When everything looks hopeless.

When I decided on this title I thought of how many other things I have read over the years with this same first line. Hundreds, probably thousands. Because I was attracted to anything that might lead me to an answer for my own hopelessness.

I read these articles like a starving person. Would this be the one that finally caused me to believe in life again? Would I find that keyword or phrase or five or ten-step plan to follow to lift my life out of the daily despair I fought with all my might?

Sometimes it worked for a little while but then it was like trying to walk in someone else’s shoes. I had two problems, the hopelessness I started with, and now I failed yet again to be able to do what the author had obviously been able to accomplish in their life. So much so that they felt led to write about it for others to read.

So I have to ask myself, do I have anything different to offer someone who might stumble upon this page who went searching as I did for a solution that would lift them permanently out of the pit of hopelessness?

I don’t know if what I’ll write here under that popular title will be what you came looking for. That’s my most honest answer. I never did find a solution. Believe me when I say that I earnestly searched for one. It would have been so much easier if someone could have just handed me a set of steps to take. I’d have done it in a heartbeat.

I remember reading some of those articles with tears running down my face. I repeated aloud many times, “How! How do these people do this?!”  I thought I had carefully noted every bit of advice they gave and rose up just knowing that this time I was going to be victorious—until the next time.

If my title led you here, as it often did me in search of that—fix—I’m so sorry if my title has given you false hope. But I can offer you something else. It might not be the answer you are looking for. It wasn’t for me either when God led me to befriend a woman who wanted me to do her hair as my last customer on a Friday night.

I almost said, no. It meant having to wait for her to arrive around 5:30 and then not finishing up my day until probably 7 o'clock or so. I had a young son that needed to be picked up by 5 o'clock or I would be charged more. So my thoughts were, would what I made by staying to do this woman’s hair offset the extra babysitting cost? If not, then why do it?

At that time I had no idea what made me say yes, come on, I’ll wait on you. Today, I know exactly not what but Who moved me to agree to stay late.

That night a friendship began and after watching her life for about a year, I found the answer to my hopelessness. And because I try very hard to be honest with any reader, I’ll tell you what she said to me when I asked her why she was so happy all the time. She proceeded to say, “Because I have a hotline to heaven.”

My very first thought was, and again I make no apology for my honesty because you might have the same thought after you read my response. I said, “Oh, please don’t tell me that it’s religion.”

She said, “No, not religion.”

I said, “Then, what? What are you talking about?”

She said, “I have, Jesus.”

I wish you could have heard the groan that came out of me when I heard her final response. I went home that night to have my own debate. I did this because at that time I had no idea about the Trinity of God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit. All I knew was there was a God somewhere. I did give myself credit for not being totally ignorant.

With respect to your time and length of this posting, I’ll try to be brief. I spent the next week going back to her over and over again, sometimes in a heated confrontation, demanding she tell me something different as to why she was so happy all the time and I was a miserable mess. Her, Jesus, was all she kept offering me. She gave me a brief description of what I needed to do to be saved and that ended our conversation.

I wrestled with this for several days until one night I sat upright in my bed and yelled out, “Ok! Ok! God, if you are real and you are the one who has been bringing all this to a head, I can’t take it anymore!”

I had been under such conviction that even to this day I have never forgotten what I felt like that night. I had absolutely no idea exactly who God was, what He was about to do, or even if what I said would be the right words. The first thing that came out of my mouth was, “God, if I give you my life I have two requests. I have to know that the buck stops with you; that no one will ever be able to change your mind about me. That I can trust you and that you will never leave me.”

I didn’t really know that night just how Biblical my first prayer was. My heart was crying out for someone I could trust who would always have the final say about me and that they would never leave me or as I later learned—never forsake me. Even right now, my heart swells remembering how utterly forsaken I felt that night. I voiced my confession of needing Jesus to forgive me and accepted his death in my place. 

I don’t want to put words in your mouth, dear reader. And I don’t want to give you false hope. If all I can offer you is some process I took, then that isn’t going to help you. So I’ll give you what did help me.

