what you may not know...

is that i'm teaching the ladies class on wednesday nights at our church. y'all...i don't know why. i'm not sure why anyone would even allow such nonsense to happen. but it is. i went to our preacher's wife, elayne, who is so awesome...i just love her. anyway, i saw this book at lifeway and thought, "hmm...lots of good, basic topics. i bet this could be a good study" and i took it to her to show her to see if she was interested. of course she said, "looks good. are you going to teach it?"

silence...

then crickets...

then a check for vital signs b/c i KNOW she was not asking ME that question.

i've taught a class of 3 year olds against my better judgement, I've been with kids 3rd grade-college age and done quick devotionals and even a sex class at Bible camp right after I was married-the nurse stuff, the Bible stuff and the real life stuff, and done prewritten Bible lessons...but this? NO. this was for women. like women my age and older. women who actually know stuff. women who are all learn-ed and whatnot. so what did i do?

I told her i'd think about it.

and i did. i took the book to the beach this past august and started reading through it. and thank goodness, it's not a very cerebral book (the author's words, not mine). but it is very applicable to every day living and that is what i LOVE when i'm in a class. i need to relate things.

also, in the years since being a stay at home mom, i have kind of let go of my used-to-be outgoing self and climbed into a box, into a box with the lights off and waaaaaaaaay back into a corner where no one could see me. (raise your hand if you've known me long enough to know that just ain't me.)

so...i prayed and decided that if He was gonna lead me down this road i may as well sign up to be a tour guide and not just another passenger asking "are we there yet?"

and then do you know that Elayne brought us Priscilla Shirer's lessons on Jonah this past fall...you know...when God told Jonah to do something and Jonah all but ran away? That one?Yeah. I'm kind of thinking I couldn't say no at that point.

micah asks me every week how class is going. and i have no idea. i tell him to ask someone who is actually there but not one of my friends cause they love me enough to lie to him. He says as long as i'm not being heckled it's probably fine. (y'all feel the love right there, too, right? nah, i'm kidding. he reads my lessons every week and lets me know if it at least makes sense.)

so i find that i'm doing purposeful reading and researching every week, something i haven't done in a long time. and i'm not too proud to tell you that some of the topics in this book that i thought were easy breezy...are kind of slapping me in the face and convicting me like i need to be...especially as i look outside of the text and dig for more scripture to base my own thoughts off of.

a week or two ago i read a friend's blog that said she had been out of God's word for a few days or a week or so and she could really tell in her attitude. Not two days later I was having breakfast with a friend to do our Christmas exchange and she was asking me to really give her something to think about b/c she had also been out of her Bible reading and could really tell in her attitude.

i have a feeling that was God trying to tell me something. I mean it was almost verbatim between these two friends who don't know each other but they are both a blessing to me. I confess that in the years that I've crawled into my box that my dependance on God is one of the things I have let go of. well, shame on me. and really...how ignorant. perhaps if i hadn't pushed talking to Him aside and searching out comfort and knowledge in His word then i'd have never known there was a little dark box for me to crawl into.

anyone else like that?

just goes to show you...sometimes you think you need to hear something encouraging and uplifting from someone else when really, it's right in front of you and He just wants YOU to search it out and find it for yourself. I mean, you learn the most when you do the work, right?

what i've learned so far is that it really is true...the teacher usually is the one who learns the most. so if you are feeling like you need to be challenged in your spiritual life, perhaps teaching just one class is what you need. trust me when I tell you that God will give you the confidence to stand up there. I look at 40 women every week and i just KNEW i was going to need some sort of pill, anxiety or antiemetic, to make it through. but i haven't felt nervous even once and i DON'T do stuff in front of crowds well, except for cheering all those years, but that's beside the point.

i have about 5 hours to pull together tonight's lesson on putting off the old self. and since it's the new year, the timing couldn't be better. i have a LOT of those areas to work on.