Finally, progress

It has been a long time since I blogged. I have really missed it. If you are reading my blog for the first time, please respond; I love to hear what people think!
I grew up going to church. My family was always active with our local congregation. After I left home in 1985 (that's right, almost 26 years ago!) I did not really attend church regularly until about 2000. Even then, I just went to church. I didn't study my Bible, I wasn't active in church and I still pretty much lived the same way I did when I did not go to church. Even in the last several years, while being active in my church and attending every Sunday, I still did not live the way I should with the consistancy that I should. On January 10th of this year, I started a bible reading program. Now, I had tried several reading programs and even tried to make some up on my own. I have never stuck with it. Even when I led a weekly Bible study in my church, I did not read daily. Well, I started this new program on Jan 10th and since then, I have read every day (except for a couple here and there) and in that time, I have read the entire New Testament and the Old Testament history books. This is a huge accomplishment to me. The strangest thing though is, it has changed my thought process. I looke back at my last blog from several months ago and can honestly say that things that I used to struggle with, are no longer such an issue for me. It still takes work, but I now have more self control than I have ever had in my life. It feels great! I am finally figuring out that life is a refining process and I need a lot of refining. I have allowed a lot of crap to come into my life. Now, like any refining process, I am trying to get the crap cleaned out. As soon as some junk surfaces, I scrape the scum off and start all over again. Just as I am foolish enough to believe that I am making headway, more crap surfaces and I have to deal with it and scrape the scum off the surface. It is a long, tedious and sometimes scary process. I don't always like it, but it is neessary and every time I confront an issue head on, with the help of God, I feel stronger every time. I recently had a major issue arise and I reacted to it with nothing but anger. I could not control it, so I may as well explode and yell at it! After praying about it and really meditating on the issue I heard voices. Yes, I said I heard voices! Now before you send for the guys in white coats and the electric shock therapy, they were good voices! One voice was God telling me that I had to have unconditional love. The other voice was that of a counselor that I had seen a while back. She said, you can't truly control another person so, decide what you are going to do if they aren't going to change. In other words, give unconditional love and it is what it is, so deal with it. Trust God to deal with the rest. So far so good. With the strength from God, it will only get better. See you next time.