June 27, 2009

Greetings My Friend,

I remember as a kid and young adult that we sang songs about the Holy Spirit and we mentioned Him often in prayer. I never really understood who the Holy Spirit was. To be honest, I never grasped who Jesus was either. God, well I sort of understood who He was. After my divorce, I remember hurting so bad and I attempted to pray. When I met Junior, I remember being thankful that he went to church and seemed to take his faith seriously. Junior encouraged me to grow in my faith.

Junior taught me that I needed to put God first in my life. That was weird to me. Because I loved Junior and I respected him, I began going to God first. The more I went to prayer and began reading my Bible, the more I was able to love Junior. I also began listening to Christian radio. One day on the radio, the announcer invited the listeners to invite Jesus into their lives and hearts. I said the prayer as they prayed it. I figured that I did not have anything to loose and so I invited Jesus to enter into my heart.

I found myself making new choices. I found myself meeting the Holy Spirit and realizing that He was real. As I read my Bible, I found John 15:26, “When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me.” I began to realize that the Holy Spirit was truly my friend too.

Prayer time was getting more precious to me. As I prayed I felt a picture of God in my heart. He was a fatherly looking picture in my mind. A gentle and kind face. I even pictured Jesus in my mind’s eye. Jesus was like a friend and I felt safe telling Him my struggles. The Holy Spirit was hard for me to picture. He had no distinct form for my heart to picture. I believed He was real, but I struggled because I could not make Him fit a mold I wanted.

I began talking to the Holy Spirit during my prayer time. I thanked Him for teaching me. I started to ask Him to teach me to know the “love, the will, the desire of the Father and to weave it into the fabric of my being.”

As I did this I began to see pictures of where God helped me in my life. I began to see where God had been trying to talk to me. When I married my first husband, on my wedding day, I remembered my Dad talking to me before I went to the church. He told me that it wasn’t too late to back out of the wedding. At the church, during the wedding ceremony, I remember feeling very dizzy. I fainted, I was carried out of the service and then I threw up. It was a great story for years to tell. At one point I realized that God had been trying to warn me. When I chose not to listen, well, I got to live with my decision.

Another time after I had a brutal night with my ex-husband, I went to stay with my parents. I stayed for three weeks and then went back to my ex-husband. My Dad asked me for money every day. I had no job, no car and two very small children. I was tired. I was weak. When I asked my ex-husband for money, he told me to come home. On the way home, I was listening to the radio. A psychologist was advising a lady that if she could tolerate her life for a little while longer then she should stay with her husband. She should get some education and a job and then she could leave. Shortly after I that, I went back to school. It became my goal to follow this advice. I had decided that the next time I left I would not have to depend on anybody.

I remember when I met Junior that he felt really comfortable. It was strange to me at how comfortable he felt. We had an engagement period of one week. I wanted to be with him. It got hard to leave him at the end of our dates. I had moved in with my Mom and I was helping her get her house in order for her retirement. I struggled with leaving her to be with Junior because Mom was very sick. The day of our wedding drew near. I was torn. I prayed and prayed for a sign. During my prayer time, I remember feeling a sensation of peace. I felt that I was to go and be married. I got up went to Junior, went to Ohio and got married. That feeling of peace was so wonderful and to be honest – I have never regretted one day being married to Junior. As Mom’s health continued to decline, Junior was at my side, helping me care for her, comforting me and encouraging me.

The Holy Spirit feels very real in my life now. I have quit needing to make Him have a shape in my mind’s eye. I can sense His direction more often now. When I am unsure about a direction I need to take, I ask God to help me to know if it is from Him. I am very grateful to finally know the Holy Spirit and to allow Him to help me in my faith journey. I do not know how to speak in tongues. I have met people who can. Tongues are a prayer language that some people have been gifted with. As of now, I have not been gifted with a prayer language. Still, I sense that God is moving in my life. I have known a peace that prior to this faith journey was foreign to me. God has given me a ministry of writing; I have made friends at Celebrate Recovery and have been able to help survivors of abuse see that we can move out of despair into hope. Best of all, Junior and I are best friends. God is good.

May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you.

Love

Janet

June 20, 2009

Greetings My Friend,

Well, another country lesson has been playing out in my heart. Sometimes, God seems to teach me lessons from nature, from life around me. It has been raining a whole lot on and off for a couple of weeks now. Today, I looked at the sky and thought that they sky looked clear in the direction of my walk. Well, I got rained on. So it goes.

