There is something comforting to me that every morning is a fresh start. The day is clear of yesterday and just waiting for me to make it something more exciting, beautiful, and productive than the day before. Every day is a new day:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
Lamentations 3:22-23
AlI I need to do is love my neighbor, right? Loving those I know, folks in my family, people I have chosen as friends is easy. That kind of love comes naturally. Anyone can love like that and we all do. In fact, I often show this kind of love without even trying or being aware of it. But these are not the only people I have been asked to love. What if I was asked to love those who look different than me, who have made different choices than I have or I may not like? What if I was asked to love in a radical way that shows no concern for my reputation, safety, or feelings, maybe even opening myself up to being hurt and disappointed? In fact, over the past couple of years that is exactly where I find myself. God has given me a deep unfamiliar kind of radical love that I cannot explain. I have found myself loving people do who not live like I do, have made very different choices than I have, and who think very differently than me. I still find myself drawn to them, thinking about how their day is going, being concerned about the next choices I know that they are making in their lives. Normally, this kind of concern or love for a group of people that I don’t really know is temporary. For reasons I cannot explain, God has chosen to continue to place that radical unfamiliar love in me for these folks. I am now choosing to pursue this new course of action into radical love no matter how apprehensive I may be or the caution that is regularly offered. My experience has proven that if I follow the ways of the God that I know, he will not abandon me. Love Wins every time!
Recently I started the Beth Moore bible study, Esther – It’s tough being a women. Although I had done this study several years ago, it amazes me how I glean something new each time I study any part of God’s word. Esther and Beth Moore are really getting into my business. In the first two weeks, the study has made me think about when I am feeling threatened by a situation or someone in my life, what is the history behind that threat. Why am I reacting in such a negative way? Why is it I feel the need to conform to the culture around me by never being beautiful enough, skinny enough, “healthy” enough, etc. (insert your “failure” here)? As a women who is into the second half of life, you would think that I would no longer be concerned with such things. But I often find myself feeling as though I will never measure up to the “enough” women in my mind. Our world is mean in that we are constantly bombarded with the perfect illusion of what a women is supposed to be in the media. Although I know that it is all smoke and mirrors, I can’t help but have that never “enough” feeling, apparently for my whole life. Silly me, I thought I would grow out of this by now. Thank goodness there is a God, if I listen to his words, I know that I will always be loved enough and beautiful enough. It’s tough being a woman in a mean world.
If you have followed this blog for any time at all you recognize that I have not been around much this year. I am still here doing my creative thing. I just have not been posting much. There is no excuse or reason other than I have lost sight of my purpose for this place where I share my thoughts, creative ideas, and just a bit of my life. However, I feel I am back on track, my purpose has been renewed and I am ready to reenter the land of my blog-o. So let the blogging begin once again and thank you for your patience.
Life has a way of taking me to a lot of different places. Sometimes these journeys require travel and other times they keep me right here in my own little world. Over the last year, I have been on a sort of journey that has taken me physically into places and circumstances that are way out of my comfort level. This has been a spiritual journey that often times, what am I saying? All the time, I feel illequipped to be on. I tend to trudge along, feeling like my pack is way too heavy to bear and assuming this is exactly where God wants me to be. In my head, and sometimes even out loud, I am saying, "Really? Really, God? Is this what life is supposed to look like?" When in reality He wants me to rely on him for my map, my provision, and carrying my pack. In this journey, I believe God has given me a very small glimpse of His compassion for my world and the people around me. Boy, is that uncomfortable. Through this little peep-hole into His compassion I know that God wants me to reach out and love the people around me, but not just to help them and change the world. He is using this to change my life, the way that I think, and make me a little more like Jesus. To do this I will have to significantly expand my capacity to love and the only way I can even hope to do this is through my reliance on God and this journey He is taking me on. Wow, doggies, I think this journey has just turned into an adventure. I know this going to be good.
This past Sunday in church we were each given three playing cards. Coming from a baptist background, my pastor, grandfather would be quite disturbed by the fact that we had playing cards let alone drums and guitars in church. But that is a whole other story. We were to assign each card something we value most in our life; family, job, security, etc. Once we had done that, we were asked to give them over to Jesus. Giving him total control and trusting him for the plans of each of these things we hold so dear. During an extended time of worship and prayer, when we had given these things over to Jesus we were to lay them face up on the floor in front of us. I have been a Christ follower since I was 12 years old and grew up in a Christan family believing that I was able to give it "all" over, but I have to be honest with you I was unable to lay these cards down. I want to be able to trust Christ for everything, and there have been times when I think I have come close, but as soon as I would lay it down, minutes later I would pick them up again. Daily, if not hourly, I have to force myself to allow Christ to have control in areas of my life that I want him to and areas where I struggle to give up that control. Needless to say, I still have my cards and have not yet laid them down. The desire to trust fully is there it's just the lack of control that I have trouble with.
Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord, is the Rock eternal. Isaiah 26:4
I do believe this, its the application that I can't seem to manage. Have a great day and "trust" in the Rock eternal.
