Grace Upon Grace

For from His fullness we have all received grace upon grace.  For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.  John 1:16-17

Grace on top of grace

Floods my life,

Hides around the corner

Sent from Jesus.

Lord, here's my crusty lens

Suspecting that Your grace is exhausted,

That I've hit my limit of bad things.

I don't just have Moses, I have You!

You've given me beautiful instructions to live by

And then grace, and then grace again

And then truth to plant deep in me.

I'm utterly taken care of, 

Completely cherished,

With a wild and wonderful future ahead

Where only truth will grow bigger

And our love will take shape.

Please help me Lord 

To clear out the foxes in my vineyard

Robbing me of the fruit You're growing.

May my soil be rich,

Cool and ready for Your seeds.

Here I am, all of me:

Today a friend, coworker, daughter, and fiancé.

May I give and find Your grace upon grace

In my thoughts, motives and words,

And may We be closer tonight than we are this morning.

May I feel You smiling at me today.

Please steady my mind to be infatuated with You

So that everyone can see that You are my Rock, my Deliverer and my Joy.

Path to Peace

Me: "I've been trying to channel my inner-Rhonda as I've been wedding planning the past couple of weeks.  You always kept your cool in an amazing way." 

Rhonda: "Oh, but I wasn't actually calm even if I looked like I was.  I can't tell you how many times I repeated this to myself: 'Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.'

Jesus, my heart is troubled.  I'm worried and anxious.  Thanks for the reminder that You want me to surrender that to You.  I feel the rightness in that.  Thanks for creating us so that we're not designed to carry burdens.  Here they are Lord.  They're petty and small and they're robbing me of joy and peace.  Please take them Lord.  

Marriage Advice from Two Saints

I ran into a couple yesterday whom I hadn't seen since I got engaged and they had some nuggets of wisdom to share about how their marriage has flourished.  Here's what they said:

1. Read 1 Corinthians 13 about every week and examine how you doing loving your spouse  compared to those instructions.
2. When difficult times come, turn to each other not away from each other. 
3. Fill yourself with trust and respect for your spouse.
4. At the end of the day, it's just you and them.  What other people think only matters to a certain extent.  It's far more important what your spouse thinks.

1 Corinthians 13 for my day today 

If I succeed in all my lofty goals in changing the world, excelling in my job, weighing a certain amount, or following God, but if I don't have love, I'm nothing.  If I surrender my life to God's work and become a martyr, but don't have love, I'm blown away chaff.

Love is: patient, kind, rejoices with the truth; bears, believes, hopes and endures all things.

Love isn't: envious or boastful, arrogant or rude, insisting on its own way, irritable or resentful, rejoicing at wrongdoing.

Love is eternal.  Prophecies, languages, knowledge, so much of the world we know will pass away once Perfection appears.  We will grow up and become men and women and so much that we know right now are childish ways that will pass away.  Faith, hope and love will remain with us, and the greatest is love.

Chairos: A Moment of Glory

"Why does God make Himself shine in certain ordinary or tragic moments and not in others?  I don't know.  All I know is that God intrudes into my daily story in extraordinary ways.  The ancient Greeks knew two kinds of time: chronos and chairos.  Chronos is clock time--the grind of daily routine.  Chairos is a moment of glory--an epiphany when God shows up and begins a new epoch, a new life."  Dan Allender in The Healing Path

Why does God make Himself shine in some moments but not others?  Or are we just missing Him in our smallness and He's actually there?

My favorite moment in a classical song is hearing the violins rise above the rest and wander through their melody.  But were I then to say that the best song then would be all violins all the time, I'd not be a mature listener.  The rest of the instruments create drama and tell their own stories to weave into the bigger story.  The violins are the cream, but we need the rest of the ingredients to make a whole meal.

God is the Conductor and Author of every story played out in my life.  In that sense, He's in every millisecond of my life on a thousand levels.  But chairos time is rare for me--my violin time where I see God clearly and I'm moved to freshly discover and enjoy Him.  My life sounds mostly like chronos time, the gentle thrumming of the flutes and the rise and fall of the piano.  The violins are playing, but they don't often hush the rest for a solo.

In Heaven it will be all chairos time when we get to experience God clearly from all 5 (or however many we have by that point) senses.  That will sprout us into something entirely different and incredible.  In the meantime, today my role is to enjoy the whole orchestra while it plays.  It was written and planned up by our King and He's excited to show it to us.  It's ok for me to lean forward itching to hear the violins, but the whole piece is the masterpiece, not just the chairos time.

