What do you say to that?

Hello friend.

Today is a closet take-over day for me.  Mua. Ha. Ha. 

Jered and I had our own closets for the majority of our first year of matrimony.  Now that we're sharing... well, let's just say, there's a difference of opinions on how the inside of a closet should look.

I probably go through my closet and dresser, with the intention of tossing items I haven't used in awhile or things I just know I won't wear, and get rid of said items, semi-annually, if not quarterly. 

Jered, however, still has pieces of clothing from the dark ages.

This is going to change.  Now, I will not be the horrible wife and throw away the truly loved, however old and worn out, items he has in his closet.  But!  I have no qualms about getting rid of the 53 out of 17,397 socks my husband keeps around without matches, not to mention the ones that are so stretched out that I cannot fathom how they stay on his feet.

 

I am also thinking about finding someone to alter about half of his dress shirts, since the likeliness of Jered growing into them is slim.  (Haha- because he is slim.)

 

You may or may not have heard Jered confess that he is "turning over a new leaf" when it comes to his attire.  He wants to start dressing up in suits and such dressiness more often, and eventually, all the time.  Rather than wear scrubs to work, he almost always wears dress clothes, including a tie.  However, out of the 3,049 he owns, he probably wears only a handful... I think it's time to reevaluate some of those as well...

 

I think if I make some preliminary changes... that maybe I can get him on board... I don't know.  This might be breaking the Flinkman law of man closets?  Can any of my fellow Flinkman ladies shed light on this issue?  Will Jered stop loving me if I toss things he never wears? 

. . .

On a completely different note, I've been noticing a lot of strongly anti-Christian posts on Facebook lately.  Posts that hate on the beliefs of Christians, and posts that straight up are against the people who make up The Church.  

One such post I saw, stated this:

I don't [care] what the bible says about gay people.  The bible condones slavery, child abuse, misogyny, war, and rape-marriages, and should not be considered a "moral guidebook."  And until you actually prove that God even exists, your argument is irrelevant.

My heart broke when I read this... largely due to the fact that I knew who posted it.  But also because this week it became clear to me that many people feel this way.  Many people I grew up with, went to school with, or worked with at some point.  

I have to confess that I can see why they believe the Bible condones some of those things.  Does it not tell slaves that they are to be obedient to their masters?  Does God not tell the kings, such as Saul and David, kings that He appointed, to go to war, sometimes to leave no survivors?  I've even been struggling in my own heart this week about the concept of "predestination."  How can there already be a set group of people who will believe?  I guess that's a big part of why my heart broke after reading the post: because I didn't feel like I could argue against it.  

Except for I know God is good.  I know God is merciful.  I know God is just.  I know God loves all of us.

It's tearing me up inside.  I know these things.  I can't explain why.  Truthfully, I know some people could point out more Bible verses that "prove" the opposite of what I wish I could.  

Earlier this week, Jered, Jacob, and I were talking about behavioral/psychological disorders in children.  It's really easy to say that they probably had some sort of trauma that set such problems in motion.  It's because of the parents.  And the parents are probably that way because of their parents.  And so on and so forth. 

Jacob pointed out, and we agreed, that it's not necessarily the case.  It had to start somewhere. It all comes back to sin nature.  Sin nature is in all of us, and it just manifests itself in different ways.  It's no different than why some of those horrible things happened in the Bible, is it?  It goes all the way back to Adam and Eve pointing fingers at each other and one of their sons killing his brother.  It's all about sin, right?

That might be what caused such horrible things to happen in the Bible and even in today's time, but it doesn't all have to begin and end with sin.  We have Jesus' promise of redemption if we come to Him, don't we?  Thank God- am I right?  What a depressing post this would be otherwise.  

Bad things happen.  Injustice and hate and terrible things.  Some things we just can't explain.  Well, maybe someone wiser, and more learned than myself could.  The point is, and this might be more for my own mind than yours, sin entered the world.  Not everything can be rationalized.  Yes, awful experiences have been had by generations and generations of people.  And not everything is going to make sense.  But if I truly believe what I say I know about God, then I can have hope in what He's promised me.

It's a really crummy feeling to know that I can't change their minds.  I don't know what has happened in their own lives to make them feel the way they do.  I feel guilt at knowing that after my time of interacting with some of them, they still have such feelings toward Christians.  I wonder what I could have done differently to lessen that.  But... I always have prayer.  And I know God can do far more than I ever could.  

If you think about it, maybe you could send up a prayer for them too.  I wouldn't mind one either.

. . .

On a much lighter note: my family is coming to visit for the weekend.  I'm very excited for them to get here and see our place for the first time.  I'm not sure what all we'll do yet, but maybe they'll let me put them to work on some of my apartment projects... Hm... We will see.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend, my friend. 

Aim