Getting back to normal...sort of

“And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee;...”  Holy Communion, Book of Common Prayer.

When I had my stroke ten years ago, I was fixated on returning “to normal”.  The old joke about ‘where normal is.”  The answer is, “In Illinois, south of Chicago.”  No kidding, Google it. :-)

But I live in Minnesota, not Illinois, and life is no joke.

In the ten plus years I’ve lived with the aftermath of stroke, it did not occur to me to head in any other direction.  It did not occur to me I couldn’t.

But one can’t get there without cleaning up the messes of life.  Many times, people change houses (apartments) to begin a new start without dealing with the most cancerous of our lives - us.

Start with your weekend.  How much time is spent preparing our hearts to worship on the weekend?  What does this even mean?  Too often, we are more prone to play the greeter for our friends.  Remember why you are there.  He is the creator of heaven and earth, the Almighty God, not just a President or Senator.

We also need to clean up our relationships.  Stop playing the wounded warrior, and act the Christian.  Forget who started it.  The Christian is the one who agrees to end hostility. (St. Matthew 5:25)  We can be so childish...ARGH! And these are just two simple, not in-your-face examples.

These two are good whether you’ve had a stroke or not.  Are you normal in these two things?  How are you going to make the changes needed?  Pray for me as I traverse the same ice field.

+gbf