The surrendering of my life to a God I couldn’t see, didn’t even know at the time if He was listening or would do what my friend said that He did for her. But, seconds after I uttered my first prayer to God, my eyes were opened. I understood for myself at that moment what my friend had been telling me was true.

Something wonderfully, explicitly, and unexplainable happened that night. It was as if my whole life lifted off me and I was born all over again. Yes, the term born again is actually what happens.

In closing, I went to my friend’s house the next night and asked her, “What does it feel like to become a Christian? I’m not sure, but I think I became a Christian last night.” Needless to say, tears filled her eyes, and she welcomed me into the family.

Well, dear reader, here it is almost Easter again. The world will display its bright baskets, chocolate rabbits, and colored eggs, and the Bunny will take center stage. We see it every year. You can accept this as the reason for Easter, load up on all the leftover candy sales, and go another year still hunting for the solution to your feeling of hopelessness—or maybe stop and ask the same questions I did.

If one word you read here has set something off in you that will make you so uncomfortable until you face the fact that it is God knocking on your heart asking to come in, then I have done my job.

Dear, dear, reader, I pray that you don’t go another second in your hopelessness. So I’ll offer you the only solution that I know. The same one that has been offered to the world since the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Perhaps at some other time in your life, you have heard these verses, and I’ll remind you of them again.

John 3: 16-18 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

This is Easter.

This is the answer; When everything looks hopeless.

I bless you.

 

 Who would do such a thing to a child?

Matthew 19: 14 But Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and don’t prevent them. For of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Once there was a man who always wanted a racehorse. One day, quite out of chance he was given one. But it didn’t look like the one he had wanted. He was now forced to feed and take care of this less-than-desirable horse. For some reason, the horse loved the man. So it trotted around trying to get the man’s attention. Day after day this horse, tried to run as fast as it could to please the man.

Once in a while, the man stood at the fence watching the horse run with all its heart, but when the horse came over to where the man stood, the man criticized the horse. You need to bend your knees higher. You're not stretching your legs out far enough. Over and over the man only told the horse what it wasn’t doing right. No matter how much the horse tried, it was never enough. Years went by and after a while, the horse finally lost all desire to please the man and ran away; never to see the man again.

But the man had damaged the horse's ability to believe in himself so much that all through the rest of the horse's life he felt that any time he tried to run fast, he’d fail.

One day, as the horse was plodding along in life, another man saw him and stopped to look at the horse. This man knew that the horse was meant to be a racehorse. So this man bought the horse and took it home to care for it.

Every day, he encouraged the horse to do his best. He gave the horse short distances to run at first until the horse could begin to see that it still could run. Finally, the horse began to run longer and faster. The horse made enough progress to once again see himself as a beautiful racehorse. But there was still something in the horse that it never could quite get over; being made to feel like a failure by the first man.

The thing that’s hard to understand is this, why would this man do everything he could to discourage his own racehorse? You’d think that he would have done the opposite. But no, instead of encouraging the horse, praising the horse’s efforts, and showing the horse that he was loved regardless if he ran fast; the man heaped discouragement upon his horse.

This story isn’t about a horse; it's about children.

Why for the love of God would any parent constantly criticize everything their child does? To what advantage does that help? If anything, it destroys any hope that child has. And the worst yet is that child lives their life feeling that no matter what they do it will never be enough. It’s an uphill climb for any person who has been made to feel that everything they do isn’t good enough but it’s especially damaging for a child.

I believe that children come into this world with childlike hope. Most parents clap and cheer when their child takes its first steps as though their child just invented walking.

It’s supposed to be natural for parents to cheer on the accomplishments of their children. Especially, a child who isn’t as bright, strong, or as talented as other children. But to purposely break the spirit in a child who is trying their best is cruel.

I know that there are no perfect parents. I dare to say that even the best of parents would admit to not doing everything right.

I always had to ask myself how different I would have been had I had a nurturing encouraging father instead of like the first man in this story.

But I was bought by another Man; Jesus Christ. And HE loved me back to wholeness. I’m not that damaged child who tried her best every day to please an earthly father who said over and over, “What you do isn’t good enough.”

