What's the Price?

For the last few years, I have been diligently working on saving money and buying ahead with the use of coupons and sales.  It has been a blessing and a discipline in my life.   Not only have we saved a great deal of money, but we have been able to bless others.    

In the last year, as I have read comments posted on some of the websites/blogs I regularly visit to find good deals, I have seen an increase in people complaining that they aren't getting just about everything for free.   As a result of people abusing the system, the stores have also started tightening the restrictions and regulations associated with coupons and other sales.     Ultimately, someone has to pay.  Either the consumer pays or the company pays.  When both sides play fair and act respectfully, both sides can come out with a pretty good win-win situation.    When one side (the consumer in this case) starts demanding all of their 'rights' and taking on an attitude of entitlement, both sides quickly lose.  Additionally, those with the attitude of entitlement cause harm to everyone else in the long run.

There are many arguments to be made about companies, greed, abuse of systems, etc.   This is not the forum for such discussions, but rather a place to stop and reflect on our own attitudes.  I confess that there have been times in my life when I had the entitlement attitude and I am embarrassed to think of how I acted.   Truth is - I'm not entitled to anything, but I am called to be thankful for everything.

In every area of our lives, there is a price to pay when we start believing that we are to get everything for nothing.    Such an attitude is like gangrene in any community, church, relationship or business.   It spreads and it is ugly and eventually it kills what once was healthy and growing.    

Perhaps we would be wise to consider the words of Paul in the New Testament:  1 Timothy 6:6-8  "But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world and we can take nothing out of it.  But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that."   


May we keep our priorities in order and our eyes on Jesus.  May our hearts and attitudes be a reflection of who Jesus called us to be in all situations.   He paid the price for our sins and we certainly weren't entitled to that!




"Be joyful always; pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

My Weekend Getaway

Ahhh, the sound of waves gently crashing against the shore.  The birds singing in the distance.  The cool breeze gently blowing in the windows.  Life is good.   But wait . . . I'm in Ohio and it is three a.m. and there isn't a beach with gently crashing waves anywhere near here.    So what could that sound be?

It is the sound of the alarm clock on the nature setting going off two hours before I have to get up.   It is the same sound I hear soon after there are little feet running down the hallway to Nana and Papa's bedroom.   A little Simon spent some time with us this weekend and as I was cleaning yesterday I apparently bumped the alarm to the "on" position and it came on playing Simon's favorite tune on the alarm clock. At least it was the gentler of the two he usually picks.   When he pushes the other button the cd player will crank out some worship music and he and I will dance to "I'm Trading My Sorrows" or "Yes Lord,  Yes Lord, yes, yes, Lord - Amen".  

We never seem to get past the first two songs, because by then his attentions have turned to something else in the house and off we go.   Or maybe it's because at 19 months he really doesn't have a lot of sorrows to trade and so he can quickly move right along. 

I've been working on rearranging my time lately so that it better reflects my priorities. 

After all, it will be all too soon until shoes like this fit his feet.  

And who knows what paths he will take in life. 

                                                                                       

I just want to make sure I don't miss a moment of it.  Thank you Jesus for the gift of this little boy - yes, yes Lord- Amen.

Overcoming Disappointment & Other Life Stuff

Ever felt disappointed?   If you said 'no', then perhaps you might want to check your pulse.   I think it is human to be disappointed sometimes.  Discouragement just might be Disappointment's cousin and Frustration would be their best friend.   Some of these ugly relatives have tried to move into my house lately.  They aren't welcome, no matter how many times they let themselves in the front door or park their bags at the back door.

Maybe you can relate to one of these statements: 

"Honey, the washer sounds a little funny."

"Come here and take a look at this, the computer screen says 'critical error'."

"I'm sorry, your washer isn't repairable"

"Hey - why won't the air conditioning turn on?  The furnace isn't coming on either". 

"Looks like something ate through the wires in your truck  (cha-ching)"

"While we were fixing the wires, did you know you needed to have __________ fixed also?" 

"What's that noise every time you shift when you're driving the car?"

"You know that noise that it made while it was shifting, it's not doing that anymore. The gearshift broke in two." 

"Bubba (yes that's his name) wants to know how much we want for the car" 

"M'am - it looks like mice ate through the wires in your air conditioning unit." 

"You need to come back next week for more tests" 

"We can't tell for sure from the tests. We will have to do surgery in 4 days." 

"Honey take a look at these spots on my back." 

"You have shingles." (which makes you contagious to your grandson, which means you can't see him for awhile) 

We have heard every single one of these and quite a few more in the last several months.  While none of them were life threatening and God provided the means to overcome all of them, frustration and disappointment have been nipping at my heels for awhile now. 

It would be so easy to sit here and think about the negative.  Because let's face it, the negative seems to come up in one way or another on a regular basis at certain seasons/times of life.   Sometimes it is like a slow drip, other times like a tsunami. 

These are just reminders of why it is so important to stay in the Word and to keep our eyes on Jesus.  If we don't, we are likely to find ourselves swimming in a cesspool of defeat and discouragement.  Sadly, discouragement is more contagious than the shingles and can be deadly to our faith if we aren't careful.  

In each one of those statements above, there was a blessing.  Albeit, I'm still trying to figure out the blessing of the shingles, but I'm sure it's there.*   If, however, we had taken a 'woe is me' attitude, we would have missed the blessings. 

In addition to the blessings directly related to each of those statements, we have seen God's hand at work in ways that make us speechless.   He is so faithful.   

I pray that you will keep your nose in the Word and your eyes fixed on the One who came to give us life and to give us life to the full. (John 10:10)   Don't miss the blessing in the midst of the mess.  

 ( *After I posted this and sat down, God reminded me they could have been much worse.  So there is the blessing.)

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.