Finishing Well

     Honest blogging right here, but I'm not writing it for sympathy or understanding or out of malice. So don't shoot me. And don't get me wrong, I am not bashing my mother. It's just because the generation I came up in was "different" from today and some of our parents didn't show affection or say I love you like we hear often today.  Perhaps they weren't taught......just didn't know how. I don't know.      Mother grew up poor, and so she worked hard to have things. Her dad, "Pop" to us, was a hard, quiet man and her mother died when I was 5 so I didn't know her and never was told anything about her, another trait of their generation - we don't talk about things, period.       I have no recollection of being hugged or kissed or told I was loved. I realize now that I have a lot of that in me too, and I have to work hard to show love. I feel like I don't do it well.  It was all about work, mother and Daddy both worked

     So many times in our lives we have to kind of redefine who we are. Our lives can take on drastic changes we didn't see coming and suddenly we aren't who we thought we were. Or, even things that are expected leave us dazed and wondering what is next.      We were single and then we get married and we have to figure out how to do that. Then perhaps we have children and we're momma, ma, mommy, mother, mom - seemingly forever. But they grow up and then we go back to ?????      Death may come and change everything. Parents die and leave us as orphans. I think of the passage in the Bible that says God puts us in families. A child may die. Your identity as mom is no more. Who are we then? Those families God puts us in are changed - but we can find the orphans of others and begin to minister to them.      A spouse is gone and you are alone again. Starting over, who am I now? Sometimes we fuss and scream about these changes in our lives. But we must allow changes to mold

     Why do we dislike change so much? Comfort seems so much more easy to dwell in. Ease of breath, pain free, just, well.......comfortable.      One day it settles in - a wind blowing the opposite way, ruffling feathers, making waves in our calm sea. Who threw a rock in our water? Why would anything disturb our quietude so? We squirm, we protest, we cry.      However, God doesn't want us to be a stagnant pond of blah. He wants us to open our sails. He wants us to fly! He has winds ready for His exact time to send us to "different".      Do we like it! Not usually. Is it for our growth? Yes. Will everyone we love go with? Nope.      In the Bible wind was sometimes wild and boisterous, but Jesus stilled it, and everyone was amazed. In Acts the wind of God filled the house with Holy Spirit power. In James we're told to ask in faith else we're tossed about.      So, how do we stand in this wind? We must not stand against the wind, but step out in faith and

     I love to talk - I do - but lately I have no words. I'm not sure I even could come up with thoughts enough to connect any words together.  Maybe God has shut me up, I don't know, maybe He's just waiting to give me a huge revelation.      I hope someone in this meantime doesn't come to me for wisdom or advice or counsel and I stare back at them blankly and can't even utter the words "I got nuthin", because I would never want to let anyone down.      So I wait......God has put that word in my heart this year.......wait. I wish I knew what I was waiting for, but I don't. I want Him to do some specific things that only He can do, but I wait. I wait for a Word and hope I'm being still enough to listen. I wait for things to change and see only sameness.      But.......I have enough hope and enough patience to do this wait because of God. I trust His promises to bring about His perfect will - for my good and His glory. Will it be soon? I wish.

      Straight outta Experiencing God is why I went back to Guatemala. It says that you watch where God is working and you join Him there. When the first or second group came back and reported to our church about Hope of Life and what God was doing there, I determined to go. The next trip that was feasible for me though, happened to be a medical trip, and I wondered why in the world He would urge me to go then. But I went and wasn't too great a hindrance to the team who conducted clinics for the villages near Hope of Life.       That's the why I went this time and then we were asked how this trip possibly changed us. I pondered that during the trip this June, this boiling hot, arduous trip, and came up with some answers and changes. It took some reflection and questioning and doubting and I came up with several things.       Three of us ladies conducted a "Bible study" for the ladies of Zion church there in Los Palmares. I put in quotation marks because the first d

     When my children were toddlers, the rule was no food or drink except in the kitchen. It was moppable and carpet was in the rest of the house so there was a reason for the rule. Of course, they would go to the very edge of it - until I would say, you know the rule, and they would go back to the table. But they never went beyond the invisible boundary. They respected the authority and the rule worked.      Well, then fast forward to grandchildren. Suddenly grace abounded and was extended to them, even though they knew of the rule. I remember a particular spill that occurred - and had it been a child instead of grandchild - I would've become "The Enforcer". But Granny grace said, it's ok!      Now, had said grandchild deliberately and willfully upended the sippycup to make milk patterns on the carpet........granny grace would've been all over that. Authority had to jump up and restate the rule forgotten. Chastisement would have to be rendered. Cup impounded.