Monthly Archives: September 2013

Five Minute Friday – True

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Linking up with Lisa Jo again this week to participate in Five Minute Friday.

Today’s word is TRUE– ready, set go –

Lisa asked us to write a true story, to share the truth of where we are right now….

Truth is I am worn out and weary most days.

Truth is I do it to myself. I have high expectations of myself and others and I get frustrated when they aren’t met.

Truth is I spend too much time worrying about what other people think about me and not enough about being a true light of Christ in my day.

Truth is I get jealous when I see friends in this online community that seem more successful than I am.

Truth is I don’t make the time to write as much as I would like so I only have myself to blame! 🙂

Truth is I have met some amazing women through blogging. Women that I can email and share all my ugly truth’s with and they still love me.They still accept me and encourage me.

Truth is THAT is what this is all about for me. Community building. I know that I am not the best at it. I know that I don’t have the email subscribers or twitter followers that others have but the truth is it doesn’t matter.

What matters is that there are people available to me because of this community and the truth is I am so so grateful.

In 4 weeks I will meet many of these women and the truth is I am terrified they won’t like the “real” me in person as much as they seem to like the me behind the computer screen.  But I am stepping out and trusting it will be ok.

The truth is, this probably took longer than 5 minutes but I am blessed by the opportunity to write and share and thankful for each of you that stop here and encourage me.

Five Minute Friday – She

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Linking up with Lisa Jo again this week to participate in Five Minute Friday.

Today’s word is SHE– ready, set go –

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She is my only girl, a sweet surprise after 3 boys and difficult times trying to conceive. I always knew that if she was added to our family that we would give her my dear friends name.

When the letters G I R L were typed across the ultrasound screen I couldn’t believe it! She would finally be ours. Sharing the news of her coming was something I will never forget.

She is independent and adorable and sassy all wrapped up in one.

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Some days I wonder what she will grow up to be like. She loves her brothers fiercely. She wants to spend all of her time doing what they are doing.  She likes to collect “cada’s” and pet them and then she rips their wings off….

She isn’t quite the princess that I imagined she might be – but she is perfect in every way. She is ours and I count my blessings every day that she is a part of our lives.

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For When You Don’t Have it All Together

I shared some of these thoughts with the “Simply Devoted” group that I am leading in the mornings. Thoughts from the verses in Ephesians we are studying in Hello Mornings.

I don’t know about you but this life can be hard at times.

I do get up early every morning and do a little reading, trying to get to know God more. It is more Bible reading and reflection than I have ever done. I feel like I pray throughout the day a lot and remember to thank God for the little things.

But even though I am going through the “christian motions” – I am human, and I still struggle. I get angry with my kids, I don’t respect my husband and I am sensitive and tend to overreact.

Part of me feels like if I were doing this christian walk “right” that maybe I wouldn’t struggle like this. But I believe strongly that I won’t ever attain “perfection” in this life time…no matter how much devotional time I have, or studies I try and lead.

Plain and simple – I don’t have it all together, I don’t have all the answers, I still sin in some way every day….

But God, in His infinite grace, knew this ahead of time, still chose to create me and provided a way “out”.

This week’s HM study of Ephesians hits home – these verses specifically…”4 But God, with the unfathomable richness of His love and mercy focused on us, 5 united us with the Anointed One and infused our lifeless souls with life—even though we were buried under mountains of sin—and saved us by His grace. 6 He raised us up with Him and seated us in the heavenly realms with our beloved Jesus the Anointed, the Liberating King. 7 He did this for a reason: so that for all eternity we will stand as a living testimony to the incredible riches of His grace and kindness that He freely gives to us by uniting us with Jesus the Anointed. 8-9 For it’s by God’s grace that you have been saved. You receive it through faith. It was not our plan or our effort. It is God’s gift, pure and simple. You didn’t earn it, not one of us did, so don’t go around bragging that you must have done something amazing. 10 For we are the product of His hand, heaven’s poetry etched on lives, created in the Anointed, Jesus, to accomplish the good works God arranged long ago.”

