Glaringly Human

I am all about being real for the glory of God and purpose of helping others in their daily walk with the Lord. (This is your disclaimer…If you do not want to read about reality, please stop now.) By “being real” I mean sharing day to day life, good times and bad, victories and struggles. We grow as Christians by sharing with each other through the “not so perfect times of life” and how God deals with us during these times. That is what I intend on doing in this post.

 

God has allowed me a couple times lately to see how glaringly human I am. (No, I am not proud of admitting this.) Both of these situations included situations dealing with other individuals and my girls which resulted in me losing my temper…I mean really lost my red-headed temper! I know those of you who know me have a really hard time believing this (ha, ha). It does not happen very often but when it does…well…it’s not pretty, nor am I proud of it.

 

Tonight I came home feeling horrible for not being a better witness for Jesus and thanking God that I didn’t have any Christian bumper stickers on my car. Ugh, I REALLY blew it. As I was cooking dinner and praying, asking God to forgive my ugly, public tangent, God began to speak to my heart. A song came to mind first that I have not heard for years…Does He Still Feel The Nails. The first line says “Does He still feel the nails every time I fail?” I am sure I pounded in a couple a bit deeper today. L I continued to pray still not feeling much better. He gently said, “Candy, you know how bad your heart hurts when your girls do not listen or do the direct opposite of what you advise them? My heart hurts worse when you choose to do/act in a way that is not honoring to Me.”

 

I continued to pray…feeling very humbled and saddened. I was asking Him to forgive me for my blatant sin. The next part is the part that always amazes me. God began to speak again. “Candy, you know how you can not stay angry at your girls very long? Well, I made a way through Jesus so that I givI am all about being real for the glory of God and purpose of helping others in their daily walk with the Lord. (This is your disclaimer…If you do not want to read about reality, please stop now.) By “being real” I mean sharing day to day life, good times and bad, victories and struggles. We grow as Christians by sharing with each other through the “not so perfect times of life” and how God deals with us during these times. That is what I intend on doing in this post.

 

 

 

God has allowed me a couple times lately to see how glaringly human I am. (No, I am not proud of admitting this.) Both of these situations included situations dealing with other individuals and my girls which resulted in me losing my temper…I mean really lost my red-headed temper! I know those of you who know me have a really hard time believing this (ha, ha). It does not happen very often but when it does…well…it’s not pretty, nor am I proud of it.

 

 

 

Tonight I came home feeling horrible for not being a better witness for Jesus and thanking God that I didn’t have any Christian bumper stickers on my car. Ugh, I REALLY blew it. As I was cooking dinner and praying, asking God to forgive my ugly, public tangent, God began to speak to my heart. A song came to mind first that I have not heard for years…Does He Still Feel The Nails. The first line says “Does He still feel the nails every time I fail?” I am sure I pounded in a couple a bit deeper today. L I continued to pray still not feeling much better. He gently said, “Candy, you know how bad
e you grace even when you do not deserve it. You are forgiven. Tomorrow is a new day; try again then. Wow, what an amazing Jesus we have! He loves us no matter how often or how big we screw up! We ask for forgiveness and He grants it and says “Lets do better together tomorrow.”

 

Does this mean we sin more so we can get more grace? No it means when we mess up and truly repent, He forgives us. I am always amazed that God loves me/you so much that He sacrificed his son, Jesus, for us. I know if it came to one of my girls or someone else, my girls would win out every time. Yet God willingly gave his son, Jesus, for us even at our worst. I am not perfect, ha I am not even close… nor do I claim to be. I am a work in progress until the day Jesus comes back or He calls me home, whichever comes first. Tomorrow is a new day and Jesus and I will handle it together. Let me encourage all of you. We all make mistakes and bad choices that sometimes result in sin. Turn around, ask for forgiveness and move on. Tomorrow is a new day.

The Blessing Day

This is a story written a couple of years ago when we were going through the loss of our home and how God provided even through what most people would think was the darkest time of our lives. I felt compelled to share this story today to give God the glory He deserves and/or encourage someone who may need it right now.

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I would love to share how the Lord has blessed us ...at the pinnacle of discouragement when Harry lost his job and we found out we had to vacate our house within approximately 5 weeks when I was ready to give up, a client of mine showed up at our door and gave us a quarter of beef to put in our freezer. It was as if God was telling us, "I know things look out of control, but I will provide!" Harry found a prospective job but he had to add hazmat and tanker to his CDL license which he had no problem passing. He also had to wait on a background check for clearance to haul hazardous materials which we are still waiting for, however, the Lord has provided and I know He will provide in that area as well.

