garbage in, garbage out

God and I have had a lot of fights over the years. Obviously, I have lost a lot of them. Well, I have chosen to "win" by doing the action he was telling me not to do, but of course I only brought suffering upon myself in the process. My mom can verify, this was pretty much a pattern with me from the age of two. For some reason, I came into this world fighting authority, always trying to prove that I was in charge. It really sucks when you finally realize that it's not true. It's very tiring too. I still lament the years I spent swimming against the tide when it came to God's direction for my life. It was a very big, miserable waste. I have been trying to do better, especially over this past year; to do more listening and less telling, more obeying and less fighting... But as I have mentioned before, it is very hard to change ingrained attitudes and habits that have been with me for 28 years. But I am trying.

Anyway, on to my original point here. One of the things I have struggled with the most pertaining to God and living a Christian lifestyle is music. I held onto music like a life raft for many many years, especially when I was a teenager, and when I was single after college. I remember in high school I used to wake up to a radio alarm and go to sleep listening to music every day. It was like a drug. I thought it helped me to just block out everything in life that I didn't want to deal with and just get lost in a certain song or a certain CD... I would play what fit my mood and just listen to it over and over again. But what I didn't realize was that listening to angry music from someone like Eminem, while somewhat cathartic, did more harm to me than good. It fueled the flame of my anger instead of helping to extinguish it, which it was I actually needed. Looking back, it was pretty stupid and counterproductive. Especially after God gave me a big fat slap in the face about the issue in 2002 - every single CD I owned was in a black case in my Jeep, parked in my apartment complex in Merritt Island. I came down one Saturday morning after a big, rowdy Friday night football game at Merritt Island High right next door, and my cd case and my portable cd player were gone. I went CRAZY. I was so depressed and upset and angry, not just about the cd's themselves, but the memories and the autographs and chorus cd's I couldn't replace and the MONEY that I had spent accumulating that collection. All of it, GONE, in the blink of an eye. But did I use this opportunity to sit back and think about the lesson I was being taught here? Of course not. I spent the next 7 years or so trying to recapture and replace what I had. But then, in 2009 I met Tim. With our wedding on the horizon and a baby on the way, my priorities changed and something had to give. I sold ALL of my CDs (and even some DVDs) to help pay for the wedding and buy baby things. Of course, we backed up all the music on the computer and transferred it to my MP3 player first, but still. WOW. It was hard to let go of those material possessions that had meant so much to me. But after a while of them being gone, I slowly stopped listening to music quite so much. Sometimes now I will get in the car for a 15 minute trip and don't even turn on any music. (Eek! Gasp!) But most of the time I now turn on Christian radio.

Ever since I started my new job in August and the stress and discontent has drastically lowered in my daily Monday-Friday life, I thought it would be a good idea to improve my mood/attitude each day even further by listening to positive, God-focused music. Now Christian radio has been an issue with me for quite a few years... When I lived with the (awesome) DeVault family one summer in college, it was all I heard. And my mom listens to it pretty much exclusively too. But it always used to bother me... it would somehow grate on my nerves in a way I couldn't quite put my finger on. Basically, I thought it was all sappy crap and I couldn't stand the repetition of what seemed like a 20 song loop. Rarely, I would tune in on a Saturday night and actually hear music I liked such as Skillet and DC Talk and P.O.D., but like I said, that was the RARE occasion. But lately, it has been starting to dawn on me that when my mother told me I should "choose" to be happy for all those years, she wasn't just spouting cliches. It's sort of like a sidekick to karma, I think: when you focus on good things and put good things out there in the world, good things come back to you. But not even just that, when you are focusing on the good things, you are less likely to be irritated by every little "bad" or annoying thing that happens in your day. So then you feel happier because you think bad things are not happening as much in your life anymore, but really life hasn't changed at all, you just remembered to put on your rose-colored glasses for a minute. Or rather for me, I finally put on the clear ones rather than the blue grumpy ones. By this point, most readers must be thinking I am an idiot, stating all of these obvious truths about life. But for me they are radical, amazing, brand-new ideas! I may be waaaay late getting some of this stuff, but at least I am getting it at all, right?