He has a plan for each of us. Some of us WILL struggle with trying to get this life “right”. May I let you off the hook a little. You aren’t expected to have it all together. You don’t have to earn it – God’s grace saves us from ourselves each and every day. Don’t ever forget that!!

I am so very grateful for this gift of grace. So glad that I have the opportunity each day to start over and try again. Some days I do pretty good. Some days I might actually be a light. Other days I struggle and fail and am not the “example” of Christ that I would like to be.

But that is exactly why He came in the first place. For sinners like me.

This morning when I got up I just felt a weight on me. The reality that I am a constant hypocrite and mess up more than I would like to admit hurts my heart and can feel overwhelming.

And I read through Ephesians 2: 1-10 again, looking for ways to apply it to me. And I was struck again of the reality that I DON’T need to have it all figured out. And that is my testimony friends. That this God of mine loves me so so much that He chose me and lavishes His love on me, His riches even when I don’t deserve it.

I could feel the weight lifting….it isn’t a burden I should be carrying because God already did the work for us!!

This grace is the legacy He is leaving with me. It is my hearts cry to share this grace with you.  It is more amazing to me every time I think about how much He loves us. In spite of us.

Maybe you are trying really hard to be perfect too, maybe you lead a Bible study or participate in the HM challenge but feel like a fraud because when “life” hits your reactions would tell a different story.

I get it. I really do and I am there most days with you!

But God.

Don’t ever forget that friends – if that is the most you can utter out as you put your head down to sleep at night – But God. It is enough. He is enough.

Encouragement to my Childhood Self

This post is inspired by Compassion International.  To spread the word about Compassion and what they do for children all over the world, bloggers are getting together for Blog Month with the hopes to sponsor 3,160 children this month! If you are interested in sponsoring a child please click here and find a child for your family to support!

I was very fortunate to grow up in a stable Christian home. We had family meals together every night and participated in church activities. Privileged, compared to most of the world, would describe my upbringing.

But regardless of all that we had – I struggled with a couple of basic “lies” that I believed and shaped how I saw myself and how I experienced my childhood. As a mother now myself I want to dispel those lies for my future and my children’s as well.

One of those lies was that I didn’t “belong”.

I wasn’t ever one of the “popular” girls. I didn’t “go with” any boys in elementary school like many girls did. I was awkward and a little nerdy and desperate to fit in.

In 6th grade one of the popular girls was having a boy-girl party. And I wanted to go SO BAD!! Some of my friends even tried to help me dress in a cool outfit to wear to an upcoming football game so this girl would see how awesome I was and invite me.

It didn’t work and I tell you I was crushed.

This now seemingly small event shaped many years to come. Shaped how I saw myself, my value and my worth. I believed that I was never going to be good enough, never valuable like the “popular crowd” was. And I always felt like I needed to try and prove that I could measure up.

That is a lot of pressure to put on yourself isn’t it?

Today I would tell myself that this event doesn’t have to shape my future. That an invitation to a party, or not, doesn’t define who I am. That God loves me just the way He made me and I didn’t need to try so hard to change to fit the worlds view of a “perfect person.

Would I have listened??

I don’t know. Those are words that I think I can only offer because of my experiences. I think, unfortunately, that we sometimes have to walk through the valleys to experience the joys of the mountaintops.

So maybe my advice would be simply to trust God. While you can’t see the future and what’s to come…He can and He is working it all out for His good!

And as a parent I can use my experiences as examples for my kids. My situation may not be exactly the same…but it would be a start for sharing how those things affected me, what my reaction was (or lie that I believed) and how I have seen God use the hurts I experienced for good.

I think that is the best we can do – live and learn from our experiences and trust God through all of it. The times that I have put my trust in God I have found a sense of peace and comfort that I don’t feel when I take the reins and try to control things myself!

I hope to always remain teachable!

How about you? What is something that you would tell your childhood self??

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