As our body cannot live without nourishment, so our soul cannot live without prayer"
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Sometimes problems don't require a solution to solve them; instead they require maturity to outgrow them.  My dear warrior,
Ridiculous though it may sound, the power of the pout is not to be underestimated. I'm not writing this post to enable those of you who use pouting and guilt trips or seek to be enabled in order to exploit other people using such techniques. No, in fact this is a slap on the wrist. Some of you may not even realize that you do it. To my great embarrassment, I have been guilty of the pout. I used even throughout my 26th year, to my great dismay. “We try, when we wake, to lay the new day at God’s feet; before we have finished shaving, it becomes our day and God’s share in it is felt as a tribute which we must pay out of ‘our own’ pocket, a deduction from the time which ought, we feel, to be ‘our own’. A man starts a new job with a sense of vocation and, perhaps, for the first week still keeps the discharge of the vocation as his end, taking the pleasures and pains from God’s hand, as they came, as ‘accidents’. But in the second week he is beginning to ‘know the ropes’: by the third, he has quarried out of the total job his own plan for himself within that job, and when he can pursue this he feels that he is getting no more than his rights, and when he cannot, that he is being interfered with.”  My dear warrior,
Over the last year I have often found myself struggling with the idea of job satisfaction. In jobs like mine, it seems to come with the territory to ‘live for the weekend.’ Working 8-5, having weekends and major holidays off, accruing vacation days for a few days off here and here or a proper vacation if you so desire. People spend their weekends either drinking and partying, or working on their houses and spending it with their families—depending on their goals and priorities. Me? I spend my free time with family, writing blogs and books, training martial sciences, bodybuilding, making art and being creative. But somehow (particularly with the long, dark days in which I saw no sunlight during my days in a windowless office), life seemed to become dimmer. That feeling of being ‘stuck’ in a job began to overwhelm me. That is, until a single conversation changed my perspective. My dear warrior,
Warriors cannot be effective on the battlefield with a mind that is cast into turbulent thoughts. Neither can they stay strong or be their best if their minds are similarly chaotic in their day-to-day lives. A warrior knows he must allow himself a chance to rest and recharge. Mokuso is a Japanese word we use in Martial Sciences that simply means to still your thoughts. (moku meaning still or silent, and so, meaning thoughts). It is the word my instructor uses to tell me I must take a moment to clear my mind of all the cares and burdens of the week, to lay aside distractions and put away all things that would inhibit me from training well as a warrior, or being effective in battle. It is not you that shapes God
it is God that shapes you. If you are the work of God await the hand of the artist who does all things in due season. Offer Him your heart, soft and tractable, and keep the form in which the artist has fashioned you. Let your clay be moist, lest you grow hard and lose the imprint of his fingers. – St. Irenaeus |
Check out Michele's new book, now available for purchase on Amazon!
Mere Humanity: Becoming a Mature Christian in an Immature World 
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