365 Days of Spirit-Filled Fruits Challenge-Day 203

Some very good friends of ours who had moved to Washington State a couple of years ago were out this weekend for a visit. They invited us to a bbq at another of their friend’s homes so we could visit and my daughter and their daughter could have fun playing together. They were the best of friends so this was special to be able to see each other again after so long. But kids grow and change and things don’t always remain the same. In fact, they very likely do change. My daughter has always been tall for her age. It has been a pattern in our family as our son was the same way; always thought of as being older than he was. It was obvious by her comments that my daughter’s friend was thinking negatively about how short she was. Comparisons are never a good thing as they inevitably bring out the negative rather than the positive. Love who you are because God certainly does.

James 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.

365 Days of Spirit-Filled Fruits Challenge-Day 107

My dear daughter will be turning 10 in a couple of weeks. She is very precious to us but she is pushing our buttons right now. It seems that she is one of the quiet kids all day long at school but as soon as she is home, she talks non-stop. She wants to give you a play-by-play of everything. It is definitely wearing on our patience but we have tried to listen to her and respond to her questions. She has also developed this attitude that is bordering on disrespectful. No, it has crossed the border into disrespectful. So, I am trying to figure out how best to approach this issue so we can turn that attitude back into loving responses and the Lord lead me to this passage about being gentle. It is going to start by myself and my husband being gentle in the way we approach her. She has always been very sensitive to harsh words or yelling but much more responsive to simply and gently telling her what she needs to know and learn. We will be calling on the Holy Spirit for his help with patience and gentleness in the days ahead so we can guide our daughter towards being more like Christ.

Proverbs 15:1 A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

365 Days of Spirit-Filled Fruits Challenge-Day 103

As I walked into my office building yesterday, I ran into our office manager who was waiting for the elevator. She greeted me and asked how I was feeling and than I asked her how her daughter was doing. I had heard thru the office grapevine that she had had a second seizure within a month. I decided to ride up the elevator with her instead of taking the stairs which is my normal routine. She said that her daughter who was a preemie has had this place in her brain that may not have gotten enough oxygen and now the doctors are saying that it is a degenerative thing and that symptoms will worsen, etc. She ended up in tears telling me how she just needed to stay home yesterday to just be with her daughter and how she started a diet program to lose her excess weight so she can be healthy and take care of her daughter as she grows older. The interaction I had with her has stayed with me. I don’t know our office manager outside of office stuff so this was on a personal level that I had not gone to with her before now. It is amazing to me how little we know about the hearts of others. I got a good look at her heart yesterday after working there for almost 4 years but God knows our hearts inside and out, through and through, completely. He knows what we need and how we are feeling and will answer those needs and comfort those feelings. Lord, I ask you to give comfort, peace and strength to this woman whose heart is breaking for her daughter and heal her daughter. With you all things are possible. Amen.

1 Samuel 16:7 But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."

365 Days of Praise Challenge-Day 359

We watched the movie Brave last night. It is well worth your time to watch especially if you are a mother or a daughter since the plot is about the relationship between the mother-queen and daughter-princess. The thing I love most about this movie is how it shows the conflict within a person when it comes to facing their sins. The princess ultimately faced what she did and asked for forgiveness. This conflict within a person came up in my reading from a Tim LaHaye book called The Spirit-filled Temperaments. He told of a woman who asked him to tell her the truth about what she was doing that was making her ultimately be depressed. He was hesitant about it but she pushed more and so he told her the flat out truth, it is because you are selfish. The sin of selfishness was making her thought patterns turn negatively and so she ends up depressed. This lady obviously was having conflict within herself and finally was brave enough to ask someone who was going to give it to her straight. The main point in both of these stories is that we have a choice but in making that choice we have to be brave. We have to be able to see the truth of ourselves so that we can go on and ask for forgiveness and be cleansed. Facing our sins for what they are is the first hurdle in restoring our relationship to God that was ripped apart in the Garden of Eden. It is like the symbol in the movie of the tapestry that the princess cut in two with a sword. One side was her and the other side was her parents. One side is us and the other side is God.  Jesus came and he can stitch the tapestry back together when we bravely face our sins and ask for forgiveness. Thank you Lord for giving us the motivation and bravery to face our sins each day and ask your forgiveness.