So maybe you’ve read this far wondering why I’d be writing this. Yes, I thank my Heavenly Father for all the love and changes he has made in me. So many times he has reminded me that He knit me in my mother’s womb and saw me before any eyes saw me. He also knew who my father would be and how he would damage my life.

These are some of the questions I’ve asked God and still don’t know the answers. But I do know this, no matter where God sends us into this world, or how he sends us, He never loses sight of us. He has his reasons.

I quit trying to spend my life trying to understand why I was given to such a destructive father. Instead, I realized that I was doing the same thing to God that my father did to me. Was I telling God that HE wasn’t enough? That He couldn’t fix the damage in me? That no matter what Jesus did on Calvary I would never be emotionally healed?

Dear reader, if you are still reading and there has been something going off inside of you that you feel that you will never be able to overcome; let me encourage you that you can.

It might not happen overnight. You might have days when it will take everything inside of you to fight that voice in your head or the pain in your heart. But when we have the Holy Spirit living within us that was sent to comfort, encourage, teach, and abide with us forever, hope can and will be restored.

The Word says that children are a gift from God. Not every person who becomes a parent sees it that way. I pray that you or someone you know isn’t doing everything they can to destroy a child’s hope.

The Word also says in Matthew 18:6 But if any of you causes one of these little ones who trusts in me to lose his faith, (hope) it would be better for you to have a rock tied to your neck and be thrown into the sea.

I’m an adult but I’m still one of God’s little ones.

I pray that if you don’t know the Lord you will ask for forgiveness, believe in the Name of Jesus, and ask Him into your life today. Your life will begin to change in ways that you could never imagine and if you have little ones depending on you to shape their lives you should thank God for entrusting them to you and lean on God to show you have to show them how to see the racehorse in themselves.

May God forgive anyone harming their own child today or anyone’s child.

I bless you.

No Ghost here…

Maybe I should have a ghost do my writing. I struggle with being consistent here on this lonely little page of mine. It calls to me to come post something, but I tend to ignore the pleading that an inanimate object can create. (a page is an inanimate object. Isn’t it?)

When the struggle isn’t getting the best of me I come here to see if perchance some internet surfer lost their way and landed on the shore of my page. Often as not, there are no traceable footprints in the sand. Sigh*

But today my motivation was seeing Oprah’s book club choice. I don’t really follow her choices. In fact, I’ll admit that I’ve never read one of her choices. So it’s lost on me. But what did get my attention was the term—ghost writer.

My inner bedraggled writer who spends hours at her keyboard while her first cup of coffee goes stone cold, and her back aches wants to protest. So I will. It’s my prerogative.

I’ll admit first that I can be very believing of people. I think too naive if the truth is told. And that’s another point in my rant. Honesty in the book writing world. Sure, I guess I could have a better chance at a #1 Best Seller if I had an English major with credentials a mile long helping me write with a creative literary mind for which I would take the credit. But alas, it’s only me.

But as it’s said by anyone who really stands behind their efforts, if I win—I did it. If I lose—I did it. I’m a one woman writer. I start the book; I spend waking hours and sometimes have to get up at night to peck out a thought so as not to lose it. I format, edit, and edit and edit… and even then I don’t get it all right. But the book is solely mine.

They become like my children. I almost don’t want to fledge them into the world where they are rejected or not even picked to have a page or two of them read. If they even became like the last kid to be picked in a gym class would be something. It doesn’t hurt my ego; it hurts my dedicated writer’s heart.

It takes a lot of a person to sit and write books. You get lost in the character’s lives. People that you created for whatever reason end up one day saying goodbye when the book is finished. I actually have felt lonely for some of the characters I spent hours with.

I might as well go ahead and get this rant over with. In today’s messed up society I think my stories are a breath of fresh air. They are GOOD stories. They have good outcomes. I play fair with my potential readers. I try to create books that people can relate to and come away with being entertained  by a memorable character or at least didn’t spend their time and money on trashy verbiage.

Okay, I’m done. I’ve had my say. I’m going to go back and work on my next book just because I can’t NOT write. How’s that for good English!

Just in case if by Divine guidance you stumbled upon this page and found an honest one woman self-published, self-written dedicated author of great unread books, here are a few titles you might want to go investigate.

