Amazing Love

 When our son was a little boy, he often said to us, “I love you a million thousand every day.”  Like most parents, we remember the cutest things our kids said and still talk about them even though those babies are now adults.  I love this phrase so much that I recently created a wall plaque with those words.

I was walking through the house the other day and passed this plaque. God said to me, “Think about those words a minute and I’ll show you something.”

Preaching to Myself

     One of the things I have the honor of doing at my church is taking notes on my pastor's sermon each Sunday morning and turning them into a study guide for mid-week groups that meet to discuss, study, and pray together.  As I write a summary of what he has taught, I write questions for discussion that the group leaders can use to get people talking about how the sermon applies to their own lives.
     This afternoon as I finished up the notes, I looked at a discussion question that I had written and realized that I probably wrote it for myself.  This was the quote:

"Sometimes we think that a life in Christ means that we should be immune from heartache and difficulties.  Jesus knew the pain that his crucifixion was causing his mother and his disciples, but he also knew what was being accomplished there and the greater joy that would follow.  Can we trust God that a season of difficulty may be in preparation for something greater in our lives?"

 

     After an exciting move to Virginia last November where things worked out beautifully, almost effortlessly, I'm now struggling with problems with my husband's deteriorating health and some financial challenges.  Though I'm an "eternal optimist" and usually make a point of thinking positive, sometimes I have felt like God was absent in my situation.

What a Difference a Year Makes!

     My last blog post was over a year ago.  That's a great track record for someone who wanted to discipline herself to write on a regular basis!   The last post I wrote is also the reason for the lack of subsequent posts.  I wanted to move to Abingdon, VA to live closer to my son and his wife and I spent the spring months of 2012 pursuing a job there.  When I failed to find a job by the time the 2012-2013 school year began, I put the whole project on the back burner and decided to settle in for the school year and try again the next spring.

     God, however, had other plans. 

The Winds of Change

     My original intention for this blog was to use it as a tool for the self-discipline of writing on a regular basis.  My thought was that writing regularly might eventually lead to the dream I've always had of writing a book someday.  Yet, you can see by the dates of this post and the last one that I've let almost a month go by without writing. In the spirit of all the other things I've said on this blog, I won't let a lapse in my own self-discipline cause me to quit altogether. 

     Given that - on to the subject of the day - change!  I seem to be addicted to it.  My husband and I have changed residences many times since our marriage almost 25 years ago.  My aunt Glenda says we have "itchy feet".  The reasons have really been many - moving to a nicer rental when our income improved, moving out of rentals that turned out to have problems the landlord wouldn't address, moving to a new part of the state to live life in the country, moving to a new state for another perspective, etc.

One Step

I love to sleep.

Well, actually I love that time in the morning when I wake up before the alarm goes off and realize that I have the luxury of lying there in my warm, cozy bed for another hour or more, that I can go back to sleep, that the lovely dream I was having might come back.  It's the absolute comfort of being under the covers with a soft pillow under my head - with no demands on my time yet - with no outside world crashing in.

So, when I decided that getting up early in the morning to exercise was something I needed to do, I wasn't sure if I could give up that lovely morning comfort.  When the first morning came, and the alarm buzzed its irritating buzz, I hesitated (after slamming the snooze button first). Did I really want to get up at this ungodly hour, on purpose, to put on tennis shoes, turn on the DVR and sweat before breakfast? 

Then I discovered something very surprising.

Who the Heck is Melchizedek?

If optimism does not come naturally in your world, you might view me as someone who is in denial about the realities of life.  You might consider me simple, naive, or deluded. " How can she think positively all the time?  That's just crazy!"

Well - here's the big revelation.  I'm not positive every minute of every day. (Sorry to disappoint you!)  There are times that circumstances start stacking up in my life, just like they do in everyone's life. I feel twinges of anxiety and then negative thoughts start flooding my brain. I guess the difference is that I don't allow myself to stay in that mind-set.  I decide to believe what God says about me instead of what the circumstances say about me.

One of the most common worries people have is about money - and boy, oh, boy - do I know about money worries!  I was a single mother for 8 years, putting myself through college working weekends at a hospital and relying on grants and loans to take care of my tuition and many of my living expenses.  Once I started teaching, I was only making $2000 a year more than I would have if I had stayed at the hospital doing secretarial work, plus there were student loans to pay.  After my husband and I were married and added another child to the mix, the two incomes didn't seem to make that much of a difference.  Everything I did to try to improve my financial situation seemed to be like pouring water into a bucket with a hole in it.  No matter how much money came in - more went out

"Un"reality Television

With all this time off for the holidays, I've been watching more television than usual and I've seen many previews of the various "reality shows".  I know these are not a new genre in television, but the longer these types of shows continue to be popular, the less I understand why.  There is no such thing as "reality" in a reality show. The minute you turn on a camera around a group of people, they cease to be themselves.  If you don't believe that - think about your childhood home movies with you and your siblings showing off - competing for air-time.

The theme of most of these so-called reality shows is how beastly people can be to each other.  The fighting, back-stabbing, scheming, hissy fits, name-calling, hysterics, and high drama is so over the top that I refuse to believe that this is the reality in which most people exist.