Separation...

Gotta say, this is not my finest hour. I am sad and lonely. I wish I did not know that the choices I am making are the right ones. I would give just about any of my worldly possessions to be back at home with my husband at this moment. But, this cannot be. This is the path that I feel the Lord calling me down. I am not saying that we will be apart forever (Lord I hope not), but at this moment I feel that he is never going to change if I keep ignoring the problem (let's face it, I have run from the problem). My husband is my world, my number two priority behind God, but we each have issues, which in turn have punctured holes in the lungs of our marriage. The hardest thing I ever had to do was give him back his ring, separate our finances and walk away. He did not choose to walk away, I did. It got to hard play the role of supporting wife when your husband can't be supportive back. You can only be hurt so many times before God expects you to change your circumstances. It was a hard choice. I believe we can work it out, I expect us to work it out. God is in control though not me so I need to seek his will for our marriage and not my own. Do you know how tiring it is to keep rowing against the current? All you end up doing is wearing yourself out!!! Before long you just feel like giving up. I still love my husband, and I always will. I have learned that you have to have that agape love. The love that is not selfish. That is not to say you must disregard yourself in the process. It is a trust you form with your heavenly Father that says, Lord right now I don't feel like doing this. I don't feel like loving him right now Lord, but I want your love to flow through me and splash out. We are unable to love like that, but God makes it possible. He makes all things possible. He will give you strength and shelter.

Lord, I love you and I humbly ask you to pour your love out in me so that I may love others the way you would have me to. I ask you to show me any area of my life I am withholding from you and help me to give it to you. Guide my words and help me grow in you daily. In Jesus holy name

Amen.

Whatever you are going through, whoever has hurt you, The One who feeds the sparrows will also take care of you. He will give you all you need for that day. In the wilderness God gave the Israelites just enough manna for that day, no more no less. He wanted them to depend on him not themselves. It is only through that attitude that we will not only survive, but thrive. If you are in a tough spot, don't be afraid to depend on your Lord and Savior Jesus. He will get you through. Maybe not the way you foresaw it, but when you get through, you will see how his plan for you unfolded.

trust....

Trust is a funny thing. It is something that is hard to give, but easy to take back. Who's to say what can push someone to rescind their trust. I have always had trust issues, most would say I had good reason, and until recently I would have agreed with them. You see, I did not have the ideal upbringing that we all grow up thinking is normal, at an early age I learned about loss and pain. I know all to well what it is like to have a parent lie to you, abandon you, and hurt you in some of the most personal ways. But that is what life is. You are the sum total of your life experiences, and you can either choose God's way or you can choose to carry that around with you. That's what I did for a very long time. I carried that pain, anger and shame for years; well into adulthood. I made some bad choices too, because of the rejection that I felt. I even had anger at God. Then I met my husband. No, it hasn't been the best marriage that it could have been, but the blame rests on both of our shoulders. I am learning how to trust, and I have God to thank. I was angry at God for many years, but that really got me nowhere fast. It took some wonderfully Godly people to break through to me. I love them dearly and they know who they are. I now see that you cannot fully trust anyone until you trust God with all you are and all you have; because until then, your trust is conditional. After you let God start his work in your life your trust will gradually start to shift. He loves you and wants to make you whole. Learning that lesson set me free. Learning that his love was unconditional and not based on my behavior or works was even more freeing. I want everyone to experience that freedom. Yes I am still working on my trust issues, but that is what life is, an exercise in trust.........

Future women......

I recently read a blog, and it made me think. I will leave the link to it at the end so that each of you can check it out for yourself. Basically the lady was asking what great advice do you wish you had known in your 20’s. It really hit a nerve because all the comments are things I wish I had known early in my 20’s also. I wonder why we aren’t passing on these sage bits of wisdom? Come on really, these things are important to every generation, and we should start passing them on early. Girls should come out of the womb knowing how wanted, special and wonderful they are to us and they are wonderful to God. Girls shouldn’t go into those critical teenage years with a bad feeling about themselves, they shouldn’t feel they have to have sex to get love, and they should never be beat up (mentally or physically) by other girls. We should love them, cherish them, and teach them. They should know that they are wonderful creatures created for greatness. I know that I wish I had known that I don’t have to measure myself by the girls around me. I should have known that Love and sex are not the same thing, nor does one expect the other; but I wasn’t told these things. And now we are letting the current generation go into adulthood with the same misconstrued ideas that we grew up believing. Why? Are we incapable of telling these girls what they need to hear?