Tangled Lives

The Others

The Making of Dexter Bridgestoke’s Bequeath

A Stone’s throw away from Christmas

God declares, Tell them I AM: Too deep a Gethsemane

Guilty Innocence

Whales in the Pond

A Clap of Thunder

Eternity’s Portal

January Sky

These are two of my personal stories about my life.

Bullied from the Womb

Walking through the Valley of Mud (Healed of cancer)

If you should read any of my books and leave a review—good or bad—I’ll be extremely grateful.

I’m done with my ranting now.

God Bless

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christmas is for people who admit to being too needy.

Recently, a friend asked me what I wanted for Christmas. This was my very first response, just to talk to you.

Friendship with this person has been one of the riches blessings in my life. I realize that not a lot of people have such a friendship like ours—if even a close friend at all. It isn’t about the material giving that makes up a truly close friendship. Life and time has limited our talking to one another as often as we once did. The friendship is still there but the time spent actually talking on the phone has been far less lately. 

It's sitting down together over a meal, a cup of coffee late at night and just sharing things. I’ve had times like this with this one friend and one other. These two people I consider two of my closes friends and my mind always goes back to those times. Remembering helping one of these friends throughout the Christmas holiday, baking with her, wrapping gifts, then stopping to eat a burger and coffee when we got done. These are the things I miss the most. With the other friend as well. Not doing the same things but that time spent talking, praying, and believing for God to move in our lives—these are what I would ask for.

I realized something about myself recently. I’ve always tried to be honest about who I am. Especially, since being a Christian. From the very beginning of my walk with the Lord I’ve stood on this scripture. You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free. It isn’t always easy to be truthful about who we are, it takes a lot of soul searching.

Lately, the world is in a real mess. It seems that another scripture is a truth. Calling good evil and evil good. Completely backwards. Sometimes you just have to sit back and wonder what in the world are people thinking. How do they ever come to such conclusions?

Examining my own life today and being asked what I really want for Christmas from this person, I reached deep inside and told them the truth. First, I admitted this truth to myself.

A little backstory. Recently I heard someone say that we come into this world wanting two things. Actually, a part of every human being whether they admit to it or not—wanting to know God and needing the closeness of another human being. Boy, does this ever describe me.

I’m constantly seeking after that closeness with knowing God. Knowing His love and wanting to live with an awareness of His presence in my life every day. Always seeking more of Him. Then in my interaction with another person. Here is where my total surrendering of the truth about myself came this morning.

I am an extremely needy person. I have been from my birth. I’ve known it but not to the degree that I’m now willing to admit it openly. All my life I have searched for that one true intimate relationship. It’s a rare illusive thing. I’m sure I’m not the only one chasing after it. I’ve pretty much given up on the hope of finding it at this time in my life. Seventy-five years and I think it’s time to let it go.

My confession this morning was realizing that being such a needy person means that I don’t think there really is anyone who could have ever filled that place in me but God. After all, we are all needy in some aspects, so asking another person who is broken themselves to fill our neediness is absurd. I think we are a lot of half people walking around looking for that other half of ourselves.

Christmas is such a hard time for many of us. It brings all those emotions to the surface that I think we keep under control all the other time. But I would be amiss if I didn't also say that I am certainly not as big a mess at Christmas that I have been in my life years ago. Even the ads this time of year prompted my emotions. Seeing families gather around cozy kitchen settings, a family dinner table or friends knocking at their door. There’s one this year that I am sure will be sending people looking for the box of Kleenex.

It’s a woman with dementia and the grandchild takes her out in an old truck that has been tucked away in a barn which brings back memories she had otherwise lost. I won’t give it all away, but what it provokes is sheer a heartstring tugging moment. I’m positive that it will touch a lot of people. We really don’t know sometimes what other people are actually going through.

My finally coming to accept the fact that my extreme neediness can and will only be filled by God gives me a much needed complete peace this Christmas. Just knowing that I DO have someone that loves me unconditionally no matter what, can’t be bought and wrapped in a package with a bow on top. Like a lot of people that think that they are the only one who feels a certain way, has to know they can’t be the only one.