The following week we were looking for a place to live without success when we were told to call a local landlord to see if he had anything open. He had a small ranch style home which had not been advertised that we made an appointment to see the following day (Tuesday). The house is 1 block from Devan's school and 3 blocks from Brianna's school. Tuesday morning we had to go pick up our beef expecting to have to pay processing for the meat only to find out even that was paid for! 100 pounds of meat to put in our freezer free of charge. Harry had an IRA from his job that he thought had around $2000.00 in and called to see about getting some to help with moving expenses. The agent said he could but would be penalized 25% for withdrawing the money. He told them to take out $1000.00 and we would have $750.00 to help us move because we really did not have any choice. We went to see the house and liked it. We were completely honest about our situation with the landlord and he was very understanding and offered to give us the rest of November to paint and get ready to move, free of charge and then have our rent actually begin on Dec 1st. He also agreed to let us have our 2 dogs and cat which was very important to our girls and had been a roadblock. We left and told him we would call him later in the day. We did like the house but was not sure if we would have enough to pay the deposit and first months rent because we only had $1000.00 put back and needed $1250.00. We came home trying to figure out how to work out the extra money needed for our 1st months rent and deposit. We had $1000.00 cash at home and I know it was exactly $1000.00 because I had counted it twice the day before. Harry went to get the money and came back out with $1200.00...no I did not miscount! We had the extra $50.00 in our checking account...another blessing. About a half hour later the agent from the IRA called to tell us we could get $1000.00 penalty free because of our situation and that he had $5000.00 in there rather than the $2000.00 he thought he had! The church offered to pay our utility deposits for our new house. We went back to Napoleon and paid the deposit and signed the lease for the house...needless to say! Later the same day we found out the mortgage company would give us relocation money because we would willingly vacate the property without them having to go to court to evict us by December 12th and remove all of our belongings rather than leave stuff on the property...another HUGE blessing! YES, THIS ALL HAPPENED IN THE SAME DAY!

There have been other blessings as well. We found a mistinted 5 gallon bucket of paint at Lowe's that was the exact color we needed that was originally $105.00 marked down to $25.00. We found a family that had lost their home in a fire and was able to give them a bunch of things we needed to get rid of anyway. There are others also but they are not coming to mind right now. We are blessed daily and praising God for His goodness! Thank you for your prayers!

Childlike Faith

I was doing my Bible study the other morning while my great-niece Carrey and my daughter Myranda were chatting in the kitchen. They were chatting about a snowball fight she had had with her daddy. Myranda asked Carrey who won and if she had fun playing with her Daddy (my nephew, Josh).... I could hear the smile and pure joy in little Carrey's voice when she said, "Yeah, it was FUN! I won because Daddy surrendered!" Myranda asked Carrey, "Do you know what surrendered means?" Carrey said, "Yup, it means put your hands behind your back!" "How do you know that, Myranda asked?" Carrey said, "Uncle Jarret and me play and he tells me 'surrender, put your hands behind your back!', so surrender means put your hands behind your back."

Do you remember playing these childhood games where you willingly gave in to someone because you trusted them and were having the time of your life playing? Well this put my mind into overdrive and I got to thinking...Think about one of your fondest childhood memories of playing this type of game and then continue to read with that in the back of your mind...

I bet that is how God would like us to picture surrendering to Him. Think about it...if we were completely surrendered to God with our hands behind our backs, we could not grab anything back that we had given Him. How often have we give a problem, trial, person or dream to God and then have snatched it back within minutes, hours or days? How many times have we prayed about something and God has given us an answer we do not want to hear so we kept praying for a different one? How many of us have prayed for a vision from God and then been too scared of what He had shown to us, so we backed off? How many times has the Holy Spirit spoken  to us and we did not respond immediately to Him because we thought, You want me to do WHAT?!

I think you get the picture by now. I know I have been guilty of these and more. What if we had the kind of childlike faith that put our hands behind our backs when God said, "Surrender! Follow Me and let Me lead! Be My captive and do what I tell you. Trust Me. You can trust ME. I love you and want what is best for you. I will not hurt you!" What if we truly gave things to God, left them in his hands and just followed his lead completely surrendered?

All the statements I made above are true...straight from God's Word! He loves you (John 3:16, Romans 5:6-8). He wants you to surrender willingly. He will not take your life forcefully. You have to let Him in (Revelation 3:20, James 4:8). He does not want you to be fearful or worry (2 Timothy 1:7, Matthew 6:25). He wants to lead you and will seek you out when/if you get lost (Matthew 18:12-14). He wants to give you good things! (Matthew 7: 7-11). Even the times of life that are difficult and hard He will use for good if you allow Him to (Romans 8:28).

