan turns around to bid him farewell, and the homeless man pulls dan down to where he sat, reaching around him and giving him a kiss on the cheek.

dan continues by saying he doesn’t remember what the suite in the hotel looked like. the taste of the steak he had was long gone thirty minutes after he ate it. but he will never, ever forget the touch of the homeless man’s kiss on his cheek.

galatians 5:10 was the verse dan centered his message on.

You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.

i’ve written a lot about the freedom we have in christ, but during dan’s talk had one of those moments when head knowledge becomes heart knowledge.

we have been given freedom in christ. and instead of making ourselves gluttons of our culture, we are given this freedom as a gift to serve each other.

galatians 5:19-21 describes the things we aren’t supposed to indulge in…

The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.

i struggle the most with this still in the area of how i spend money. it’s not necessarily how much i spend, but why i spend it.

to be quite raw, it’s mostly because of envy, selfish ambition and jealousy. why can’t i have the perfect house/wardrobe/car/gadgets or eat at the most posh of restaurants/bistros when others can? i want to be perceived as trendy and well-off, like they are. and so my bank account suffers.

is there anything wrong with any of those things? i truly believe not. again, it’s the why.

am i serving myself or am i serving others with my freedom? if i serve myself, does my freedom actually trap me?

how can i pray for you?

this weekend, i am sharing my thoughts on blogging community at the lifechurch.tv internet campus. something i am talking about is how this community here on flowerdust.net has formed over the last few years and how we truly do cover each other in prayer, support, advice, and even discuss the questions of life. we even fight a little bit. all signs of healthy relationships!

so, with that…i think it’s time to have another post dedicated to how we can pray for each other. i will be checking in over the weekend and praying for you, and encourage you to come back and do the same for others.

i’ll start.

chris & i could really use your prayers about our finances. we have cut back so much, but like some of you shared, similarly, we have made poor decisions in our past that we are paying for now. there is also quite a bit of medical debt that we were able to defer but it is now staring at us in the face and is making a tight situation tighter. i could identify with much of what anonymous had to say earlier this week.

please pray that we are sensitive to areas we are able to cut back on so we can build more margin into that area of our life. and for god’s protection. we don’t have any room for emergencies!

wow, that was hard to share!!!

your turn…

keeping your mouth shut!

what is something you feel you can’t say in church, or around other christians?

for example…mine would be, “i suck at reading my bible.”

funny, serious, whatever…what’s yours?

Guest Blog: From an Addict

Pete Wilson is the pastor at Cross Point Church in Nashville, Tennessee. If you think this post rocks, you should read the rest of his blog!

Pete writes:

Let me tell you a little about myself. I’m a pastor. A husband. A father to three little boys. A friend. A Christ follower.

And I’m an addict.

I’m addicted to noise and chaos. I’m addicted to it in the kind of way that makes my life feel totally out of control and overwhelming at times.

And the worst part of my addiction is that I have recently realized that I don’t really “know” Scripture. Oh make no mistake about it. I can quote it, preach it, and debate it, but I’m not sure that I really “know it.”

And I bet I’m not alone. It seems as if we have been conditioned in our culture towards this addiction. We live in a day of unprecedented opportunities to stimulate our minds.

We have blogs, television, text-messaging and 24-hour news. We have iPods, satellite radio, and who could forget? Twitter. Everywhere we go there is some kind of message that is trying to attach itself to our minds.

We pretend as if the problem to knowing Scripture is a lack of access.

So, we have made the Bible more accessible than ever. We have dozens of translations. We have the Men’s, Women’s, and teens’ study Bibles. We have the camo Bible for the hunter. We have a Bible designed just for your purse. We have the digital Bible for your handheld or the audio Bible for your iPod. My favorite is the “waterproof” Bible that one publisher recently sent me.

Never has it been easier to access the Scriptures, but never has it been harder to absorb them.

Even if you’re taking time to read the scriptures, when do you have time to absorb them? When are you escaping the noise and chaos of your life?

And the problem is not what you think it is. You have time. You can make time. But you don’t. Why?

Because you’re addicted to the noise and probably even a little scared of what life would be without it.

Henri Nouwen wrote in “The Way of the Heart”…

“In solitude I get rid of my scaffolding: no friends to talk with, no telephones calls to make, no meetings to attend, no music to entertain, no books to distract, just me - naked, vulnerable, weak, sinful, deprived, broken-nothing. It is this nothingness that I have to face in my solitude, a nothingness so dreadful that everything in me want to run to my friends, my work, and my distractions so that I can forget my nothingness and make myself believe that I am worth something.”

I want to encourage you to take some time to drop your scaffolding and get naked. Run from the chaos and dial down the noise. I want to encourage you to quiet your life. Simply, simplify. Put yourself in a place where you can absorb God’s grace and love and message for your life.

What do you think?