So, if you are struggling again this Christmas looking for that fleeting vision of finding all that you need in another individual I have good news for you. There is Someone who can love you more than any other person in the world—God.

That is what Christmas is really all about. Not what the world has made it out to be. If you want to really have a Christmas experience, take a minute to slow down, steal away in your mind and really look at that manger birth scene. Ask yourself what really was happening in that moment. Who was Mary and Joseph and what were their lives about to do for all of humanity. They were just two young people chosen by God to be the instruments of his coming in human form as Jesus.

I’m sure at some time you might have heard the word—Emmanuel. It means God with us. He came into this world to do just that—be with each and every one of us who will recognize Him in the birth of Jesus Christ. It takes faith. It takes wanting to admit to needing God. That life is hard and when we look anywhere else for something or someone to fill that need in our lives we come away still in need. I think the truth that really hit me hard in my being honest is in the word—reciprocate. Often times this is what is missing with human relationships. Expecting that other person to meet our expectations in the same way that we give to them. This is rare, extremely rare, and rarely does it ever happen.

I hope with all my heart if even one person is led here this Christmas season looking for something to fill that need in themselves I will have given them Good News. I’d like to offer you a place to look for that rare and almost impossible relationship if like me, you find yourself able to admit to being needy.

There is someone looking for you too. Someone who can be everything to you that you ever wanted and need. And it can happen so easily with just one simple prayer of admitting that He is Lord and asking for forgiveness and asking Him to come into your life. This person is—Jesus. Please take time to really look into the meaning of Christmas this year, you won’t be disappointed. I know that its hard to believe that its possible for the deepest part of you to ever find what you are searching for, but it's possible. The only way that it is possible is through God's precious gift of Himself. 

I bless you.

Merry Christmas

 

 

 

When Lazarus doesn’t come out of the Grave

This post starts by refreshing your memory about the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead by Jesus. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with this event in the Bible, you can read it here. John 11: 1-43

Lazarus wasn’t just one of the many people who followed Jesus. He was a dear friend. Lazarus and his two sisters had become special when they entered the life of Jesus and his disciples through visits to there home whenever Jesus came into their town. This family of three had evidently been chosen to be more than casual acquaintances. They had built a relationship with Jesus by welcoming him deeply into their lives.

The two sisters, Martha, the eldest sister, and Mary the younger, saw that Jesus and his disciples were treated with love and hospitality. Martha in particular must have loved to prepare the meals. I can relate to this part of the story. There’s nothing like feeding the people that you love, especially when they enjoy your efforts to please them. Mary, was more drawn to joining the times of teaching and sitting at the feet of Jesus. Both of these acts were ways in which these women showed their love for Jesus.

Lazarus was spoken of as being Jesus’ friend. The two men were probably like brothers. I’m sure the community must have recognized the fact of how dear this family was to the Rabbi Jesus. So, when we begin to read about Lazarus falling ill and Martha sending a servant to find Jesus to tell him, our minds begin to think that Jesus will instantly head their way. It was no secret that Jesus was able to heal those who came to him. Most of these were strangers.

When the servant found Jesus and his disciples and told him that Lazarus was sick and that Martha was asking him to come, Jesus’ response was to stay two more days where he was. Wouldn’t you have thought that being his friend that Jesus would have hurried to his side? It ended up being four days before Jesus went to the home of his friends. At first, Jesus left his confused disciples wondering why he didn’t respond to the news brought by the servant only to hear, that in fact, Lazarus wasn’t just ill but that he had died.

When the news came to the sisters that Jesus was entering their town of Bethany, Martha went out to meet him. The town was full of people who knew the family and official mourners. Martha was understandably heartbroken and upset with Jesus; and rightly so. Lazarus was a friend. She and Mary also considered themselves to be friends with Jesus. If any person would have prompted Jesus to act, you would have thought it would have been Lazarus.

This is a very emotionally charged story. There’s confusion, anger, disappointment, and most of all a deep hurt coming out of total misunderstanding. Jesus’ actions seemed to be completely out of character. It seemed that he had purposely not come to this family's side at their most critical hour of need.

