Saturday, February 27, 2010


I attended a praise, prayer and healing service tonight. The woman who prayed for me, among other things, said I had to forgive. She gave me her method of telling the offenses to God, on paper if necessary, going to the word and speaking it over the hurts and, when Satan brings it up again, telling him to get lost, "I've already given this to God."

I started to think more deeply about forgiveness. It's not just big, obvious infractions we need to forgive. We need to forgive people for acting selfishly toward us. For things that hurt us that the other person might not have even meant maliciously. We need to forgive people who just don't know any better. Instead of judging their ignorance, we need to look at ourselves as being in an excellent position to pray for them to gain wisdom, and healing for the area that is broken. We need to look at it as if we were put there by God "for such a time as this."

We so often are told to look for the good in the pain--for once we can be a part of the good to come through such prayers. In the long run, we can be on the side of our "offender" where we can meet in the name of victory through healing. I feel a little better already.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Ready for Summer


Wow, it's snowing. . .I said again for the nth time this month. It is pretty but quite frankly, I've taken enough pictures and would gladly look back at them rather than cancel another night out, day at the Y, dinner with friends. . .

And as a writer I guess this could be good--being trapped in the house and all, but lo and behold, I have 4 laptops that refuse to do what I need them to do (print, get onto the internet, run a word processing program and, of course the one with all of my info on it, turn on.) Isn't technology wonderful. This computer seems to skip every few letters so I can assure you that this will be a quick blog.

I'm not frustrated--which is not like me. Wouldn't you think that God might work on my character AND let me accomplish something for Him? I am confused. I recognize attack, yes, but when do we get to the part where our side wins? How about the part where our team gets a tiny little bit ahead. That would be nice too.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Nothing else TO do


I never thought the reason for writing is that I have nothing ELSE to do. Having gotten two feet of snow Friday to Saturday and having a few more inches dumped atop of that Tuesday to Wednesday we have seemingly been trapped inside the house. Now don't get me wrong, we have gotten out, but the whold air about it has been less than encouraging. Perhaps it's that the kids have been off of school all week. . .did I mention all week.

Last week the phrase God gave me was "battle for it". He said it in so many ways "are you battling?", "You are going to have to fight for this", and "What you are doing is important and hence opposed-so you know that it is not going to come easy". On one hand, yes, I was happy for a word. On the other hand, however, THIS WORD?

The word has come to fruition. I had planned to get serious about writing (again) and make it an unchangable part of my schedule. If I had to change it, like was already happening for an endocrine appointment for my mom and a biopsy for myself, I would have to reschedule it just like any other appointment. I started on the weekend by attempting to back up my data files on a disc and my photos on a brand new portable hard drive. Neither of these worked. Yes, I used the snow days to try to be productive, yes it ended up being another waste of time.

Tuesday I had Joe run virus software. It was an all day project. By Wednesday, my computer wouldn't even turn on. I am not furious, dejected, deflated or anything similar. Hmmmm, what's that all about? I have peace about it. I had hard copies of the data and he was able to copy the photos. But what is this peace? Where is this nagging feeling coming from that wants to say, "Now you can't do anything". Sometimes, I admit, I don't get it. Is God saying "Rest and enjoy this beautiful time?" I don't think so. Actually, right now I am so bored I want to write--of course I will be doing it with a pen and paper.

And this is how I recognize the attack, the battle. Decide you are going to get on a schedule and write-the enemy counters with a week of school cancellations. Take time out to back up your documents-counter, you don't even have that computer where everything was saved anymore. Make a fire and try to read for awhile-the neighbor boy shows up for a live cowboy and indians show in the same room. Blow off the fire and go to whip off a quick blog enroute to closing yourself in your quiet bedroom with pen and paper-it's instantly silent downstairs. . .the boys are upstairs. Is this peace or just the emotion that oozes out from "you can't get anywhere, why even try?" This is the battle.

All I can gain from this is that what I am doing must be important-or the enemy wouldn't waste so much effort trying to stop me. Unfortunately, this doesn't put the fire under me that it should. What is the missing link to that fire?

The boys are back downstairs and it is quiet--I better run!

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Resolutions. . .and February


After finding last years unaccomplished resolutions and realizing that they were the exact same as this years, I knew I had to make a change. I started evaluating how I spend my days and although I do all "good" stuff, it is not the best stuff I could be doing--ie, not in line with the goals I have set for myself. As 2 Corinthians says, I want to be compelled by Christ's love. That is my prayer, that I will accomplish what He has set before me to do compelled by His love. How a simple desire or calling becomes a passion to get something done I do not know. Hopefully, though, I will have an answer to share on that soon.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

FINALLY JOINED THE CENTURY


It was bound to happen-I joined this century! OK, not fully, I don't text-why don't people just CALL? So in that I will remain old fashioned. . .until I get my new phone in May.

I have been meaning to set up a blog since . . .well, for a long time. I don't know exactly how I ended up doing it today except that I was on the Lifeway web site trying to get into an online Beth Moore Bible study and the next thing I knew I had a blog.

Normally I would make a big project out of this -which is why things take so long with me-I want everything to be a little perfect and in order the first time. Had I not set this up today I would have spent months picking the perfect name, format, photos etc. and ended up with nothing. This is one of those times I just went for it - Wow I finished something. Sometimes finishing something is just STARTING it.