words

So I’m on day 3 of Nate being gone. Counting today, it’s 15 days until he comes back. Today feels easier than yesterday, and yesterday was WAY easier than day 1, which was pretty brutal. (To be expected.)

One of the things I know needs to be a part of my life this year is Scripture. I will be honest and admit that it has been a long time since I’ve had a regular, daily-ish habit of reading the Bible. There’s lots of things I could blame for that, but I won’t. At this point it makes no difference why, or what I “should” have done, or whatever. There’s no room for shame and guilt here. But what there is room for is a decision to come back to a discipline that is super life-giving and WORTH pursuing.

I’m a words person. Call it a love language thing; call it a personality-type thing; call it a brain-wiring thing (all of these are true). I am a super verbal person, and words are 98% of my internal life. When I think, I literally talk and/or see sentences inside my head. (I even correct my own grammar, inside my head. Word nerd = big yes.) Words stick to my brain. They reverberate and echo and I rarely forget those that are meaningful in some way, for better or for worse. Bad & good & hard – they all stick. I’m not saying I remember everything…but I am saying that once certain words or verbal exchanges stick to my brain, they don’t go away for a long time, even when I want them to.

In the case of Scripture, this definitely works to my advantage. I still remember the old (not New) King James version of Psalm 23 that I memorized in 1^st grade. “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.” That first night after Nate left, I was feeling kind of scared and creeped out being in my dark, quiet house all alone with the kids. I was having trouble falling asleep, and found myself reciting this old-world-language Psalm inside of my head. I felt instantly calmer. Even the big words themselves were somehow calming.

This is just one example of why having the words of Scripture fresh in my head and heart is a REALLY good idea for me. Whatever words I have most recently taken in are the ones that most quickly spring to mind. This is very difficult for me when the words were hurtful or conflict-oriented. But it’s super beneficial to me when the words were ones of comfort, encouragement, and TRUTH. My super-verbal nature makes it an even good-er idea for me to be ingesting the WORDS of truth, as much as possible. (Especially now, when I'm deprived of adult conversation.) (And special thanks to Annabel for putting good-er into my vocabulary.)

So, I’m working on figuring out how to do this. One thing I keep seeing pop up around the mommy blogging world is something called “she reads truth.” I don’t know much about it other than that it’s a group of women a lot like me who contribute daily thoughts/devotions/reflections based on Scripture. I also know that one of my all-time favorite bloggers is a contributer/founder. Today I checked it out for the first time, and they were talking about memorizing Scripture. They made this beautiful smartphone screensaver to make memorization that much more visually happy:

“The Lord will fight for you. You need only to be still.”

 This verse is a pretty awesome truth for me right now as I’m single-momming it. When it comes to reincorporating God’s truth into my daily verbal intake, I think this is a perfect place for me to start.