Perhaps as you read this story as I did, I found myself thinking about times in my life where I needed Jesus to show up with the only possible answer to my prayers; and He was late.

After four days of being in the grave it was an opinion of that era that the soul of the deceased had passed on and death was absolutely believed to be true. Not only that, but the body had begun to decompose. Therefore, when Jesus was asked to be taken to where Lazarus had been sealed in the tomb he was followed by the crowd. He’d already been confronted by the sisters stating what they believed that if he had come, their brother would not have died. I’m sure there were many in this small town who had taken the same approach to the appearance of Jesus’ lack of concern for someone he was supposed to have highly respected and loved as friends.

Jesus makes the most humanly response so far in this story; he weeps openly. His conduct now shows what so many had already thought Jesus would do—care deeply. That he would care enough to have rushed to stop this grief from ever happening. But if we continue to follow along while carrying our own story of grief or disappointment as we watch this story unfold, we’ll see why Jesus did what he did.

Jesus was after far more than restoring life to his friend. He wanted all those who were witness to this event to believe that in seeing him, they were seeing the tremendous Love of the Father for all humanity. Now, I know you might be thinking—love? How could it possibly be love when Jesus had the ability to heal Lazarus and have prevented such hurt and chose not to?

Jesus was always representing the Father—in fact he was the exact image of the Father having come in human form. That was what Jesus came to do over everything else; show the world the Father. On many occasion he said, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father. The Father and I are one.”

In my own life I have come to Jesus in prayer believing that He would answer those prayers. In those times I realize now that I was coming like the people in this story asking for the “thing” and not the Person behind my prayers. Jesus’ main purpose that he wove through every incident of healing, teaching or interaction with people was to turn their attention to the Father’s love.

Continuing to the end of the story we see that Lazarus is called out of the tomb and his life restored much to the amazement of everyone who witnessed it. Jesus was acclaimed that day to truly be more than a Rabbi because no one could raise the dead other than the Son of God.

If you are sitting thinking about a time when you needed Jesus to raise the “dead” prayer you prayed, and he didn’t, than you are not alone. I’m sure Jesus and the disciples all returned to the home of this family and ate and rejoiced the rest of the day. But it’s not that crowd I want to continue to address. What about the crowd of us who have been left standing at that grave waiting for the answer to our prayers to come walking out?

What do we do when Lazarus stays in the grave?

I can only tell you what I have had to do on several occasions once I realized that what I was asking God for wasn’t going to happen—I continued on. What I’m about to say doesn’t make me some kind of super saint, in fact what I’m going to say will expose me to be just the opposite. I am a very needy weak person. I have not been able to handle most of what life threw at me. I learned early on that I needed God. I knew that I could not do life without help.

When my “Lazarus” doesn’t come out of the grave I keep trusting. I have to, I have no other choice. Turning back to whatever means of coping I had before accepting Jesus as Lord of my life isn’t an option.

Many times, I have laid on my face crying out for some kind of understanding of why God didn’t answer my prayers the way I thought he would. After times of sheer mental and physical exhaustion God gathered me up in His arms of love and reassured me that He wasn’t done yet.

When I dared to continue to believe that perhaps God had something else in store for me was when my answer came. I had to learn the same lesson Jesus was teaching in the story of raising Lazarus. It wasn’t getting Lazarus back that was most important; it was understanding the Love of the Father for us. If just getting what we are asking from God is the only thing we want then we are sadly missing everything Jesus stood for.

The main instruction to all of us in the Word is this, Matthew 6:33  But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

When we make knowing God our primary goal everything else becomes secondary. When it dawned on me what God was truly after in my life I have made it my main pursuit. I want to know Him. I want to know His love for me. I want to wake up every day experiencing His love, comfort, and care through the Holy Spirit he sent into my life for just that purpose.

Do I have needs? Do I pray for things that I hope will come to pass? Absolutely. Even with my main desire to know and trust God’s sovereignty and believe in prayer have I continued to spend nights hurting over unanswered prayers? Yes, yes I have. But I have also seen the sun rise on better answers than what I was asking for.