Joseph's Tears

(Italicized Scripture is Genesis 45:1-8 in the NLT)

The tension grew strong enough to break something inside Joseph.  The tears that were on their way disintegrated his sloppy pretend game as he looked at his fearful, confused brothers.  Joseph could stand it no longer.  There were many people in the room, and he said to his attendants, "Out, all of you!"  So he was alone with his brothers when he told them who he was.  The moment he'd pined for as a slave for 22 years had finally come.  Then he broke down and wept.  He wept so loudly the Egyptians could hear him, and word of it quickly carried to Pharaoh's palace.  All at once his mind used tears to hammer out the pain of slavery, the deeper pain he saw in his brothers' guilt, the goodness of God to hurt him so deeply, and the surrender to that good God who hurts to save.  Tears brought to outward hysteria but inward healing.

"I am Joseph!" he said to his brothers, feeling the foreign familiarity of his Hebrew name.  "Is my father still alive?  He looked around at these men.  Before their faces showed the fear of impending slavery, now he'd struck the harder blow by revealing their 22-year-old covered up sin.  With one sentence he'd forced a light on the chain in their darkest place, and they were undone.  But his brothers were speechless!  They were stunned to realize that Joseph was standing there in front of them.  Joseph's compassion grew warm for these brothers and his tears shallowed enough for him to speak.

"Please come closer," he said to them, growing even stronger in his love for these men.  So they came closer, bewildered and without any walls left inside.  And he said again, "I am Joseph, your brother, whom you sold into slavery in Egypt.  But don't be upset, and don't be angry with yourselves for selling me to this place.  It was God who sent me here ahead of you to preserve your lives.  This famine that has ravaged the land for two years will last give more years, and there will be neither plowing nor harvesting.  God has sent me ahead of you to keep you and your families alive and to preserve many survivors.  So it was God who sent me here, not you!  And He is the one who made me an adviser to Pharaoh--the manager of his entire palace and the governor of all Egypt.  That day Joseph finally got to communicate the work of forgiveness and perspective that God had been forging in him for decades.  Now the Lord was turning to the brothers to begin his healing work, first by saving them from the famine, and then by being gracious enough to shine His light on the sin that held them captive for so long.  Would they respond by walking blinkingly into the blinding light or by running from it?  How would you have responded?

Take a Moment to Remember

I'm in a season where my mind is so full that it tends to stop whatever I want it to think about to replay a recent memory or to remind me of something I need to do soon.  That's made it difficult to focus in my times with the Lord and reading the Bible has been tricky.

I'm quick to want to condemn this season as one where I'm wandering away from the Lord, but when I think about it from a bigger picture view, I'm not sure that reasoning holds up.  A week's worth of life has been crammed into the last three days.  My birthday, my roommate's bachelorette party, two weddings, being a bridesmaid, having family in town, getting time with my fiancé--the Lord has put all of this into a short little jaunt of a weekend.  And yesterday marked only 2 more months till our wedding.  My brain is overloaded with remembering the past with delight, thinking forward to our wedding with anticipation and jitters, and trying to get a handle on what my to do list looks like.  Were I the sinless version of myself, I don't think those events happening on the same weekend would have changed.  But the way I reacted to each part would definitely have been way better.

As I've been fighting to stay focused on the Lord this morning, I remembered this line from a song I like:  "Take a moment to remember who God is and who I am.  There You go, lifting my load again." 

Who God is: King, never forgets anything (except our forgiven sin), the Architect of time, my Savior, the One who's for me, the ultimate fulfillment of all my desires, the Lord of heaven and of earth, brought Jeff and me together, can do anything He wants, delights in us, hates sin, Poet, most important, the Center of my story, wants to take our burdens

Who I am: sheep, led by the Lord, the Lord's daughter, part of the Bride of Christ, in the 'already but not yet' part of the story, not superman, not invincible, not able to do more than I'm able, tired, nervous, excited, not the center of my life, not built to carry burdens

Lord, I need Your help to stay afloat these next two months.  Here's the wedding and all the plans tied in.  I surrender them to You.  Please help me to listen well to how You want me to live and plan and delegate and dream and remember.  Please quiet me down so I can hear You.  Thank You for the wedding that You gave to David and Britt last night and James and Kristin the night before.  Thank You for letting us be a part of that.  You're so good to us Lord!  May we find You today and stay close.

