I'm Getting Ready to Ride!

Have you ever been on a roller coaster? I used to love to ride them. You get in line to wait your turn and with each slow step the line advances, your heart starts to race a bit more as you anticipate the relinquishing of all control.

Finally, you make it to the top platform where you climb in and the harness comes down tightly over your shoulders...your heart beats faster until you think it will burst and with a jerk off you go!

Click, click, click, clack, click ...up higher and higher...man, what a view but don't look down!

Then your at the top and the car hesitates just for a split second .... that incidentally feels like an hour...then vrooooom down you go twisting this way and that up and down ....and my personal favorite the loop... weee!

Well, enough said you get my point, today I feel as if I'm in the line slowly making steps forward as I will be embarking on a journey to the other side of the world.  Lord willing, I am going to an island in the Indian Ocean called Mauritius.

It is where our church was founded and it is our annual conference time.  I'm very excited to be one of many ambassadors from our small Florida congregation.

I will be making posts along the way to share my adventures. I'm asking the Lord to do many things in me....oh, how I need to mature and grow deeper in my love for him and others.

More is to come and I can't wait to share.

It's got me thinking...

Recently, the Lord has been challenging me to see people as he sees them.  He's opened my eyes to the lack of love I have for people and he desires to change this in my life.  I am confident that he wants to change this because he doesn't show us our lack just to leave us to our own devices to fix ourselves. He shows us what the need is then we work together with him to bring lasting change.

In Nehemiah chapter 1:4, I saw a clear reflection of the state of my heart.  As Nehemiah heard of the state of his people he was grieved, he wept, mourned and fasted for his people.   What love he displayed for his fellow man.  Would I have reacted the same or just remarked in momentary sadness.

Oh, that I could have the heart of the Lord for people.

Another scripture he brought me to this morning was Isaiah 25:8-9. This was another challenge from him for my heart's disposition towards God himself.  "...your name and renown are the desire of our hearts. My soul yearns for you in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for you..."  I'll be honest, God was the last thing on my mind last night as I surfed the net with diligence for something I wanted to buy.

Oh, how my heart needs to change.

Lastly, there has been something the Lord has revealed to me that has given me great victory and these are the words spoken from my heart as God revealed it, "God, I surrender to you and accept your will for me today, I trust you."  so simple and yet so profound as I truly accept his will for me today.

Thank you Lord, I am confident that you are changing me and I desire to work with you on these things which you have confronted me today...thank you for your love and thank you for your dicipline...grow me up:)

Wide Open Spaces

I'm so very blessed by the church family God has put around me that I can trust to speak truth into my life. What a gift to have loved ones who challenge me to grow and cause to see my state and need for God.

Recently, a sweet sister came halfway around the world at a time such as it was to speak such a truth that rocked my boat and is changing my life!  Simple words spoken...faithful are the wounds of friend.  What were those blessed words that the Lord spoke directly from her lips to my heart?

People in all walks and phases of life need to feel the heart of the Lord for them and if they can't feel it from us...me...why is that?  Could it be that my "laws and principles" have made safety walls around me, barriers so to speak that can't be breached by me or anyone else for that matter.

Laws and principles I've had all my life....dos and don'ts.  I was shattered when she spoke these words to me...I saw my legalistic self.  I could live by these but I'm the one in the cage.  God was challenging me to come into an open plain and live by his grace that has no walls or barriers.

How can I reach others with the Gospel of Christ when I'm applying my laws and principles to everyone expecting them to live up to them as I do...miserably I might add.  Paul's words ring in my heart as I'm writing..You foolish Galations! Who has bewitched you?....Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? Galations 3:1-5

I'm seeing in me how much I live by the law instead of Grace. But I'm encouraged because seeing it is more than half the battle and God didn't show me these things to leave me here! Praise the Lord he will bring me into great freedom like I've never known before and it's the power of His Gospel that is accomplishing this in me as I allow God to work in my heart deciding to die to my laws and principles and choose his life....freedom on an open plain of Grace!

What that looks like lived out I'm not totally sure but I've seen a glimps and I want it with all my heart! I want more!

Its ok to let go...

A friend of mine text this picture to me this week.  She lovingly visited the grave of my daughter as I know many people do. I know this because everytime I go to visit it there is something new placed along side.