God is never done. Just because Lazarus doesn’t come out of the grave for you and me doesn’t mean that God hasn’t heard our prayers or doesn’t care.

I want to encourage you and in encouraging you, I’m once again encouraging myself to never give up on God’s love. It’s the power behind everything we as Christians believe.

If you have or are now having to walk away from the grave of an unanswered prayer I would ask you to take heart. I’m not saying don’t feel the feelings, I’m saying by all means let yourself grieve the loss, the disappointment and even the discouragement. But once your tears subside, and they will, then look to the God of all Comfort because He is not done yet.

Maybe you have heard it said that when God doesn’t answer your prayers the way you think that he should that he has something else in mind. At the time that doesn’t offer much comfort. Sometimes it takes time to see the better plan. Living in an instantaneous world, waiting is not something any of us want to do. Because I have been at the end of many unanswered prayers I have also found myself rejoicing over much more than I was asking. Not only did I finally see the Wisdom of God’s purpose in not answering my prayers the way I thought he would I learned a far greater lesson. I learned to patiently trust the love of God for my life. I learned how comforting the Holy Spirit can be. I learned what unconditional love really means when God forgives my frustration with him. I’ve gained an ever growing relationship with God. One that isn’t superficial but goes far beyond. One that I’m still perfecting.

It's with an extremely thankful heart today that I can say that I’m glad that Lazarus stayed in the grave of some of my prayers. Because I gave God time to show me what He was doing in my life I have never been forsaken by Him. Today as I’m waiting and watching yet again, for that marvelous loving heart of God to choose something better for me and those I love, I will praise Him today. My expectations are in Him. No matter what, he can and will only do me good. The Word doesn’t say that all things are good, but that He works all things together for the good of those who love him. He never intends anything but good for all of us.

No matter what you are facing today, if you know God and even if you don’t, his Love for you is the same. Don’t give up, don’t walk away because God just might not be done yet and you don’t want to miss what He has planned for you that you didn’t see coming.

I bless you

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 This too shall come to pass

 Do you ever wish that where you find yourself right now would get over? Stop for a minute and reflect back to another time in your life when you felt the same thing. You didn’t stay there.

I remember a Sunday, years ago, just after my parents divorced, I was sixteen. I thought I was going to go live with my father because he had promised me that I would. But that had only been a lie to keep me while the divorce was going on. I didn’t know it then. He had no intention of taking me with him. I loved my father more than life itself. So, when he said he needed me to stay with my mother, something still in me wanted to please him far more than let my own feelings be expressed; I relented.

My mother and I had no transportation at the time. We were solely dependent on either my sister who had gotten married by that time or my father who only came to take me to the grocery store once a week. My world was very bleak. I was a sixteen-year-old girl who should have been living a carefree life filled with promise and hope.

On this particular Sunday, my sister had promised that she would come and get me and Mother and take us out for the day to a piece of property where they kept their horses. I was so excited to be able to get out of the house. She had told me to be ready early so that her husband wouldn’t have to wait on us. I had a bag packed for the day, told my mother to also be ready and we were up at 7 o’clock.

I sat anticipating seeing my sister pull up at any moment. Seven o’clock came and went. Eight o’clock, nine o’clock, and still no sister. No phone call either. By now my mother had made coffee and found a book to read. I sat at the window slowly dissolving into a broken mess. Every car that came around the corner and passed my house sent me further into a pit of despair. All day I refused to lose what little hope I had. My mother tried several times to get me to find something to do. It was evident that my sister wasn’t coming and even if she did it was getting so late in the day.

By ten o’clock at night, I was still sitting looking out that window. I had gone through every imaginable emotion from anger to deep discouragement. It was days later that my sister finally called to say that her husband had wanted her to run errands and was getting more irritated with her as the day went on. This explanation did nothing to soothe the pain I felt. Days after that I found myself still tied to those feelings. I just didn’t seem to be able to move on.

That was over fifty years ago. At that time, I was sure my life would never change. I felt that I would be stuck right there in that rejected sixteen-year-old life of mine. I was convinced that nothing was ever going to change.