Assertiveness

I recently read this little book called Speak Up: Christian Assertiveness and it's redefined my entire thinking for how to behave in front of people.  Today I need to relearn some of the truths, so hopefully we can all be learning together.  Here are some of the treasures I've picked up from it.  Hopefully they bless you even a hint of how much they've blessed me.

• Assertiveness is acting based on weighing your thoughts and wants and the other person's equally.  It walks the perfect line between being passive and being aggressive. 
• Jesus was very assertive.  It's not a mark of righteousness to be passive.  Doormats aren't Christlike.
• When you don't talk about something that bothers you, most of the time you're unknowingly hurting whoever's affected even when you're trying to protect them.  Oftentimes you start to punish them by behaving in a confusing way that both you and them aren't controlling.
• Being pressured into saying yes is oftentimes worse for the other person too.
• Life happens in the hard stuff.  Those who don't share about their lives on a deep level with people are like players who sit on the bench.  Ultimately bench sitters don't play the game. 
• Aggressiveness is acting based on your own feelings alone, and that's never the goal.  Subtle aggression expresses anger unclearly or in a backhanded way to someone.  That's never the goal.  I shouldn't have ulterior motives in what I say beyond the obvious.
• Assertiveness is a risk of faith. 
• Sometimes it's hard to decipher what my thoughts and feelings are, and it's more confusing still when I know that my feelings don't seem right.  Oftentimes that's because there's a flaw in my self-talk (the arguments I make to myself about anything).  We improve our relationships, behavior and future when we closely monitor the logic our self-talk.  Good self-talk keeps God in the picture and solves problems creatively and hopefully. 
• Our body gives stress signals (clenched hands, tense shoulders, crying, etc.) pointing to an emotion that clue us in that something's wrong.  Everyone's signals are different and it's helpful to be watching for them.
• This sentence is the bread and butter for jumping from passiveness to assertiveness:  "When ___, I feel ____.  I'd like ____."   What an effective tool to bring someone else into our heart and mind.
• Having trouble asking for help at an appropriate time is a mark that I'm not behaving assertively.  A correct request is concise, direct and pleasant, fully giving the other person the freedom to say yes or no.
• Escape is a terrible conflict method.  
• Solve problems by 1. looking inward to see how I add to the problem, 2. using 'I messages' where the statements are subjected around me, 3. summarizing the problem, 4. brainstorming potential solutions, and then 5. evaluating and implementing. 

I am growing to love these truths because I see how they've already directly blessed me again and again.  May they be the same for you :).

The Sheep of His Pasture

Shout with joy to the Lord, all the earth!  Worship the Lord with gladness. Come before Him, singing with joy.  Acknowledge that the Lord is God!  He made us, and we are His.  We are His people, the sheep of His pasture.  Enter His gates with thanksgiving; go into His courts with praise.  For the Lord is good.  His unfailing love continues forever, and His faithfulness continues to each generation.  (Psalm 100)

We are His people, the sheep of His pasture.

• We, those singing this psalm, the people of Israel.
• We've become the people of Israel through Jesus.  
• We--those who are in Christ.

We are His people, the sheep of His pasture.

• Not 'were when we were good enough' or 'will be when we get our act together.'  Are.  Present tense implying right at this moment.  

We are His people, the sheep of His pasture.

• His.  I remember maybe 3 months into dating Jeff, he wrote me a letter titled, 'My Jessey' and my heart stopped for about a week.  It's powerful to be so close to someone that they start taking ownership of you.  
• We are the Lord's, we are His.  We're very close to Him, so much that we're His special possession.

We are His people, the sheep of His pasture.

• People who share a commonality, namely knowing Christ.  We're in His people group not because we were born into it or worked our way up into it, but because He chose us and we can't wriggle out.

We are His people, the sheep of His pasture.

• not 'a', 'the.'  We comprise the whole group of sheep.  There aren't other sheep. 

We are His people, the sheep of His pasture.

• Sheep need a Shepherd.  They're exceptionally unintelligent and vulnerable compared to other animals.  They don't have a way to protect themselves agains predators, except for the Shepherd.  They forget easily and fall back into the same sins from years ago.  They worry and fret for sport and tangle up their wool and forget to follow the Shepherd.  Sheep need a Shepherd.

We are His people, the sheep of His pasture.

• 'of'--what a freeing preposition!  Not sheep 'in' His pasture which might imply that you an wander right back out of it.  'Of' is used like David was 'of' the tribe of Benjamin.  There's no wriggling out of that for David, and there's no way for us to wander out of His pasture.  It's where we belong.

