Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries…
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
(wife of Robert Browning)

This is one of my favorite quotes. I never tire of it, and was reminded of it today as I woke up and realized it is th first day of the 21 day fasting and prayer. Metaphorically speaking, I will be taking of my shoes, barefoot, or just especially honoring God in my everyday life with more fasting, prayer, Bible study and reading of great positive books that uplift me and help me gain focus on where I am headed in 2010.

I was planning that morning latte, and then remembered that I had decided to do the Daniel fast.

Sometimes I may doubt myself and my goals and all that I SHOULD be doing but there were some obvious SIGNS in my life in the past few days that were TOO coincidental, and made it very clear what I was going to do through the end of January. I think God is in the little things, the everyday of our life, and sometimes He can surely make it obvious, what we are to do.

1. I had considered giving up twitter and facebook, but kept wondering if I really HAD to. After all it is such a small fraction of my time to just tweet what I am doin, maybe inspire or encourage another. But then, 2 days ago, part of my keyboard stopped working. Not just any part, but the top row of symbols/numbers. This meant I had no at @ sign to respond to another tweet. I could not even write my own address to sign into facebook. I also was missing my ! which is always necessary to show my excitement and enthusiasm!! or my ( quotes ) to parenthesize the tangents in my head. It was so frustrating! I was having to copy and paste exclamation points from old emails. So I KNEW that social media was goin for the month.

Now that I have solidified the commitment (and announced it), the dang thing is miraculously working again.

2. I went in to make a cup of coffee, and realized there just happened to be enough grounds for ONE MORE CUP. So I graciously prepared the latte machine for my husband and accepted the obvious 2 x 4 across my head.

3. I went to the bookstore with Jacob-13 last night. I really did not want to get out in the cold, but he wanted to go. I had some books I could look up, so we went and I sat for over an hour, reading Jack Canfield’s new book , “The Success Principle”. He started the Chicken Soup for the Souls. It was great, and it got me so excited for the new year and new goals. I had to remind myself that I am holding off on specifics and using this time in January to gain clarity. So I came home even more fired up and anxious for the fasting time to begin.

4. My husband, Wildman, and I had already scheduled time for this morning to get together and discuss new goals. I was able to use some of the new “strategic communication questions” that I learned in Jack’s book, and we had a great talk. We are on the same page, and I am going into this 21 day commitment with much more clarity of purpose.

So no more tweets or facebook for 21 days. No more coffee and all the restrictions of the Daniel diet. But YAY, more reading ,more exercise, more prayer time with God, more praise and worship. I might even blog a little about my experience.

unless my keyboard speaks to me again..:)

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 10th, 2010 at 6:52 pm and is filed under christianity, personal growth, values, writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.