I have been married 13 years.  All of my life (I’m 34) was spent dreaming of motherhood.  As a child and a teen I had no desire for career, only to be a mother.  My husband and I were married at 19 and 20.  (I am his elder by one year and five days.)

It was NINE long years before we had our first child.  Nine LONG years.  Nine long YEARS.  There was no medical evidence as to what the problem was.  There was no money for more extensive medical testing.  There was no money to allow for adoption.  (which we were and are very open to)

What there was, was lots of time.  Time for God and I to build a relationship.  Time for me to learn to trust him and to surrender my will and my need of understanding why completely over to him.  Those nine years were inexplicably painful but still filled with joy.  My husband and I spent a lot of time in service to our family and friends.  Service that we would not have been able to offer if we had children at the time.  Between us we have 28 nieces and nephews and 8 god-children.  There was a lot of time spent on helping to raise them.

God used those years to bring me to be completely in love with him.  What sounded impossible to accept and offer back to him became a joy to give.  It became a joy because I discovered that the jewel of suffering I had to give could not be duplicated by anyone else.  It was my gift to him.  Obedience with a joyful heart.  The “peace that surpasses all understanding” that the Bible speaks of comes when our hearts are united with His.  A personal friendship.  A trust that was able to say and firmly believe that it didn’t matter what was physically wrong, that we didn’t even need to know what was wrong;  God could heal it if it was HIS will.

There was one moment in time that will forever burn in my memory.  My husband and I were walking through the parking lot to Wal-mart.  Hand in hand.  I had a vision of us old and grey, still childless.  My heart spoke directly to God when it completely surrendered.  “Father, if that is how you would have it, we will be joyful with it.”  I embraced that possible future with my whole heart and yet simultaneously we did not quit trying for children.

Not one month later, I found out I was pregnant.  Abigail is her name, it means “father’s joy.”  She is four years old now and has a little brother that is 2, Jacob. meaning ”one who replaces”.   Holding them in my arms completely erased the pain of the long wait.  They are both so worth every second of pain I had to endure to become ready for them.  They fill us with joy and replace the pain of the years spent in longing.

But, I have more than just my children and my husband.  I have a deeply forged relationship with my God.  I can trust him and know without falter that He IS. 

Abraham could do what he did, because before the relationship with his son was born, his relationship with God was forged.

Plato I did not like very much.  I was actually very disappointed in the book we read.  I had always heard Plato being described as this great philosopher and maybe he still is and it was just the book we read, but I didn’t like it.  I guess I didn’t like how most of the book we don’t even know if it really happened.  It was more of a fictional story with the main character being and actual person.  I also didn’t like how it was all about piety and what being pius was, and it was never explained what it was. It was just a big circular argument with different opninions and never a conclusion.  I know thats what philosophy is all about, but I just think if you are going to write a book about a topic then write about it.  It was to me a long book saying “I don’t know what it is but I’m going to babble on about it and then never finish it.  The story about Socrates in itself was good.  I enjoyed that. Just not the piety part.

Augustine I enjoyed.  I really liked what he had to say, but it almost made me feel guilty for thinking the way I did about self defense.  Even after reading it I don’t think I would change my mind.  Maybe that makes me a bad person, but thats just who I am.  I think Augustine is great for thinking the way he did though.  He really believed in the eternal life and that is great.  He knows that that our soul is the most important thing in our life and not just our bodies.  I would like to think the same way and know that nothing can be taken away from you but your body.  I just enjoy life.  I think it is hard to be that okay with death and I hope to someday be that way.

I ended up writing my paper over Descartes, so I spent a lot of time trying to decipher his work. While his language was difficult to fully understand at times, I think he was entertaining to read. It was in some ways fascinating to read the back-and-forth banter between himself in discussing his personal foundation in life. I do agree with him on his end result that there is a God, but as I pointed out in my paper, I noticed the way he determined there was a God had too many holes in its argument. Descartes was a great philosopher, but I disagreed with most of his work that we read in class.

Kierkegaard I really enjoyed, as I said in an earlier post.  He was easier to understand because I understood him more.  He was probably the one philosopher that I completely agreed with.  His material was easier to read and understand and I really liked his take on the story of Abraham.  I also enjoyed how he described the differenece between faith and ethics and how Abraham would be a very faithful person or an murderer, based on which way you looked at it.  I thought Kierkegaard was very honest and Fear and Trembling was by far my favorite from this class.

Its hard to think that Abraham didn’t even think or hold back on this command.  He was told to do something and did it, without hesitation.  Perhaps Abraham did think about it or wonder if he could do it or what would happen, but he still did it because he had that much faith in the Lord that everything would be okay. 

Another thing to think of when put in this situation is the punishment.  I don’t know about back then but if someone took their son and bound him and took a knife and was ready to sacrifice him, they would be in a lot of trouble.  Now it would be considered murder and you would be thought to be crazy if you said God told you to do it.  Even if you had the intent to kill someone you would be put away for years.  I don’t think I would believe someone if they said that God told them to sacrifice their son.  I would think they were crazy.  Even if this had never happened in the Bible.  Its a hard concept to grasp.

Also, imagine being in Isaac’s shoes.  If your father had done that to you, what would you think? I don’t know about anyone else but I think my relationship with my father would be done for.  I would move away as far as possible thinking I would never be safe from him.  It would be a scary thing to be bound up and ready to sacrifice.  Would you believe your dad when he said that the Lord commanded it?  This is a very intense story and yet Abraham is known for his Faith.  I don’t know how had that much faith to be willing to sacrifice his son.  I don’t know what I would do when put in that situation and I hope I never have to be.

For this statement to be false, we only need to find one instance of true creativity in any form.  So I began to think.  In painting, every painting I could think of is a representation of something else in the world.  Even Salvador Dali’s work is representative of items in the “real world.”  In his painting “Persistence of Memory,” we see things that we can recognize desert scenes and clocks and so on.So this might not be anything more that regurgitation of a version of something he had seen. Whether a combination of things he had seen and put together, or something from a bad dream.  Maybe you think Pablo Picasso was original.  But in his “3 Musicians” we can see clearly recognizable shapes, and those shapes put together to create a representation of people. So again, did he create it?  Or is it something that he put together with some interesting combinations?  I hope you come up with something better than I did, but using Descartes rules of existance, I can not find that the human being is a truly creative animal.  Help me find just one example, be honest and critique your example thoroughly, and I will try to prove you right.  Lets see what we can find.

 Failure is often required for growth.   A child doesn’t usually learn to walk without falling first.

Failure is not a bad thing.  For what is practising if not failing until we get it right?

Even the bad choices we make give us the experiences we need to make better choices. 

There is a quote on my desk that makes me laugh, but it shows how much failure is a part of our daily lives.

“Good judgment comes from experience; and experience, well, that comes from bad judgment.” (Dayspring Calender)

How has failure helped you?

What do you think?

Thinking of free will always makes me think of the movie Bruce Almighty.  When he was given all the power God had he could do anything.  Anything, but his girlfriend love him again.  That was the only thing she could decide for herself.  You can make things happen, but you can’t make people feel different things.  God may be able to do a lot of things but he gave us the gift of making our own decisions.  We know what is right and wrong but it is up to us whether we want to do the right thing.  I believe that he loved us enough to give us something he cannot control.  If he controlled everything we did, including our free will, we would just be like puppets.

What do you all think?  Why do you think he gave us free will?