We are His people, the sheep of His pasture.

• When something is the Lord's, He's in it.  So we are with Him in His pasture.  
• He is kind and loving and good and right, and so is His pasture.  
• He takes our fears and stress and sin and switches them for peace and joy and trust.

We are His people, the sheep of His pasture.

• Pasture--the land where we eat and grow!  
• The safe home base.  
• We are at home with the Lord.   

We are His people, the sheep of His pasture. 

Remain Vital & Green

But the godly will flourish like palm trees and grow strong like the cedars of Lebanon.  For they are transplanted to the Lord's own house.  They flourish in the courts of our God.  Even in old age they will still produce fruit; they will remain vital and green.  Psalm 92:12-14

Beautiful.  Haven't we all known people like this?  They don't spoil; instead they sweeten with time.  They grow stronger and more alive.  This is what the Lord wants for His kids.  The best of life isn't over when I turn 30 or get wrinkles or kids go to college.  I will still flourish because I'm the Lord's plant and He cultivates me.  Even in deserts, I can remain green and dripping with sap.  The Lord enables me to do what otherwise would be impossible.  I love that.  Life only gets better for those who know the Lord.

What joy for those who follow the Lord!  Let's walk in that today.  Big big hope.

Giving & Receiving

I was trying to explain why I am so allergic to asking for help.  "I don't like inconveniencing other people, and that's been especially apparent in planning the wedding.  I cringe when I ask for help."

Her response stung with truth.  "It sounds like you don't believe that people might actually want to help you, but rather that you're forcing people to do something out of obligation."

I'd never say "Oh, thanks for your offer, but I don't actually believe that you're genuine." in the face of someone offering to help, yet when I study my true reasoning, that's more often than not my working logic.  What an ugly judgment for me to make!  That's offensive and wrong in me.

Life is so simple when I'm self-sufficient, when I can totally manage problems on my own.  My favorite way to interact with people is when I'm problem-less and can be freed up to help other people undistracted.  Somehow though, it doesn't seem like the Lord had that paradigm in mind when He designed community.

The Lord is opening my eyes to the ugliness of not receiving and giving equally.  I become calcified high up away from everyone when I don't share what's hard or ask for help.  And my plan to help as many people as I can backfires as people realize that I'm not going to open up and I lose their trust.

Here's a more accurate logic that I'd like to adopt:

• The Lord loves me and anyone I interact with oceans and oceans deep.
• He eagerly wants to bless us. 
• He's designed community so He can bless us by working through other people. 
• I'm receptive to the Lord's blessing when I talk about what hurts or ask for help.
• When I'm open, I create a safe environment to spur someone else to share what hurts too.  
• Then we can be the hands and feet of Jesus to each other to encourage and help. 
• That blesses both of us as we both receive and give. 
• So I'm blessed by the Lord more, and so is someone else. 

Jesus, I pray You'd straighten out this twistedness in me.  Please plant this better logic in me, and may it grow up into a healthy tree that I can sit under the rest of my life.  No more of this ugly apart-ness.  You're the only One with no weakness.  When I'm too scared to receive, You're the One I'm rejecting.  I pray I could see through these opportunities to You.  You're behind each one, eagerly excited to help.  I want that Lord.  I'm sorry I've been so blind.  Thanks for Your patience with me.  Thanks for showing me this truth today.  

A Prize

Ladies--ponder this with me for a few minutes.  It's something I've been learning about the incredible men in our lives.  

Did you know that men are more visual than we are?  I've heard that concept for as long as I can remember, but now that I've seen it in practice, it's come alive and I think I finally see it.  Our appearance in every way is a powerful gift to our men to either honor them or not.  

I've grew up thinking that effortless beauty was the best kind.  So the concept of a man being blessed by my beauty was mortifying because in my mind, if I didn't wake up with that beauty first thing in the morning, then I didn't have what it takes to please him. 

Thankfully, the Lord and my wonderful Jeff have helped me see the truth that I had painfully twisted.  God is so good--there is freedom in the truth.  The game changer for me as I've thought about my beauty affects Jeff is this--what men are blessed most by is our effort.  What a beautiful clarification.  That means I don't need to be paralyzed by my inadequacy until I'm a certain size, or until I finally meet the standard for perfection.  If Jeff can tell that I've invested time and effort into being beautiful to him, he's deeply blessed.

