These Little Feet

Oh the sweetness!  These little feet belong to my grandson, Simon.   We have a little ritual when he comes to visit Nana.    I get out the ice cream and scoop some in a small bowl for the two of us.  It's vanilla, because his Mommy says he can't have chocolate yet.

We start out with me sitting on the kitchen floor and Simon standing up facing me.  I put the first spoonful in his little mouth.   He likes it.

By the 2nd or 3rd bite, Simon has turned himself around and wiggles himself backwards up into my lap.   If my legs aren't situated just right, he pushes them over so he can snuggle up real close.

We finish the bowl of ice cream in this position.  It is all I can do not to feed him more than he should have.   I don't want this to end.

Every time we sit like this and I look down at his little feet, I thank God for him.  I pray that he will want Nana to tell him about Jesus - sitting just like this.  

Changes

Life is full of changes.  Sometimes a change seems good, then it seems bad and then you look back and realize it was God and it really was good.   Make sense?

This picture was taken almost 3 years ago from the back stoop at my grandma's house.That is grandma's clothesline against the backdrop of the sunrise over the field. Grandma never did own a dryer and maybe this view is why.   

We were living there in transition between houses when I took this picture.  We lived there for a year.  I think I spent most of my time wondering why God wasn't moving us sooner.  Sadly I spent way too much time complaining about it too.  As I look back, I truly wish I had enjoyed the view and the blessings more.   I was only seeing what I wanted to see and not what God wanted to show me. 

How often do we get caught up in the act of the change or the inconvenience of the moment and miss the blessing?    

A lot of things have changed in the last few months. Little did I know that God would show up so spectacularly and so miraculously in this time of personal transition in our lives.  Just like living at Grandma's house, it hasn't all been easy.  But I can say - it has all been good. 

Blessed be His name.

Kim 

For the Love of the Journal

I have this love-hate relationship with my journal.  I love to look back and see where God has taken me on this journey.  I hate that I don't journal with regularity.   I used to wonder what the 'right' way was to journal.  After all, how could you or should you track prayer requests and answers?  And what about the details that should be included?   Should I just put in the big stuff or should I include things that really didn't seem so significant, but might be significant later.   So my life with the journal has been a bit of hit and miss.  

Journaling was probably never meant to be this difficult.   For goodness sake, it is a spiral bound notebook with lined paper.  It is mine to do with it as I please.  I'm not doing it for a grade or for a project for school.  No one sees it but me and God forbid anyone should see them after I die.    They probably wouldn't make any sense to anyone but me anyway.

Monday night after our prayer meeting at church, I wanted to come home and look for something in one of my old journals.   As I dug through them and found the one I wanted, I started reading bits and pieces of it.  At first I was truly on a search for what I was looking for.  But then it became more like a meandering journey of the mind through the past several years.    

As I kept reading and perusing the pages that constituted a good portion of my life with Christ, I found something very disturbing.   Don't get me wrong, there was lots of good stuff and things I am totally clueless as to why I would have written down at all.  But what disturbed me the most was my waning faith.

There I said it.  My faith was shrinking right there on the pages of my journal.   I kept reading it and wondered what happened to the woman that started the journaling to begin with.    If trials make you stronger and draw you closer to Jesus, then I should have been having large leaps of faith growth.  But that wasn't what was there.  

On the pages of the first journal I saw a "childlike, endless, God can do ANYTHING He wants" faith.  I saw a faith that believed in and expected miracles.  I trusted that if God said jump, well then, just jump and He will catch you.     But then this "oh I am more mature in my faith, don't want people to think I'm strange" woman showed up.     We share the same name, but I'm not nearly as fond of her.    This person I had become was too logical, played it too safe.

Only one or two journals before that I was asking God to interrupt my life.  To draw me so close to Him that I wouldn't question what He asked of me.  I prayed for a dangerous, give it all to Jesus kind of faith.  