Tokens of love from a community whose lives were touched and changed forever by her life and by her passing. I am so grateful to God that he knows all things and even though its hard sometimes I must trust that he knows more than me.

Us moms are special people, even after our children pass we still try to be the best mom we can be to them. We struggle and fight to keep their memory alive. Sometimes we think if we don't we're not being a good mom.

The truth is they are at peace and so we should be as well. Isaiah 57 verse 2 says, " those who walk uprightly enter into peace they find rest as they lie in death."  This got me thinking how can they walk uprightly and yet lie death at the same time?

My thoughts were taken to other scriptures in the word that speak of dying to the flesh.  In order to walk uprightly before God, we must trust in him and during that process our flesh must die. 

I had never looked at that verse that way even though I had read these scriptures (verses 1 & 2) many times to comfort me for the loss of my daughter.

Verse one is for her; verse two is for me. Much love to all you mothers who have lost your precious children.

Proverbs 3 verses 5&6 " Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understandings; in all your ways  acknowledge him, and He will make your paths straight."

Now Available...

I'm blessed to announce that Hug Life is available for Google Play, Kindle, and Nook! 

Hug Life is the daily blog put into book form as my daughter and I walked through her brain cancer.  She's my hero and I want everyone to read about her!

Written from my perspective as a mother and caregiver my prayer is that this book will bring life to the reader and encourage their heart.

Salvation

I woke up this morning thinking about the process of salvation in my life. My thoughts were of this house of a body I live in and how when I welcomed Jesus in all I could see was his wonderful light flooding my barren walls. The warmth and love from him was overwhelming, my whole being was flooded with peace.

People around me must have thought me crazy because I remember for the first time in my short life (I was 15) I was peaceful, quiet and still.  I was truly in awe and yet I wasn't fully aware of what happened to me...all I knew was suddenly the wind and waves inside were calm and still.

Life went on as it always does and unknowingly I went my own way, somehow I didn't put together the things they spoke of in church with my new found calm. I had grown up in the church but it all just seemed to swirl around me like a smoke filled haze.

Then one day it was like God flipped on the light in a dark room and the cleansing began. Now by his light I could see all the boxes and cobwebs stacked and piled strung from here to there. God was with me as we began ever so slowly to open box after box. Some of them were so gruesome that all I could do was weep and say, "Please, Lord, deal with this one for me."

Gently he would come along side me with his word and his presence and walk me through the process and then other times he would make me deal with the boxes myself always standing or sitting nearby, never leaving or forsaking me.

This salvation process the world can never understand. It isn't that we accept Christ as our Savior and then instantly our lives are perfect...quite the contrary now we must deal with the things we have stacked and piled that trip us up. Things we weren't even aware were there...we couldn't see them before his light came.

I understand why the world would say, "There is no God," because then they would have to see things about themselves that need to be cleared away. John 3:19 says, "...Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God."

God's whole purpose in exposing the darkness in me is to fill me with more of his glorious light so that he can shine his light through me and bring other people to inner peace and give them the gift of his salvation.

He wants to calm the storm in you and clear away the dust and burdens of old boxes of junk that life heaps upon us or that we collect. If those things are cleared away, we can live at peace with God and ourselves no matter how crazy this world gets.

Don't be afraid...come to the Light of Jesus and he will change your life. Ask him to show you that he's real and invite him into your very being, confess to him the darkness in your life and you will receive his peace and his love.

Quiet Life

Life can be so quiet, so mundane; every morning we trudge off to work and every evening is the same; We lovingly discuss the day, what was good and what was bad, then we eat and go for a walk... by the way this is my favorite time of the day.

Some TV, some popcorn, then off to bed we go to start the whole cycle over again; Every day I have my ears to the news and my eyes on the skies, when are you coming Lord, this world gets darker by the minute.
I look at the pristine skies and the lush tropical foliage; I watch the lizards play and think is this for real? How can it be so bad in other parts of the world and yet so calm and peaceful in mine?

When is the next big thing going to hit? I know I must sound rather grim and pessimistic but isn't that a part of life as well? We have the good and those things that challenge us as God grows us up into him.
I'm grateful for the quiet life. I'm grateful for mundane because I'm convinced if there was no mundane we wouldn't learn how to commune with the Father on a deeper level.

It takes a lot more effort to be intimate with Him in the calm than in the storm.