I have found this fabulous miracle cure for a wicked blister I got from my "mother of the groom" shoes over the weekend. The shoes that I wore were a beautiful light bronze pointy toed pump and to be honest with you I spent more on my shoes than I did my dress. I was bound and determined to wear them the entire night so I did not even bring any change of shoes with me to the reception. Half way through the night I just could not even walk because not only did I have a blister but the skin had torn as well. Luckily our hotel was right across the street and my niece Rebekah was willing to go over and get my bronze flip flop, urgh! I went from a very sophisticated pump to $2 Old Navy flip flops, seriously? Unless, I was going to sit the entire party this was the only option and I am not a barefoot kind of gal. However, Scab Dab to the rescue. I just dabbed a little on my blister and the pain is gone and it is almost totally healed, yay! This is the best stuff ever and it is natural too, if that matters to you. All I know is, it really does work.
What if my life was like a fountain? What if hope, grace, peace, and love flowed freely, never drying up or feeling depleted? Try as I might to fill that top bowl of my "fountain" with the things of this world, approval, accumulating stuff, gaining advantage, etc. it never seems to fill up enough to spill out into the bowl below and then the bowl beyond that. Trying to fill my own fountain makes me weary and ultimately burned out. But when I build into my day time to pray and do a devotion, somehow that top bowl begins to fill and the more often I do this, the fuller that bowl becomes and starts to spill over into the next bowl and my fountain begins to flow over into other areas of life. My desire and quite frankly, struggle, is to live a life that is overflowing with the love of Christ that it may even be splashing onto things I do not even expect or imagine.
"If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him." ~ John 7:37-38
I am here to tell you I am not a toe kind of gal, in fact, they kind of creep me out which is a good reason to keep them looking good at all times. Here is one of the hottest colors of nail polish for the Summer. It is OPI, "You Don't Know Jacques". I absolutely love it. As I am one who has never had a professional manicure or pedicure, I am always looking for the newest colors so as appear to have had a professional job. OPI is my favorite brand of polish, in fact that is the only kind that I own. My experience has proved that the couple of extra dollars up front means a longer time between re-dos. As I do my polish myself, that means I only have to totally do a new pedicure about every three weeks. I must admit that I did not actually buy this color, the daughter, Lindsey, brought it over the other night and I knew that I just had to have it. I will be purchasing this color for myself soon. The color reminds me of a nice cool glass of chocolate milk, yummy.
So I have been suffering from creative block. I have a couple of projects that are partially done, but seem to have no motivation to complete them. There are seasons of my life where I do not seem to have enough hours in the day to complete all of the things that I have created in my head. But right now, I just cannot seem to finish up the loose ends of several creative undertakings. The projects themselves are actually quite wonderful, I have a couple of old windows that will end up being an awesome arrangement with pictures and quotes, a t-shirt makeover that is half done, and various knitting projects that just cannot seem to make it into my hands. I am not sure what will kick me out of this creative slump but I so ready to get back to my creative self. I am thinking, just maybe, a vacation will do it. Summer time, 4th of July coming up, and beautiful sunshine, that has go to do it, right?
I have to say, there is a small group of people that really know me and I think that they would agree that I really know them. Some are in my family and others are people that I have chosen to be a part of my "family". When we allow people to be close enough to really get to know us, they can tell by our expressions and body language what we are thinking and feeling. This can be a good thing when you are in a group, someone else is talking, and your spouse gives you a look and you know exactly what they are thinking about what is being said. Or, you and friend can be walking in a crowd, you pass someone, you both look at each other and just crack up knowing exactly what they are thinking without saying a word. I love having people in my life that I can do this with. However, there are people that never allow others to get too close. They have walls up for whatever reason and just don't know what they are missing out on. In fact, they may feel they are not missing out at all and wonder what the big deal about "living in community" is all about. I want others to experience a close circle of friends that they can depend on in good times and bad. Although, I am not the kind of person to give up easily, I do respect, "not too close, please" when I see it. How can I make a difference to that "not too close, please" person? Something I have been thinking a lot about lately.
During our snow storm last we week when we were stuck in the house, Lindsey and I were bored and needed to come up with something creative to do. She had just had her cast replaced and it was just plain white. Empty space means a place to be creative. Grandma was working on a quilt and she had some scrapes of fabric hanging around. So we had the idea of Mod Podging Lindsey's cast with the quilt scrapes.
We began by cutting out the flowers from the scrape fabric.
Then using the Mod Podge and a sponge brush we started to cover the cast with the flowers being careful to smoothe out the fabric and overlap as we went. We coverd the whole cast leaving the inside of the palm clear.
Lindsey then used a blow dryer to set the Mod Podge. We then put a second coat on just to make sure that all of the edges of fabric were well secured.
And there you have it a DIY cute cast.
I am participating in the following link ups: The DIY Showoff, Its so Very Cheri, Skip to My Lou, Today's Creative Blog
This is my plan of action for 2011, to become all that God has planned for me.