Well, life did change and throughout my life, there have been other times that I thought I would always be stuck in. I lost hope as a child and it took me years, with God’s help, to gain back hope again.

Now come to my present time. God has made some promises to me of things that are coming. I remember a few times in the Word when God made promises to people. Here in Genesis 18:10 Then one of them said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.”

Sarah was barren and had no children. So reading this was for me like my sister promising to come on that Sunday.

Another scripture was of a woman called Hannah who also had no children and while she was crying out to God in the temple, the priest Eli heard her and thought she was drunk. When she told him that she was not drunk but sick in her soul and explained why, Eli told her to go her way and that God would grant her whatever it was she was asking for. 

1 Samuel 1: 20 So in the course of time Hannah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Samuel saying, “Because I asked the Lord for him.”

Both of these situations must have seemed hopeless to these women. So much so that even as they walked year after year the desire only grew greater, and they weren’t getting any younger.

Now that I find myself years into walking with the Lord I can look back and in looking back at times I thought would never change, I see that nothing came to stay—it all came to pass.

When we all find ourselves in times, we think will never change we need to remind ourselves of those times we didn’t think would change and yet they did.

Even though God restored my hope, over the years, I still have to remind myself not to let the present situation cause me to lose hope. God is working on our behalf even when we don’t see things changing.

I’ll leave you with this. God is always ready to encourage you and talk with you. In fact, He desires to have time with us every single day. He is a God of all our today and also of our futures. He has a place He is longing to bring us into not just one day in Heaven but here and now.

Maybe you feel stuck, but get still and listen for God to say, “This has not come into your life to stay it has come to pass.”

I bless you.

 

 

 

 

          More than just having cancer.

 When you wake up on the day that you have received a diagnosis of cancer, life changes. Your whole schedule changes. Everything you were doing at the time comes pretty much to a standstill. A whole lot of new appointments get scheduled for you and what you were giving your days to; a lot gets put on hold.

When this hit my life, I went about it differently. I refused to see myself being a victim of my diagnosis. I never saw myself dying at any time. I kept saying, “It’s just a thing.” It happened. I don’t know how and that wasn’t the main thought every day. When the first thing I did before I even called 911 was to contact Heaven and see what God had to say, that set my path ahead of me.

I finished the book, Walking through the Valley of Mud the other day and it’s on Amazon. I woke up this morning wanting to come here to add another post about what this past year for me was like.

I thought about the book and realized that there is more about what God did in my spirit and life than what cancer did to my body. I believe that is because I refused to take it into my body. All these months and still today this diagnosis sat outside of me. I know that might not make sense but it’s all I have to share with you.

It’s more than a mindset, although, that has a great deal to do with how you get through your journey. But it has to come from a conviction that God is good and loving, and he doesn’t afflict his children with cancer to teach them something. That’s in complete contrast to who He is.

But He does use these trials that come into our lives for good. That is a fantastic part of my journey; good has come out of it.

Now when I see or hear about other people who lost loved ones to this disease, I can’t help but wonder if they took the word of the medical field over the Word of God? I got told things that sounded like the truth. I was given percentages of 40 or 50 or even 80% of recurrence if I didn’t follow what I was told. And to be honest, when I’d come home from these visits, I’d feel fear trying to overtake me. Where I had been walking in trust from the beginning and knew that I had a journey to take to my Pool where I’d SEE what I was believing; that I was already healed.

I hope anyone reading this will stop listening to the words of fear being spoken over them. Words from any source, friends who tell you stories of people who died from what you have, Christians who say you shouldn’t go to doctors if you are really a Christian.

You have to first stop and talk to God about your individual life. That’s the only voice that matters. He knows you better than you know yourself. He knows the way in which you should walk and he’s not going to get mad at you or deny you access to all His love, grace, and mercy just because you can’t stand in complete faith.

 This was what I needed to share today over just another update on how my journey went. Today I feel closer to the Lord than ever and at the same time healthier than ever. I refuse to live the rest of my life in fear. I have a bright future ahead of me, hoping to get back to Florida when God opens the door, I’ll be ready.

I bless you. 

https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B0082D161E