Sometimes it is painful to look back, but sometimes it's absolutely necessary if we ever want to move forward as God intended.    I am so incredibly thankful for my journal and for God allowing me to see the truth in it.   If people think I'm strange then that is fine with me, because I would rather be strange and full of faith than 'normal' and faithless.  

It's the Small Things

Sometimes it is easy in our world of abundance to forget just how blessed we are.  I fall trap to that way of  thinking more often than I like to admit.    

Sponsoring a child from Compassion this year makes me stop and look at life differently.   When I take the time to prepare a small package of very simple items for him, it fills my heart with overflowing joy.  Praying over the items brings me back to reality.  It really is more of a blessing to give than to receive.    

Christ calls us to care for the poor and to preach the good news to the nations.  That doesn't mean that we have to go to another country to fulfill His calling for us.    We can share the good news of Jesus Christ and help to care for the poor right from our own home.   A little time and a little sacrifice is all it takes.   

The Secret of Making Your Marriage Work

"Always give more than you get" was what my mother told me over 25 years ago at my bridal shower.    My mother had been married a long time and that advice has served me well.     Sadly, I can't say that I always followed it.  But by the grace of God and an amazing husband, our marriage has survived all these years.

My thoughts lately have been a lot about marriage and what really does make it work.   We have seen way too many marriages end in divorce in the last year or so, while others are barely hanging on by a thread even as I write this.

Then I got an email this week from a friend who wanted me to call another woman about the difficulties that woman was experiencing in her marriage. I knew a bit about the situation they were going through and wasn't sure what advice I could give her that would truly help if she wasn't willing to do some hard work and see it through.

Here is the one thing I have learned over the last 25+ years, you really do have to be willing to give more than you get - or at least more than you think you are getting.    If there was such a thing as 'elbow-grease' in marriage, you need that!   Hard work and sacrifice and patience and prayer and love that goes beyond words.

Over the last several years, my husband and I have met with and talked to numerous people who are going through difficult times in their marriage.   Sadly, the one thing we saw repeatedly was people who wanted their marriage to work, no matter how bad it had gotten, but they weren't willing to do the hard work to see it through.   If just wanting your marriage to work was all it took, there wouldn't be a need for divorce attorneys.

There hasn't been a fix-all answer that I could ever give to anyone whose marriage was struggling.  But this much I know, you have to be willing to sacrifice and put your spouse first, and in even greater amounts during difficult seasons.

Our marriage has seen a wide-range of trials, testings and blessings.  We have survived difficult times when we weren't followers of Jesus Christ.  We have survived difficult times when we were following Jesus with all of our hearts. We have seen lean seasons and seasons of plenty.  We have walked through busy years of children and adjusted to the empty nest years.    We have had difficult times that we share publicly and we have private trials that aren't always meant to be shared.

I say these things, because I want you to understand that it wasn't just because of one particular thing or lack of something that made it work.   My husband and I have learned to press on and hold on and to give and bend and fight fair.   We pray for each.  We try to put each other first and yet I fail too often at this.   We have learned to close our mouths and keep our negative words to ourselves when our flesh wanted to just say what it was thinking. We have forgiven 7 x 7 and then a thousand more on top of that.  

Although God graciously sustained our marriage even when we weren't living for Him, I can't help but direct troubled marriages back to the Bible to be your guide.  Are you personally living as the husband or wife that God called you to be?    When you look in the mirror do you see the husband/wife that God intended you to be or something that looks more like a version that has been modified by the world's standards?

Sadly there are times when you can do all the right things and the hard work and pray and sacrifice and a spouse will still choose to leave or will continue an abusive or addictive lifestyle that is unhealthy for you to remain in.   The fallen world in which we live is still a reality today as much as it was in biblical times.

But there is hope if you are still married, even if the problems seem too much.   As my mother said "always give more than you get".  You might just be surprised at what you get in return.

Unlimited Potential

Turning points in our lives can cause us to revert and focus on weaknesses or they can catapult us into new possibilities.  There are many places we can land in between those points, but I am praying that the turning points in my life will catapult me straight into the middle of God's plan and purposes for my life.  

