Questions....

Hot tears fall freely...it is midnight thirty and my world has just been shaken to it's core! My whole identity has been set into questions and I need answers! I need answers from a God who I place entire faith and purpose in! He is a good God! Right? He is Sovereign! Right? He is the Alpha and Omega! Right? He has a plan! Right? He set the world in motion...created...all is and was b/c He is I AM! Right? So, in all His creating...did He create bad? Where did sin originate? Where did the bad begin...where did it come from? All these questions circle through my mind...shake my steady ground of faith. Are we just puppets in His grand scheme of life? Do we have any choice in anything? B/c, in order to choose, means He isn't God. Right? Do we have free-will over the Creator Himself? Or did He create free-will? Or in creating free-will, did He let go of some of His God ship? I'm confused beyond belief! I've never questioned these things...they are complex and they set my world in chaos. I don't understand God. I've never claimed too. These things I know to be true....

He is God. He is Holy. He is good! He works all things for our good, for them who love Him and are call according to His purpose! He is Sovereign. He is in control. He has a plan. He demands our worship in all entirety! He demands an undivided heart! He also hates sin! He hates sin so much that He wipes out entire nations b/c of their lack of loyalty to Him. He is Just. He judges sin. He punishes sin. He forgives. He loves. He delights in His creation. We are His creation. He is the Creator. He creates to bring honor and glory to Himself. Because He is God. He desires a relationship with us. He created the means to have that relationship. He is Savior.

I love Him. I know Him. He knows me. I spend everyday of my life striving to know Him more. I can't get enough of His goodness, His beauty, His love. He gives me hope...in a fallen and sinful world...He gives me HOPE. He gives me LIFE. Life more than air I breathe but life with purpose! He gives me His Word...The God of the Universe spoke Words into being so that I may know Him and understand a small part of Who He is. He didn't have to do all this. But He choose to create! He gave me a mind and a heart and feelings and emotions. Everything about Him is good! He gives good. He makes good. He creates good. And I place my faith in the God of all this! I can't think of this good and amazing, awesome and mighty God creating BAD! Right? I won't allow Satan to steal my faith with logic and reason. I don't understand all of who God is...I don't understand why He allows bad to happen. But I do know that He uses the bad to create good. He uses the bad to bring people to their knees, in search for Him. He uses the bad to draw men unto Himself. He uses the bad to birth beauty. The bad is used for His glory just as the good and beautiful and spectacular and the miracle. That is what makes Him a God worth serving...a God worth committing everything too! A God worth laying everything down, to take up a cross and follow! To sacrifice my rights and will, and follow after all of the days of my life. This is my God. I know Who He is. And I serve Him freely! He isn't forcing my hand in service...but I dance on the streets before Him b/c my heart is so overwelmed with love bubbling up and over! How it all works out...I don't really know. All the logistics don't add up...in my finite mind, I don't begin to have a fraction of the answers. But I rejoice in the fact that I am HIS! He is MINE! JOY is in my heart...PRAISE is on my lips. My life has purpose...it is God alone. And whether here on this earth, or in Heaven before Him...I will give Him ALL the glory of all the moments of all the time I have exsistence...b/c that is why I exsist in the first place. And to think anything less is foolishness...He is God. Not me. It is so complex...this crazy life He has created. He is complex! But I thank Him that I have all eternity to spend learning and growing in my relationship with Him! Hmmmm....isn't God good!!!!!!!!!!! That is no question at all!

Only God

Grace Lord...I find it on my knees. Bowed low, I feel Your hands soothing away the "ugly" as Your fingers caress my hair back from my tear-stained face. I am prostrate before You...and that is when I feel the highest exalted! B/c it is when MY will is broken, that YOURS is made complete!

In the wee early of the day, my sleepy heart is stubborn. My knees bow, but oh so reluctantly. I refuse to bend...I keep the mean and ugly tucked away in the back of my mind...choosing to revisit it...holding on to the hurt and nasty...wallowing in it like a sow in the mud! I trudge downstairs to schoolbooks open on morning table. Little hands rub sleep away...and prayer is lost in the rush of hurry. In my flesh, I snap. She hurts. I bark. Tears well in her big bright eyes. She tries harder but words cannot be read through pools of sadness. She stumbles over simple and grace seems to have escaped through the cracks...

And he is putting dishes away steps beyond our reading time...he is joy-filled...singing as he works. And it bursts my concentration...and I snap again. And I watch his joy drain from his face...and God gently shakes me...whispers over my selfish ignorant heart...and I know. It is time to do a little knee duty. I bow before my boy, I ask for forgiveness, humbling this proud heart of mine. He smiles. He embraces me. He forgives. His joy is restored. She comes bounding around the corner and exclaims in joyful triumph, "I forgive you too". We all bow before the Forgiver Himself and give thanks. Thanks for forgiveness, for joy, for restoration. Grace. In a moment of fleshly "rotten"...He swoops down His grace of good and transforms our moment into beauty! Only God.

