I hate the new xanga layout. I just thought I'd throw that out there. Once there lived a little boy about six years old or so named Billy. For his birthday he recieved a car race track that he had wanted for as long as he could remember. That was his most prized treasure and his best loved toy. He had many other toys though and he loved to play all day long. Every day he would wake up in the morning and he couldn't wait to get through breakfast because he wanted to play with his toys. He would start with his remote control airplane, then he would play with his legos then he would play with his race trace for many hours at a time. His mother decided one day that it was high time he learned to put his toys away when he was done with them. She decided that she wanted him to have his room all cleaned up before he went to bed each night. Billy was generally an obedient boy and he wanted to make his mommy happy. The day after his mother told him the new rule he stared his day like normal. He had lots of fun with all of his toys and especially is special race track. His mother reminded him at dinner time to clean his room before he went to bed, but at the end of the day Billy forgot that he was supposed to clean his room. The next day his mother gently informed him that he would need to be punished for disobeying. Billy reluctantly agreed that that would be the only way he would remember to obey in the future. Unfortunately, at the end of the day Billy had quite forgotten the punishment he had received that morning as well as the fact that he was supposed to clean his room. The next morning the same thing happened only this time the punishment was a little harder. This went on for several weeks. After a while Billy was getting very tired of being punished every morning for the same thing that he just couldn't seem to remember. Billy purposed that he would make him mommy happy and get his room all cleaned up. He would find a way to remind himself to clean his room that day. The reminder worked. After dinner, where Billy had placed a peice of paper with a drawing of his room on it at his place, Billy went straight up to his room to begin cleaning it. He managed to get his soldiers, legos, and his remote control airplane put away, but being the fun-loving and playful child that he was he was soon distracted by his special race track. He began to play with the cars and pretty soon his room looked worse than it did before he started cleaning it. When he went to bed that night he had once again forgotten that his room was supposed to be clean . The next morning when Billy's mother saw his room she noticed that the mess was all from the race track. "That's unusual" she thought. She didn't think that Billy was being willfully disobedient all this time, but now she realized WHY he wasn't remembering to clean his room. When Billy came to breakfast that morning she gently asked him, "Billy, is your room clean this morning?" Billy burst into tears. He told her that he wanted to be obedient and make her happy and that he tried to clean his room but forgot half way through. It wasn't that he didn't want to clean his room, or that he was deliberately disobeying, he just couldn't get it right. Billy's mother sat down next to him and asked him if he would be willing to do whatever it would take to remember to clean his room. Billy thought for a moment and remembered all of the punishments he had had over the last few weeks and how unhappy his mother had been. He was more concerned about displeasing his mother than anything else. After giving it some thought he said, "yes! I will do whatever it takes to make you happy and to remember to clean my room." "Alright then," she said, "Why do you suppose you keep forgetting to pick up your toys." Billy thought for a moment, then he said, "I think its because I have so much fun". Then his mother asked "which toy is the most distracting to you?" Billy hung his head. He knew instantly that it was his race track and that his mother knew that as well. He said very slowly and quietly, "it's my race track." There was a moment of silence, then Billy's mother asked him if he would be willing to give up his beloved race track so that he could remember to clean his room. Billy looked at her with a tear in his eye and said "whatever you think is best mother." She looked at Billy with a gentle smile on her face and said, "No Billy, its whatever YOU think is best. I am not taking your race track away from you, and I am not punishing you, but if you want to remember to clean your room every day and you think that your race track might be keeping you from remembering then perhaps you should consider giving it up until you can always remember to clean up. But it is up to you Billy." Billy went up to his room and stared at his race track for a few minutes and thought about the conversation. He remembered that he said he would be willing to do anything to make his mom happy. He looked at the race track again. He thought that he might never remember to clean his room every day, but that race track was the biggest distraction and it simply had to go. With a sense of resolution he went into the garage and pulled out the box for his race track, boxed it up and put it in the garage. Billy didn't have quite as much fun playing that day, but he did remember to clean his room. After that, cleaning his room at the end of the day became the norm. He did forget once in a while, but he was happy that he had learned to remember to clean his room and could make his mom happy. This is a story that I made up that depicts the recent happenings in my spiritual life. I feel like this little boy. I try and try but I never seem to learn. There is a repeated cycle of trying and failing or forgetting altogether, being reminded and starting the cycle over again. The Lord has asked me to give up something in my life that was not a bad thing, but was distracting me from the intimate relationship that He wanted to have with me. It was a willing sacrifice, and I sort of like to think of it as a thanksgiving offering because I had joy when I surrendered it and I have joy now (after the fact) and I'm grateful that God gave it to me in the first place and I am grateful that he asked for it back. The conclusion that I left off of the story because it is yet unknown in my story is whether or not Billy ever brought out his race track again.I do not know if I will be able to take back the thing I gave up, but before I gave it up there was a spiral pattern of failures in a couple of different areas of my life including my relationship with the Lord and I don't want that to keep happening or to start happening again. I watched Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian yesterday. I loved it! There were two things in the movie that convicted me. 1. Lucy kept saying she saw Aslan, but the others didn't believe her. Finally, Susan asked Lucy why Lucy could see him and she couldn't. Lucy's answer was, "maybe you didn't really want to!" Why don't we hear God's voice?... Maybe we don't really want to. 2. Lucy finally found Aslan. She told him that she knew he was there all along, but the others didn't believe her. He asked her why that should stop her from going to find him. She didn't try to explain herself or make excuses she just looked down and then back up and said, "I'm sorry, I was afraid to come alone". She knew that she was wrong to be afraid, and she knew that it shouldn't have mattered what the others thought. Are we afraid to seek God because those around us are not? In other news, I am now able to teach Harmony. | 