Several events lately have caused me to pause and to begin reevaluating my own relationship with the Lord and how to use my gifts.  For that matter, I am even having more discussions with God about what gifts and talents He gave me versus the ones I want or the ones I think I have and don't.   That will be another post perhaps.

Anyway, if I look at things through my own limited understanding, I will find myself . . . limited.    If, however, I sit up and take note of how I see God working in miraculous ways, I find that the limits are the fences and walls I have built in my own thinking.

A couple months ago, I wrote about sponsoring a child through Compassion.  Within just a few short days after that, God saw fit for me to meet a man from Rwanda personally.   The man walked straight into my office at work.  I love the way God does things.

Here's the beautiful part of what I learned about this man.   I don't know exactly how he became a believer in Jesus Christ, but he did.   He read his bible.   And he took God's instructions personally.    The bible told him he was to go and reach and teach the world for Jesus Christ.  He thought to himself that he would be unable to teach the world about Jesus because he did not know English and so many others did.  So he taught himself English.  

He also went from teaching a handful of people in an untraditional style of church to leading a church of over a thousand.  I forget the exact figure but it was as a lot!   No marketing.  No advertising.   No formal education in the Word.  Just preaching and teaching.     Right there in the middle of Rwanda.

He is here because his country now has certain requirements that he must meet.   I have no doubt that he will do that in record time so that he can get back to preaching the Word and leading people to Jesus.

What would happen in our lives if we began to take God's words of promise and instruction a little more literally?   God said it and so I must do it.  God promised it and so I must expect it.   God forbade it and so I can't do it.

Our potential and power is unlimited when we remember where both come from.  May the turning points in my life cause me to tear down the walls of limitation with the truth of God's word and to wait with expectation for the unleashing of his power and provision in my life to do what he called me and created me to do.

I pray there is also a part 2 to this story.   I couldn't help but wonder about the timing of meeting this man.  So I very boldly printed off what little information I had about the child we were sponsoring and asked the man how close he lived to the boy's village.  Turns out he lives only a couple hours away from there.  Perhaps someday God will use this man to show my husband and I to the village where Mucyo lives.  You just never know.

Your Spouse First

Two very different conversations that took place in the last 24 hours really have me thinking about marriage and how we treat our spouse.   In the one conversation, a person basically stated they were nice to people who weren't family.  The indication was clear that you can treat family like dirt, as long as you are nice to strangers.   This was in the presence of their spouse.    The second conversation was one relayed to me that concerned a couple where at least one of the spouses vacations without the other.  

Here's the deal.   The person you are married to - where exactly do they rate on your list of priorities and time?   Do you put them before yourself and others?

I remember several years ago, probably 9 or so by now, when my husband and I were having a very rare night of dinner alone at home without the kids.   It always seemed like we rarely had time to talk when the kids weren't there or something wasn't going on.   However, on this particular night, it seemed like within 5 minutes we had covered what we needed to talk about.  And in my own mind, at least, there was this very eerie feeling that I didn't really know my spouse.  And what would happen to us when the kids moved out?

We had just finished moving into the home we had built. We had full-time jobs.  We didn't have financial problems.  We had been married a long time.  We had two teenagers.   But our marriage seemed to be held together by stuff as opposed to substance.

That night was my wake-up call.  Although things are very different now, I still remember it as though it was yesterday because I never want to feel that way again.

I often hear people say that you and your spouse should go out on a date regularly.  I believe this is especially true when you have little people at home.   But when it is just the two of you there, I suggest you take time to talk.    You can catch up on what is going on in your lives and other things.   But then, take time to talk without the TV, the movies, the dinner guests, or other distractions.    

Without a doubt, I believe that your spouse is to be your first ministry.   Before the church, before the children, before anyone else.  Do you minister to your spouse?      I'm not talking about doing ministry together, which is a great thing.  I'm talking about ministering to them in ways that show you love them and that they matter to you.

At the end of my days, can I say that I loved my husband well?  Will he say that I loved him well?