Romans 14:11-12 If we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong.

365 Days of Praise Challenge-Day 146

I went on a walk yesterday with my daughter. She has lots of questions these days and really is wonderful at thinking things through. She brought up that she felt ignored by most of the kids at school. She has her friends but I guess she is feeling like she is being judged by the outside and not the inside. I will have to dig a bit more to see where all this is coming from but I am praising God for her and being able to build her up as much as I can do. You want the best for your children and it is tough to see them struggle with things of life but I will pray to God that he will lead her through this issue and that she will know in her heart that she is loved. Are you not feeling loved? Know that you are loved by the one who created love.
Psalm 86:13 For great is your love toward me; you have delivered me from the depths of the grave.

365 Days of Praise Challenge-Day 94

After putting my daughter to bed every night, I leave her room and there is my son waiting for me. Sometimes, we play around and he blocks the doorway so I can't leave so I have to wrestle with him to get out which is not easy these days as he's bigger than me now. Other times, I will run around and try to fake him out that I am going to try going out through the bathroom. In the end, I get out of the room and we always have a wonderful long rocking side to side hug. It's not a moment that I have ever captured on film although the creative side to me will probably figure that one out but it's something I have to document in my scrapbooks. It's one of those everyday moments with my son that is so precious and I will always cherish those moments even after he leaves home someday to be on his own. We may not be able to have those precious moments with our sons, daughters, husbands and family every day but we can have those precious moments with God. Have you ever been reading scripture and you get this warm fuzzy feeling or get the good chills feeling? I am going to think of those moments as times when God is giving me a long wonderful rocking side-to-side hug. The more often you are in the Word the more hugs you get! So, what are you waiting for? Go, get a hug from God.

365 Days of Praise Challenge-Day 24

Last night I was in the new spa with my daughter. It's not like we don't get plenty of opportunity to spend time together. That is her love language, quality time, so I make sure she is getting her love tank filled but there is something about relaxing in a hot tub at night with the dark sky and twinkling stars that just made it a very opportune time to really connect with her and see how things are going. So, she opens it up with 'let's talk' so I asked her how things are going at school with teacher, class and friends. Everything is good until we get to the friends part. She tells me one of her friends is hurting her. By this she meant she is getting hit, kicked and scratched by this 'friend'. Unfortunatley, this is not the first time with this 'friend'. They had this same issue back in either Kindergarten or 1st grade and I had to conquer my fears of confrontation and approach the mom at the bus stop and pull her aside to let her know what was going on. It seemed to have stopped but is now rearing it's ugly head. It may be because they are in the same class again but it apparently only happens at the lunch line in school, on the bus or at her house. Hmmmm... sounds like she's only doing this when she knows she can get away with it. Faith is a gentle and very-kind hearted person and says she doesn't want to hurt her feelings but also says she is afraid too because she doesn't want to hurt her more. Oh my... so for the first time probably ever, LOL, I told her I was going to pray about it and talk with Dad about it to see how to proceed. So, that next morning I was taking work off because my shoulder so I walked her over to the bus stop and afterwards walked the mom to her house telling her about the conversation I had with Faith. Of course, the protective defensive nature in a parent came up but we just discussed and decided to give the girls a break from playing with each other and she would talk with their teacher and her daughter. So, although I am not sure she is feeling like this is an issue with her daughter, as Nathan puts it, you have planted the seed and made her aware and that's all you can do at this point. So, I am thanking God for the opportunity to learn more about my daughter and her life and thankful for his guidance in how to deal with it.
Psalm 73:24 You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory.