I don't feel like it...

"I don't feel like getting up!"

"I don't feel like shoveling snow!"

"I don't feel like making dinner!

"I don't feel like
taking a bath!" Said mostly by 10 year old boys, by the way.

"I don't feel like going to church!" Most often said by teens.

"I don't feel like taking my medicine!"

"I don't feel like praying..."

As a mom, I've heard or said myself, everyone of these, "I don't feel likes..." at one point or another. In the name of full disclosure, I use to fake a bath when I was around nine years old myself. Not sure why Mom never busted me on it, but she didn't. I have no idea how long I went that year...not sure I want to talk about it in public either...so stop bugging me about it. For the record, if my bath tub looked like the one above, I would still be in it. Just sayin'.

Anyway, most "I don't feel likes" have a consequence or two attached to them. Some are obvious right away, some take time to show up. I once knew a woman who had two family members decide they "didn't feel like" going for their dialysis treatments. She lost them both with in twenty four hours. That is one heck of a consequence.

But what do you do when you don't "feel" like forgiving or don't "feel" like praying? What if The Spirit has not moved you? Seriously, what? I recently had a friend ask me if I was attending a "church of the loose leaf bible." Still not 100% sure what that means, but I understood her suspicions. I am pretty sure she was worried, with some good points I might add, that faith had become "an experience." Some of us just are exuberant about God. But we can also be exuberant about a sale at Penny's. And given the right bakery cookies,
we could dance in the parking lot as we pick up our pound of fat to eat in the quiet of our car before anyone finds out...or so I have heard. Given the right concoction of hormones, I hear that a tissue commercial can get you to boo-hoo. You can feel it all. And if you are tender hearted at all, a YouTube video of a soldier returning home from war could make you a hot mess for hours on end...again, or so I have heard.

My point? What do you do on the days when the feeling to pray just never shows up? How about when you go to pray and it "feels" like He never showed up? Can you get you butt out of bed on a perfectly sunny/cold and wet Sunday? Yeah, I know the feeling.

The thing is Christianity has nothing to do with feelings. Love is a fact. Our faith is built on facts. So why did He bother to give us feelings? Why joy, and sadness, pain and laughter? Why would He allow us the thrill of Third Day singing Anges Dei if we weren't suppose to feel anything? Especially we girls...I mean, do we feel or what?

As my dearly, departed mother use to say, "When the hand clapping, foot stomping and arm waving STOPS...and it will, in one season or another, there had better be something underneath. Those roots had better be down deep. Sometimes our roots get tangles. But that is okay. He understands."

There are things I am feeling right now, that have taken my breath away...and there have been moments of true perplexity. But I have every intention to sit in a pew on Sunday morning to corporeally worship my God. Paul tells us to not give up joining together to worship, as some have done. Some seasons, I can't wait to get to church on Sundays...and some Sundays. Sigh. I go as an act of obedience. That obedience is an act of worship, in and of itself.

Some mornings, I sit with my coffee, read the Word, and fall back to sleep. I wake up just in time to start running as a mommy, completely blowing my chance to be just His little girl for an hour. Nice that He lets me come back when the house is quiet again. Very nice.