Feeling like an outcast should never feel normal. We are called upon to make sure the future generations know what is good and what is not normal. Continuously I see girl after girl telling their story, always the same thing; bullying, cutting, drugs, suicide attempts, and sex. Satan is leading an attack on our girls and we are letting him. Girls are impressionable, and those of us who have been victimized are weak. Sure we try to mask it, but if we don’t let God put the broken pieces back together, we are still broken. We can do better than what we are now. A woman entering her twenties should know that she is loved. By God and by us. She should know that it will be hard, but God will be with her every step of the way. We should make sure each girl knows that walking in step with God and seeking him and his will is the only way to escape the darkness that can swallow one whole. And even if she feels like she has already gone too far, I wish that she could know that God can give you the light you need for the step you are on right now. Then as you step farther he will give you the light you need then.

God is ever present. He knows what is troubling you, what’s more, he cares about what's troubling you. Keep your head up, the sun is shining up ahead, it won’t always be this hard and when you look back you will see the why. Seeking God’s righteousness even when you don’t want to or don’t think you can is paramount above all else. Those are some of the things I wish I had known. How far will we let our future women go without knowing what we wish we had known?

http://www.sheseeks.org/2011/its-no-secret/

I feel lost....

It has been quite a long time since I blogged. Let's just say that I have had some personal trials to go through. I was prepared to get on here and gripe and complain, but I realize that even with all that is going on in my family, I still have it quite good. My heart goes out to all the storm, wind, tornado, and now flood victims. some of these people have lost all their possessions, others have lost their lives or lives of their family and friends. I just pray that they may find comfort in Jesus at this difficult time.

Dear precious Lord,

I know that you work all things together for our good. we may never understand what is going on, but I pray for peace and comfort to fill the hearts of everyone affected. For those of us who escaped relatively unscathed I pray that you would fill our hearts with compassion and love. I am so thankful for all you have blessed me with, I love you dearly. Pick me up when I have lost sight of what you have planned for me. Guide my hands and heart. You are more gracious than we will ever know. Lord, show me the ways I can help, give me your eyes, help me stand on your solid foundation in this time of uncertainty. You alone are the one true God, you are the only one who can make sense of this. You are the only one who knows the whys to the answers we seek. Help me to walk in love, knowing the risk and taking it any way. Trusting you to catch me if I stumble. Lord, help me to be careful not to rebuild the stumbling blocks that you helped me remove. Forgive my many sins and shortcomings. Forgive my doubts. Stand with my family through all our trials that we face. In Jesus name,

Amen.

I just felt the need to include that. I need that closeness with God again. I feel it slipping away, I know that I moved not God. It is tough in this world to hold on to God when there are so many distractions. I feel all of us have a little ADD sometimes. We can be so easily turned away from the goal set before us. We must not turn to the left or right. I pray that we will all pray for God to guard our hearts, minds and souls.

Keep safe until next time.......

Soul Starvers........

I have been thinking a lot lately about women in general. It is a sad situation when we as women are willing to starve our souls to be what society considers normal, sexy, or beautiful. We have forgotten that what is on the inside is what counts, what matters. We are more than willing usually to give up a piece of our soul to fit in. What does that say about us? We should celebrate our differences rather than strive to be just like everyone else. In our strive to be normal we have lost our uniqueness and have become just like every other girl. We have confused skinny with healthy. Healthy is not just how you look, it is evident in everything you do. How you carry yourself, what foods you eat (or do not eat), how you treat others, your mental state. Healthy is not in how you look, how much you weigh, what you wear, or what you own.

