Thoughts on Thoughts...on Thoughts

I've been doing a lot of thinking about the things I think. Profound, I know. The more I think, the more I'm disappointed that I've been Thinking so much of my life, and not Doing. I'm a firm believer that if you really believe something, you'll put your beliefs into action. "What I believe is not what I say I believe; what I believe is what I do." [Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz] That's not proof that I'm right, but Don just says it so well, that I can't help but quote him. That thought has always stuck with me because it's how I want to live.

So all this thinking has lead to more thinking and lots of pondering and lots of questioning and now I'm just kind of tired of myself and my thoughts. That happens to me a lot.

Where I work, I've met some folks who have some very different beliefs than my own. I'm friends with a Mormon, friends with an atheist, and friends with a few Catholics who sometimes think about God. I got to talking with my friend Missy the Mormon last night, and she was so amazingly kind in telling me what she believes and why she believes it. In the middle of our conversation, our Atheist friend said, "I think that if there really is a God, and if he really does care about you, he's not gonna send you to hell." That got me thinking about in this day and age, we think it's all about us. Our happiness is the only thing that matters. We forget there's a greater picture and that in a few decades we'll be dead and then in a century or so we'll be completely forgotten. (This is not a new thought...I think, or at least hope, America is starting to realize the audacity of the "me" situation.) My mother-in-law thinks it's all about her right now, as she's going through a divorce, and foregoing the thought that perhaps marriage is supposed to make us holy, and not just happy. What's even worse is that my life blares on speakers that the only thing I care about is me, because I think about myself 99.9% of the day- my schedule, my make-up, my e-mails, my money, my friends, my goals, my workout, my food, my happiness, my, oh my.

What if, for one day, I thought about nothing- absolutely Nothing- that has to do with myself? Is that even possible? What if I put every effort into solely thinking about other people- people at work, the homeless, my neighbors, my husband, my friends. Would people see Christ more in that day than in my whole lifetime?

My thoughts are erratic and this I know but it's only because my thoughts are my thoughts and this is the long road to being at peace again. Except this time, I don't want to be at peace in the same place I started.