Lindsey is a dear friend of mine from medical school. Our friendship has afforded me so many good times....we had sleepovers during my last semester probably 3-4 nights per week. Both of us left our men (my husband, her fiance) at home and we leaned on each other a lot. We played basketball every Friday together, along my room mate Angie.... They both hovered at six foot, me....not so much. She has never met Tedi, but adores him...sending him gifts (too many of them) and always calling to check on him. I can not say enough wonderful things about Lindsey...my love and respect for her, as a friend, Christian, and physician. Thanks Lindsey!
Hi ya’ll! Just a warning, my grammer is not the best and my spelling is down right pitiful. I have also noticed that spell/grammer check does not correct everything. Alas, I continue to blog!
Last Sunday I was sitting in “big” church. Yes, I still call it big church, yes I am 29 years old, but I love the term big church!! Rewind prior to big church and I am in the hospital trying to round on patients and get out so I can make it to church. Good news, I made it! Bad news, I was not ready for church.
I sit down by Brad (my wonderful husband) and wait for church to start. All the time thinking about the lab I ordered that will be back at 11:30, yet I won’t get out of church until 12:00. So I ponder on that and the next thing I know the pastor is already praying. I didn’t hear the first part of the prayer but one phrase really socked me in the gut. He said, “intrude on our lives God”. I really don’t know what he said next (sorry Bruce!) but I thought, “How odd to use intrude in a prayer and then to ask God to intrude”. I mean really, does God intrude?? That word has such negative implications. I then went to Merriam Webster to see what he thought of the word intrude.
Intrude: to thrust oneself in without invitation; to cause to enter as if by force.
Wow, that’s intense. I really didn’t pay much attention the rest of the service because I was stuck on the word intrude. I was stuck at how appropriate that word was to me that Sunday morning.
Rewind to about a year ago. We were living in Houma, LA and we were in Sunday School. We were discussing how to get out of the valley’s of our Christian walk. Long discussion, but what I came out of the conversation with was, “ we pray to God to help us love God more”. That was a foreign idea to me at that time. Pray to God… to ask him… to help me… love Him more??? That doesn’t make sense either, it doesn’t seem logical. Nobody has ever come up to me and ask me to help them love me more. Ha ha ha, what a thought! But to pray to God asking for help to love Him more makes sense. He wants me to love Him and strive for a real relationship with Him. In my mind I imagine God smiling when I pray for help to grow my love for Him and grow in my relationship with Him. Because let’s face it, it’s my side of the relationship that needs growth, not God’s.
Anyway, I apply my thinking to asking God to love Him more to the intrusion prayer I heard in church. I needed God to intrude on my life that morning. Am I proud of that? No, but if I had not been so distracted that morning I would not have had a second thought about using “intrude” in a prayer. It was an epiphany of sorts that I keep in my brain right next to asking God to help me love Him more. When I feel distracted, not ready for the day at hand or just not feeling patient, loving and kind, I’ll ask God to intrude. I’ll ask God to open my heart and eyes so I cannot just see but have sight to see the world around me. To intrude in my life when I am not prepared. To intrude and take control when I don’t ask. To intrude and take me down the path I need to go on, not necessarily want to go on.
Now intrude doesn’t seem so malignant, more of a reassurance that even when I don’t ask, God will be there to intrude and guide me.
Have a good and intrusion filled day!
Lindsey
Lindsey and I having too much fun in Dominica
JT and Lindsey after running a 10k in Central Park in NYC
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