Jeff takes me on these extravagant dates where I sometimes accidentally find out that he's done all this research and planning on the front end.  Seeing the effort and heart that went into the time might be my favorite part of the date.  It deeply blesses me.  It almost doesn't matter if we see any whales on our whale watching tour, or if the potatoes are slightly burned when I know that in his joy, he's cooked them for me and he never cooks.  In the same way with my appearance, if he can see that I have been delighted to invest time and heart into it, that's the key.

So I'm on the road to meeting my standard for beauty, but he's right there with me and he's happy and blessed even right now when I'm still far from where I want to be.  What a treasure to know a new way to bless this man!  I want his smile and to be his prize.  I want to be the best version of myself for him.  What a huge blessing (aka how like the Lord) that Jeff doesn't wait to accept me till I've finally hit perfection, he's blessed by me now.

Following Dreamers

Here's a text I sent my mom yesterday about my fiancé Jeff.  What an incredible man.  He's so excited to explore new cities together, to make nights at home a priority, and other random, beautiful things about our future.  I love how his imagination is more innovative than mine.  I've been too excited to sleep at times just based on my own dreams, but now hearing his daydreams take me to a whole new level.  74 more days till we get married, and I can't wait.  

So of course, as good blessings do, this makes me ponder the Lord.  He holds my future.  He is able and excited to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or imagine.  He is constantly up to something, weaving the events in my life toward His glory and my good.  His dreams for me are incomparably greater than my dreams for me.  

Jeff's visionary leadership for the two of us "makes me feel so lucky to be following him."  Stand still my heart!  Take time to remember how the Lord's leadership is far beyond Jeff's.  I am the most blessed person on the planet to get to be taken care of by the God who gives gifts spanning eternity.  Now follow Him today, with all that you have.  With every breath that I take, may I be breathing out praise.  

The Gospel Reorients Me

We never never never grow out of the gospel.  It's so good to ruminate in it afresh this morning inside this Titus passage.

"Jesus gave His life to free us from every kind of sin, to cleanse us, and to make us His very own people, totally committed to doing good deeds."  Titus 2:14

Jesus gave His life

Jesus didn't grasp on to His equality with God in heaven.  Bountiful riches, glory, and direct fellowship with the other two Members of the Trinity in heaven, all totally let go.  Instead He made Himself nothing.  He came to the earth as a Servant, a little Boy in a poor family.  I wonder if He remembered what He left as He grew up.  I can't imagine the contrast--either the riches He left or the environment He entered.  And He grew up and went even further by choosing to be obedient to death, even death in the worst possible way.

To free us from every kind of sin, to cleanse us

Sin is the worst plague humankind has ever experienced.  All of us have it.  We all breathe sin in and cough it out everyday.  It's so consumed us that we don't even know what life is without it.  Jesus knew that our situation is dire and there's no cure on this earth.  That's why Jesus came.  His insane choice to become nothing and die has freed us from every kind of sin.  His sacrifice cleanses us.  His blood for ours.

And to make us His very own people

What love!  He came to rescue us from this darkness and bring us to Himself.  He wants us and one day, He's coming for us and will take us off with Him, fully perfected and without sin.  We're His.  That's the most important thing about me now.  More than being Jeff's fiancé, a Woodward or an American, I'm Jesus.'

Totally committed to doing good deeds.

My identity has changed and so has my purpose.  Jesus has loved me with sacrifice beyond my imagination's scope.  He's given me Himself to make me His very own.  That's my future.  It's secure and unchanging.  I'm finished working for approval.  Now I'm freed up to love Him back.  Now I'm freed up to do what makes Him smile.

Psalm 85 - A Beautiful Bend

The son of Korah who wrote Psalm 85 started off in a prayer much like the one that's in my heart today.  "Restore us again, God our Savior, and put away Your displeasure toward us...  Will you not revive us again that Your people may rejoice in You?  Show us Your unfailing love, Lord, and grant us Your salvation."  Yes!  What a gift to read these Psalms and find that they help me define what's happening in me. This is just what I want--my heart beats strangely these days.  I don't feel close to the Lord much of the time.  I feel this quiet deadness in me.  Whether it's sin or a tough season or my current chemical makeup, "Restore us again" is a beautiful prayer for me today.  

The author did the vulnerable thing by admiting the problem and adjuring the Lord to help.  What happens next?  I've unlearned this hundreds of times, but I confess that my heart still expects a disappointed lecture from the Lord in moments like this.  But that's not what happens.  The author quieted down and listened to the Lord's response, glistening in our Bible:  "I listen to what God the Lord says;" and then everything changes.  Now the Psalm bends in a beautiful way as the Lord takes the pen.  Our God is an impassioned Poet.  