Grace Moments...

So here I am...and I am in a daze of wonder...can I do it? This challenge to "count the moments?" To find grace in all? Can I live this "giving thanks in all things?" Ann Voskamp's book..."One Thousand Gifts" has moved me outside of myself. The idea of putting names to moments given to me from the Creator Himself...the idea of slowing down time, capturing it really, and numbering grace...1,2,3,4,5,...587,588,589,....all the way to 1,000. I've begun. And in just a short week of time, my life has become transfixed, transformed! I am changing...time is slowing down...beauty is swelling all around me...the ugly is finding its spot in the beautiful God intended. And my eyes are opened. My eyes are opened wider than ever before. I am seeing truly for the first time in my whole life! His Love has captured my heart, stollen my soul, and taken me to a place I never want to leave! My days are becoming more than just "another day". Moments are filling and spilling over with majestic and inspiring and earth-shattering AMAZING! Joy is upon me and has taken me by force! And why? B/c I am learning to "give thanks always...in everything...in the good and in the bad...especially in the bad...b/c who am I to label a moment good or bad anyway? All moments are given by the One who gave the breath to breathe...so that makes all moments GRACE MOMENTS! I am growing into a girl I've always dreamed of being...a girl who is happy and excited and filled with overwelming JOY!

Friends and Family...please take this challenge. Buy the book! Read the book! And start today..."pray without ceaseing...giving thanks always..."

I would love to meet Ann one day...to throw my arms around this woman who opened her heart to the world and let us watch God move in and work miracles! She has inspired me and encouraged me more than I could ever thank her for. What a precious treasure she has given...allowing God to work through her and her struggles to show us...me...what it means to TRULY give thanks!

Just a Regular Day...

A regular day. Monday. Aother week. But God did something this morning that stirs the inner places of my being. He turned my "ordinary moment" of a day, into an "extra-ordinary miracle" of grace. He is God. He is in control. My world spins in a thousand different cirlcles all at once, yet He finds order and beauty and wonder right in the very center of all my "crazy". And He gently blows His sweet kiss of peace straight into my heart. And I catch it. I bask in it! That peace that leaves the world spell-bound. The peace that man-kind can not comprehend. The peace that He lovingly floods hearts with. That peace, He kissed me with today. My "regular Monday" miracle.

And although the turmoil still swirls around me...the friend still battles with the unknown...Cancer still rears it's ugly head and fear threatens to steal away that precious Kiss...God remains faithful and control remains in His hands alone. Two heads bow together in the middle of a kitchen. Tears stream down faces as voices are lifted to heaven. And God ushers in His Holy Spirit and in a single breath, my little kitchen floor becomes holy ground as we seek the Father in unified togetherness. We don't know what tomorrow will bring forth. We can't see into the future. But Peace Himself has whispered into our hearts...and we know. His love washes over and seeps into the secret places of our very souls! We are comforted. His miracle. His kiss. His peace. His comfort. His girls!

"Regular days" can be some of my favorite ones.

One of "THOSE" Days.

Today has been, well, one of "THOSE" days! Nothing of significant chaos happened...just your ordinary, crazy, mother of three little ones, homeschooling all morning, kids fussing, spilt milk, favorite shirt dirty, step on a tack kind of day!



The worse part of the day, is that I let it all get to me. I caved. I gave in to the temptation. I lost my cool, I stressed out, I gave in to worrying about the little stuff! And I hate that part of me! I took my eyes off of Him...and let them rest on the trivial, petty, passing mess. I snapped at my children. I was short with my husband. I was grumpy with my Lord.



I tried "pulling it together". But the harder I try, the worse the day goes. Why? I figure b/c I am trying on my own...not humbling myself to the awesome presence and strength of Almighty God.



And the, right when I thought I was doing okay...that the day was "shaping up"...my oldest child goes and vomits in the grocery store! (talk about being humbled) Do I laugh or cry? It was like God was saying..."Sweet daughter, you don't have ANY control. So, surrender already!" Guess what I have spent the rest of the afternoon doing? Yep, surrendering my will, my mind, my heart, my words, and my spirit over to the One who holds it all together in the palm of His hands.



But the most humbling part of the entire day was this...right in the midst of me acting like a spoiled toddler, pouting and stomping my foot b/c my day wasn't going "as planned", my youngest, Lukey, who is 18 months, wraps his chubby little arms around my neck and whispers in my ear..."Wuv oo Mama". Then he sported his "cheeser face" and ran off to play with his brother and sister. In the middle of my foolishness, my family still loves me...still accepts me...and forgives without question. "Those" days turn out to be some of the best learning days God gives us. So, I encourage you to embrace your "mess"...and let God use it to mold you more into His most precious image!