Being Deliberate

I wasn't sure what to write about today. But the thing that's been going around in my head is something that we talked about while at Ladies Retreat. It was a private discussion between my friends not something that was lectured about.

We were talking about celebrating Christmas. One of my big problems in discussions like these is that I am not a debater but I have a couple of friends who are. So I always feel like no one really understood my point by the end of the thing. And I'm not sure if that was the case here or not.

I really couldn't care less if you celebrate Christmas or not. But the way I have always felt about it was that if you are going to celebrate it as a fun holiday, do so. And if you are going to celebrate it as a holy day, do so. If you don't want to celebrate it all, I think that's your choice too. But I don't think that you should claim it as a holy day if you want all the trappings of treating it as a fun holiday or vice versa.

I guess my point was that you should be deliberate about how you celebrate it. And I think that's the case in a lot of things.

After multiple parenting books, classes and real life observations, the one thing I've found is that you have to be deliberate in parenting. You can't just react to the situation, the child, or your mood at any given time. Those things do not consistently behave or cause you to behave in the same way. If you rely on inconsistent factors, you won't react in a consistent way. You have to decide, beforehand, how you feel and will react to different situations and you have to deliberately respond in the same way each time no matter how you feel or where you're at. (By the way, I know that's easier said than done.)

I also think there are a lot of times where a Christian must respond deliberately to a situation. The circumstances may change but the core issue is the same. A lot of people like to say there isn't a black and white, only grey. I think there is a black and white but they may not stand for right and wrong. Instead they stand for "God's way" and "the world's way." Sometimes they might converge but most of the time they are polar opposites.

If a Christian doesn't know what or why they believe what they believe, that person may find themselves on one side they didn't want to be on because they allowed themselves to be pulled along with the flow of the tide rather than making the effort to swim upstream.

This whole being deliberate thing bothers me a lot because too often I've just been too exhausted or too lazy to get up off my bum and be deliberate about something. I really think that a lot of our problems boil down to that one thing.

And to take it a bit further I think that might be one of Satan's tools. If he can keep us busy enough or worn out enough, he knows that we'll be pulled along with the tide too. And guess who the master of that current is. As Christians, we should be Salmon people -- we should be ready and willing to swim upstream.

I know that a lot of people will read the Christmas thing and be so consumed with defending their own choices regarding it, that they'll miss this whole point. But I really hope not. I really don't care if you decorate a Christmas tree or burn it in your fireplace. But I hope that you know why and have made the conscious choice to do whatever it is you do.

So flex your muscles, my fellow salmon. It may be a long swim.