"He promises peace to His people, His faithful servants...Surely his salvation is near those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land.  Love and faithfulness meet together, righteousness and peace kiss each other.  Faithfulness springs forth from the earth, and righteousness looks down from heaven.  The Lord will indeed give what is good, and our land will yield its harvest.  Righteousness goes before him and prepares the way for his steps."

The Lord handles these concepts (righteousness, truth, love, peace, salvation, glory) in such a friendly way because He's the Creator of them.  They're His paint.  The psalmist was asking earlier for the Lord's love and salvation.  The Lord responds by using those two as a base coat to then add the imagery and color and future and hope you read above.  Beautiful.  The Lord writes like a mountain top view.  Sometimes you just stop and look and breathe it in.

The Lord is so much more than I remember Him to be.  More merciful, hopeful, loving, assuring, alive and beautiful.  What a Lord I get to serve.

Trust through Waves

It's 3am and the waves are spilling into the boat.  The disciples are terrified and doing anything possible to stay on board.  Whoever saw Him first initially doubted his eyes, but eventually reality triumphed.  "There's someone there" he said dumbfounded, not loud enough to compete with the crashing waves.  Then again, loud enough to expose his fear, "SOMEONE'S THERE!!" pointing to the black distance.  A figure was steadily approaching, hiking on top of the waves.  The disciples' fear transferred from the waves to the Person on top of the waves.  They froze.  "IT'S A GHOST!"  At once they heard Him reply from the blackness: "Be not afraid.  I AM here."  

Peter responded strong and afraid when the rest couldn't, "Lord, if it's You, give me the command to walk out to You on these waves."

"Yes, come."

Out he went, surrendering himself to the very waves he'd been thrashing against for hours.  But he found solid footing on this lake water, his only trick being his trust.  His eyes were on this Jesus who isn't overwhelmed by waves, He stands on top of them.  Peter walked toward this God-Man.  But to his right came a huge swell, and on his left he heard a gust of wind.  Instinct and fear pushed their way back into his heart and muscled out his trust.  He looked away from his Jesus and sank, falling into his surging doubt.  "Save me" was all he could get out.  Immediately, at that very instant, Jesus' hand was right there, helping him up.

As Peter stood, Jesus looked right into Peter's eyes and said, "Peter you have so little faith.  Why did you doubt me?"  Disappointment, love and unending peace was in Jesus eyes.  Peter was shaken and undone.  

The waves and wind that no one was paying me attention to anymore died as the two men climbed back into the boat.

---  

I wonder if Peter thought Jesus may have misunderstood his doubt.  He might have thought, "I wasn't doubting You, Jesus.  I was doubting the idea of walking on water compared with those waves and that wind."  That's what I've thought when I doubt.  It's the situation, not Jesus.  But that's not what Jesus said, and He's always right.  When I see the waves and then my fear conquers my trust, I am ultimately doubting the Person I trust, doubting Jesus.  

Deep sorrow fills me when I consider how many times I've let doubt rule me.  I am a huge doubter, and that has lasting pain on my relationships with God and with people.  No more.  

Let's keep walking on water, you and me, and even when we hear the rushing waves and scary futures and unanswered questions.  Let's keep looking straight at Jesus, our God above the waves.

Cherished

Thanks for loving me Lord through this wonderful man named Jeff.  The way he cares for me and cherishes me is beyond anything I've ever experienced.  It helps me understand how You cherish me.  Now I see everything differently.  Build us up Lord.  Please protect us from Satan's schemes.  May we care for what You've built in us as new parents care for their baby.  I can't believe I get to be so blessed.

Windows & Walls

"What can I offer the Lord for all He has done for me?  I will lift up the cup of salvation and praise the Lord's name for saving me."  Psalm 116:12-13

Love has to get out of a person.  Otherwise it's a bird thrashing against a window.  It has to get out and express itself.  Otherwise it does what caged things do, none of which are what I want for the love in me.  This blog is my open window.  The Lord has loved me with a galaxy, and I want to let this little love of mine out toward Him.

Something magical happens when I type out a thought.  It falls out, then gets up and looks itself over for the first time.  Then more quickly than I'd guess, after it walks around for a little while, then it settles in as a brick in my wall of understanding.  As I'm typing out these thoughts, my understanding is growing.  I'm learning right alongside whomever reads this.  I'm excited for what the Lord will show us together.