I think that if you are unhappy with your body now, if you do not go about changing it in the right way, you are going to be just as unhappy when you get to your perfect size. It has taken a long time to figure this out, but I am happier now at size 18 than I ever was at size 8 or 10. I had to accept my body for what it is, and let go of what it will never be. We struggle to fit into societies little boxes of what we should be. Why? God made each and every one of us different. From the hairs on your head to the tips of your painted toenails, you are unique! Celebrate it, do not fight it. Let's quit starving our souls and start feeding them.

Patience.....

"Therefore being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope; and hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly." Romans 5:1-6

These words give me hope for today and every day that I live until Christs return. I mean if God was willing to send his son to die for me when I was a lost, dying sinner; how much more will he do for me as his child? Satan will try to convince you that God doesn't care, or that it is to hard; but know that the love of God is there on the good days and on the days that we mess up. He doesn't turn his back just because we make a mistake. If we come to him and repent when we realize that we have sinned, he is faithful to forgive us.

Know that God loves you even if he has sent you a storm. Look at the storm as a chance to walk on the water with Him. As the verses state above, storms work patience. Patience is a tool that we all run short on. It is a handy tool though and we should all work to make ourselves more patient. Most times we get tired in our storms, and Satan will not get tired. He will pound the waves upon you until you give up. Thats where patience comes in. If we are patient, God provides a way out, His way out (and His ways are always easier and more fruitful than ours.)

Patience works experience. When we get through the storm with our sanity and patience, we have experience. We all have stories of trials and heartache. You know the old saying "Hindsight is 20/20"; well hindsight is a wonderful tool, it is just never around when you need it. This is where patience comes in. You cannot have hindsight if we do not go through storms. We cannot counsel the friend with a broken marriage or the teenage girl thinking of giving herself away if we do not have experience. Sure we may have words of wisdom, but people want to know that they are not alone, that someone has been there. So don't give up, the Son's coming up in the morning!

Experience breeds hope. If you have ever been through hard times you may have a hard time with this one. I understand it now, but it took awhile. When you are in the storm, it all looks cloudy and dark; but just around the corner is a breakthrough. Some people get stuck, some people turn around, don't be one of them. If you get stuck, you will always be in the same spot. Reliving the same nightmare is never fun. If you turn around, you will eventually have to go back through what you avoided. But, when you see that ray of Son peeking through, there is a tiny sliver of hope. Nurture that hope. It will grow into love.

Not just any love mind you, God's love. God's love does what ours cannot, it suceeds. You cannot love a drug addict or alchoholic on your own. Eventually your patience (theres that word again) will run short. If you have God's love however you will never get tired or impatient. He is always refreshing you if you ask. I know from personal experience that a spouse is sometimes the hardest to love. Try letting God's love flow through you and into them. You will be surprised at what you can do and who you can love with God in your heart.

I love you all and you are consistantly in my prayers. May God bless each and everyone of you. He will supply your every need. He will get you through your personal storm. Trust in Him.

 

It's been awhile........

The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace. Exodus 14:14


So, my husband and I recently got a puppy. She is a five pound terror of a Chocolate Lab that we absolutely adore. We are putting her in a crate at night to sleep and she usually sleeps until about three in the morning. Then she starts whining, crying and howling. It breaks my heart and I always want to go release her and bring her to our bed.  I don't though because it is something she has to learn.  I realized that we are a lot like Ellie Mae in that God will try to corral us to teach us something and we struggle against him the whole way. As she was making her noise, I thought the same thought I am sure God thinks from time to time with us; If you will just wait and rest Ellie, morning is just a few hours away. I believe that sometimes we are put in an hard, harrowing position by God himself. Mostly to teach us something we don't already know or to reinforce something we are supposed to know. When that time comes we can either be like Ellie and fight or we can do what God put us there to do lean on him and pray for guidance.
My thoughts are short and sweet this week, but nevertheless they ring true. God only disciplines us because he loves us. Remember that this week. Until next time.........