So what if we had childlike faith? I guarantee we would have more peace, life would be more fun and we would be much more content in our daily lives. Does it mean we wouldn't have problems? Nope! Would we deal with our problems differently? We sure would, because we would have a Friend and a Confidant that we knew was working things out with our best interest in mind. How do I know all these things? I know them because I have experienced them! My Friend and Confidant walks through each and every day with me. Believe me there have been some rough ones, but He has never left me! I do not know His entire plan but I know He has my best interest at heart. The best but certainly not least is my eternal promise of spending eternity in heaven with Him.

Try on some childlike faith today. Have some fun and just wait to see what God will do. I can promise it will be more than you can ever imagine!

Keep Smiling! :)

This is Carrey the day she and Daddy had their snowball fight. Look at that grin!!!!

A Mustard Seed of Faith

As I was browsing Facebook this morning I came across a posted pic that sent my mind reeling. "I have a mustard seed and I am not afraid to use it". How many times have you been in that situation? Your situation is huge...your faith is dwindling? I personally have been there more times than I care to admit.

Matthew 17:20 New Living Translation (NLT) ²⁰ “You don’t have enough faith,” Jesus told them. “I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible.^[a]”

One of the most vivid in my mind occurred a couple years ago when the reality that we were going to lose our home became...well very painfully real! This is the home that we had lived in for 13 years, raised our girls in, had birthday parties in, I had run my business from, we had overcome many trials in, God had given me a ministry vision for...you get the idea. This is a home we had really lived life in for a major portion of our marriage. We had many victories and happy times in this house. We had overcome many trials in this house and we had numerous beautiful memories made in this house.

I was hurting, angry, and my faith was "numbing, fading". I had more questions than I had answers. Being my type A self, I hated life being so out of my control! I was sick, physically incapable of doing anything to prevent the situation and I hated it. Not only that, but I felt very alone. I did not feel allowed to be real with my feelings and emotions because I did not anyone to think I was not dealing with the situation in a way that was Christian and glorified God.

I forced myself to get out of my house on a Friday night to attend a Women's Ministry event at my church because I knew that I would set home and cry otherwise. As I was driving there that night I was listening to the Superchick's song "Beauty From Pain" over and over trying to convince myself the words in the song were true. I started yelling out my van window at God (yes, I said yelling!). "Really Lord, will there be hope? Will there be beauty from this, because I sure can't see it? All I see and feel are pain!"

I was going around a curve and looked out my driver's window to see the most beautiful section of rainbow in the sky! There was no reason to have a rainbow in the sky... God had put it there just for me! (Really He loves us that much to put small sections of rainbow in the sky just for us, just when we need them.) This of course made me cry harder but laugh and smile at the same time!  He had taken the only mustard seed of faith I had at that moment and used it to tell me He had everything under control and my family would be ok, even after this huge earthly transition and loss. I went on to the event that night and had a wonderful time with my sisters in Christ that I desperately need to have.

Beauty from pain? Yes, there has been. My family did move into another home that He provided. We survived the trial. We made new memories in a different home (and then in another better, bigger home). Notice I said "home" not house. A house is made of the wood, brick & mortar. A home is made up of the people who live in it. I grew stronger in my faith. I knew God had never left me. I knew that God had things in control when I felt like everything was out of control. And I pray I modeled these things for my daughter's well enough that they grew through the trial as well.

A mustard seed of faith? I pray that I have more than a mustard seed's worth most days. I know, however, that when or if I am down to that mustard seed again, that He will take it... and use it... and grow it beyond what my human imagination can comprehend. God is always faithful! If we give Him our mustard seed, He can make gallons of faith!

Beauty From Pain by Superchick      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-GPbYcTDbQ

Why Do I Smile?

 I love to smile! Smiles can brighten your day or another person's day, make you feel better on the inside, and make you more beautiful on the outside. Smiles tell people how you are feeling (or how you want them to think you are feeling). These are things smiles help with, however you will notice the title of this post is "Why Do I Smile?" The answer to this is simple...I smile because I have Jesus as my Savior! Jesus loves me and would have died on the cross even if I were the only person that needed saving! (It's true...He would have done that for you too!) How amazing is that to think about!?! Can you even imagine being loved that much? Sometimes I can't. To think that Jesus would have died just for little ol me is overwhelming at times. To know and feel that kind of love is the reason I smile every day regardless of the circumstances in my life. Being loved by my Lord and loving Him in return IS the reason I smile EVERY day!