So back to music. Somehow, with the changes I have slowly been making in my life over the past couple of years, Christian music transformed from nails on a chalkboard to uplifting encouragement. I actually hear the words of the songs and take them in, rather than being annoyed by the lack of catchy refrains and pumped-up ROCK sound like I used to. Growing up is weird in so many ways, I swear. Another thing with music that I really feel God has told me is that the reason I never really excelled in singing or songwriting like I dreamt of doing is because I never gave it to Him. Deep down inside me somewhere, the talent is there, but it didn't blossom because I never tried to use that talent to glorify God. BAM! Harsh, God, harsh. I guess we all need harsh truth in our lives sometimes though, and as much as I tried to deny it, this one has definitely become evident for me. And that's in addition to the whole realization of "music is your idol - drop it" side of the equation. Yikes. It's been rough, I'll tell you.

Hopefully, you all can keep following me as I continue to chase this train of thought even further...

Over the past 6 months Tim and I have had the opportunity to visit many different friends and family members on weekend trips and such, which has been great. The one thing negative thing that stood out to me from every single visit, though, is the amount of TV being watched in those households. Not to say that I am going to start a campaign against TV or go all fundamentalist on my friends and relatives, but seriously - WTF? Tim and I cut off our cable a few months ago to save money, and the longer I go without TV, the more I am glad we did it. I makes me feel like a zombie to sit around in a house where the TV is on constantly, even when it is not really being watched. I can't take it anymore. I start to feel like I can't breathe. I need trees and sunshine and fresh air in my life, and I need the darn OCEAN too (but alas, it is much too far away from Greenville). Also, just as music is now becoming an edifying part of my life instead of a destructive force, so too is lack of TV. I am not watching ridiculous relationship soap operas anymore or looking at actresses all the time that stir up my inner jealousy monster or sitting on the couch like a fat blob doing nothing every night. I am playing more actively with Logan and participating more in my own life whereas I used to just have an attitude of giving up - "there's never enough time to get everything done around the house so I will just sit here and do nothing." Now I am not saying that those of you who watch a lot of TV are inept multi-taskers like me, or that you are bad parents or spouses or housekeepers, like I was. But for me, those bad habits and TV watching went hand in hand. It was a hard habit to break, but ended up being so freeing. My husband and I do watch a few shows on Netflix here and there (read: 3 per week, max) and I turn on an episode of Backyardigans for Logan once or twice a week, but that's it. We play or read books or go to the park more, especially on the weekends, and Logan is happier with the change and so am I. You may want to give it a try at your house too. Just once or twice a week, don't turn on the TV in the evening and focus on spending quality time with your family - and see what happens. Get creative with your time instead of falling into the same old routine. Again, a simple truth that finally made it's way through the dense Mickie stubbornness and took effect, to great reward.

Another thing I have stopped doing in recent times is reading trashy publications such as romance novels, Cosmo and other magazines, etc. I am by no means perfect, but it has really helped me to stop and think, "How will the information and ideas in this work affect my mood or improve/degrade my life?" I have always been a person who absorbs external influences like a sponge, and I am finally starting to see that I have control over how many of those influences are negative. Granted, i am not perfect. OMG! on yahoo (celebrity news/gossip) is still one of my guilty pleasures, as is watching veronica mars, but I keep them to a minimum and I am aware of my limits. I pay more attention to how things affect my mood and my temper and I stop them when they get to the point of being a bad influence. It's a never-ending journey of self-improvement and self-awareness, but also of being more aware of the needs of my family and placing them above my own, too.

A final note about all this, with the use of cliches: you really do reap what you sow, you only get out of something what you put into it, and every journey begins with a single step. Also, an important word from Yoda that I am TRYING to live by when it comes to improving my life: "Do or do not, there is no try." I really hope that, one step at a time, I am starting to put more good out there into the world than bad and therefore bringing more good into my life and the lives of the people I know and love.