I will walk with the dreamers
the believers,
the courageous,
the cheerful,
the planners, the doers,
the successful
people with their
head in the clouds
and their feet on the
ground. Let their spirit
ignite a fire within
me, to leave this
world better than
when I found it.
~Wilford Peterson~
This week I have been listening to the book on CD "It's Not My Fault", by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend, in my studio during work. Wow, this book has a ton of great information in it, so much so, I have now purchased the book knowing that I need to go back and look at some things more closely. I have never been a big fan of self-help books. I am not above them by any means, I just prefer a good novel. But after a personality assessment that I had the privilege of participating in, several months ago, I was shown some specific areas in my behaviors that definitely need improvement. The assessment also came with an hour of counseling on how to interpret the results and some things that I can do going forward. I have to say that the hour with Greg Wiens and Ken Love has to be some of the most productive time I have spent in a long time. Since that meeting, a day has not gone by where I am not thinking about that assessment and my next steps for improvement. This book is just one in a long list of books that I want to read in order to be the best that God has made me to be. Here is a quote from the book, "That which you desire will require more of you than you are today." Now that's the kind of stuff that I can grab onto.
Yes, there she goes again, writing another article that can hit a sister right between the eyes. My sister, Janet, has written another article that is published in the Christian Standard titled Shut Up. This past Spring Janet and I spent some time together in Norther Minnesota as she took a good portion of her time writing this article among some other things and we talked a lot about this "shut up" concept and it impacted me pretty good then too as I wrote a blog post about it here. Janet serves as the community life director at Restore Community Church, where she helps people get connected to small groups and develops leaders. She has always been one of those people that has been able to talk to me about the hard stuff of life and I don't take offense but rather know that what she is telling me is out of love and helping me the best that I can be. I am a big fan, can you tell. Who knows maybe one day, after she becomes some kind of famous author, I will be able to say I knew her back when she still wore pigtails.
Last Friday night we spent the evening thanking the community group leaders here at Indian Creek Community Church. Our leaders were greeted with a walk of fame, where each leader was honored with a star of their own. We honored 104 group leaders over the past year. (Insert big applause here). Community groups are where the truth of God's word and the realities of life meet here at Indian Creek. We heard some great stories of life change and inspiration that were attributed to being part of a group.
If you live the in the Kansas City area, it is not too late to sign up for the Fall Semester of community groups here at Indian Creek Community Church. Click here to find a full listing of the groups available at both the Olathe and Gardner Campuses this semester where you are sure to find something that will fit your needs and season of life.
As I posted yesterday, Jeff and I are credit card free!!!!!! Yes, we have zero credit card debt as of this week. Yeah! (Jumping up and down doing the happy dance, and believe me you are glad that this is a blog and there is no video!) But quite frankly, the war is not won yet. This is just one more step in our commitment to become totally debt free.
Next we tackle the parent plus college loans and at the same time commit to paying the last two years of Anna's college without any additional loans. Yikes! As young parents, Jeff and I had made no plans on how we would help our kids financially through college, after all, that was years away and we had plenty of time. Well, we are here to tell you those years disappear without a trace and you are faced with how to pay for higher education when you wake up from the fog of raising teenagers.
We have not been total financial dummies, after all, we do have retirement planned for, it was the in-between years that fell off our radar. But those college bills are not standing in our way for long and with a little dedication, they too will disappear and we can proceed with the happy dance once again. I do have to say, I felt a bit of anxiety when thinking about cutting up those credit cards and that first cut really made me sweat, but once I got started, the scissors were flying and the relief was awesome. Just to make sure that these debts will not be forgotten and the stress that is related to them, I decided to put them there right in front of us every day. Yes, instead of the pretty marbles that usually surround my candles, I thought this credit card confetti makes a nice reminder! Debt freedom here we come!
I believe every woman no matter where she lives or what she does for a living deep down, somewhere in her soul, wants to be beautiful. There are gals I have met that insist this is not true, but you know what, I don't believe them. I will admit that I want to be beautiful, maybe it is not as important to be beautiful to everyone, but there are certainly people in my life I want to think that I am beautiful. Now I am going to say, I have had people in my life that I never doubted thought I was beautiful. My Dad told me from the time I can remember, every time I saw him just how beautiful he thought that I was. Although, I am sure this was a biased opinion, that did not matter. I knew that he thought I was beautiful. As a little girl to a grown woman I never got tired of him telling me just that. One of the first things that I told Jeff after my Dad passed away was that I was going to need to hear him tell me I was beautiful because my Dad was no longer here to do that for me. And what a great husband I have because he has really stepped it up in the "Judy, you look great today". He is really not a "beautiful" word kind of guy, but you know what, it works for me. I want my beauty to come from inside as well and that is where I have to rely on God to give me the beauty that will permeate from His heart into mine allowing myself full exposure and vulnerability to those I do life with. To trust Him and offer my true self to those around me is hard at times but I know, again, deep down God says I am beautiful and I want to live in that.
Show me your face, let me hear your voice;
For your voice is sweet and your face is lovely.
Song of Solomon 2:14
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