One of the things I have noticed with all the rain is that the river turns brown when it rains a whole lot. It looks muddy and not pretty blue. A day or so after it stops raining; well the river turns blue again. We see it changing back to the pretty blue/gray slowly. Sometimes we see that it is muddy looking in one place and blue in another as it works its way back to the pretty river we first fell in love with. I also notice that bank of the river seems to change as well. Sometimes the bank is covered in water and we watch the water move closer and closer to the vegetation.

The more I looked out at the river, the more I thought about my life in Christ. When I began my serious walk with the Lord, well, the more I wanted to please Him. I learned that my thought life was not pretty. I had a lot of “dirty” thoughts, I had a lot of anger hanging around, I had a whole bunch of unkind thoughts and allowed unkind words – gossip, you name it to come out of my thoughts and turn into words I spoke frequently.

I remember telling my co-workers that I was not all nicey nice in my “other” life. When my daughter was very little I had a major “potty” mouth. I even made up songs which rhymed with a certain four letter word. I have always been a small woman. When my daughter was a baby we lived in a flat. At night I could hear mice scratching on the walls. I worried that they would come out in the open and harm my child. Next to our home was a field – the owner often planted a vegetable garden. The owner did not take great care of the garden, thus mice loved it. Soon, they discovered ways to get into our home. I called the city. A man came out to talk to me about the garden. He was not taking me seriously. He thought I looked too young to be a mother. He focused on me, my age, my child more than the field, the problem with mice I had called about. I got so angry that I started using very bad language. Amazingly, the man started to listen to me then. He contacted the owner of the field and soon the garden was gone. Well, when he responded to my I thought “grown-up” language; I began to use it more often.

As I said earlier, I felt that I needed to clean myself up more. I also remember after a while I wanted to be pure. I had regretted giving my body away so freely. I struggled with knowing if my first husband loved me or my body. It seems like I gave myself to unwholesome things rather rashly and later, I regretted my decisions.

The more my walk with God developed, I again found myself wanting to clean up my act. As the years have passed, I found that God gave me prayers. I can’t thank Him enough, because as I started to pray them, well, I found myself making changes I could not have done on my own.

One of the things that I noticed as I began life with Junior, was that he didn’t seem to live in a constant state of guilt. By Junior’s own admission, he was not a very “clean” guy his whole life. For some reason, I love those “bad” boys. Junior was teaching me without saying a word. The more I watched him, the more I realized that through confession and then in God’s power and strength, I could truly give up my bad habits. I could also not live in a constant state of guilt. I had always thought that when I admitted I was wrong, well then I would have to feel guilty as penitence for my awful act of ugliness.

I found as I walked more and more with Jesus that my life was like that river in the back of our house. It is muddy, un-clean etc. As the river keeps flowing though, the junk soon goes away and a cleaner river will come back. At work, I would “fall of the wagon” from time to time. I’d give into gossip; tell an “off color” story etc. I would find myself confessing it to God and then I found that I was giving in less and less often.

Through the years, I had developed a “dirty” thought life. That was extremely hard for me to let go of. Once my mind entered into that path – well…. I started saying a prayer as soon as I noticed that I was “having” those thoughts. I asked God to take the thought away. To this day, well I am amazed because within a few seconds, those thoughts now disappear.

Am I always perfect now? No! In Jesus though, I find that I choose more wisely now. When I goof up, I find that confession – admitting my wrong and then asking God to help me works wonders for my attitude, my life in general.

What baggage are you holding onto? What sin from the past is haunting you? Is it time to, Let Go, Let God?

May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you.

Love

Janet

June 13, 2009

Greetings My Friend,

I remember a song from my youth. It went something like, “there is a season for every activity under the sun.” Many years later I found that this song was taken from the Bible. It is Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8. “ There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

I don’t know why, but this song has always brought comfort to my soul. I realize that it speaks to the many sides of life we all face and go through. Weep, who has not cried ever in their life? Mourning, again, who has not mourned? At one point we all were children in our parents home, and then we were grown and were on our own. For years, I hated war. I still do. The older I get though; I realize that wars will always be with us. No matter how much we “talk,” there will be war. The older I get, I find myself appreciating the men and women who are willing to fight, so I can walk safely, sleep contently and live life the way I want to.

When I found myself single after 24 years of marriage, I found that I wanted to dance. A group of us “newly” divorced decided that it would be fun, to go out dancing, so I remember asking a gentleman from Singlepoint how to get to a Singles Dance place. This man was gracious and he showed us how to get there. He stayed with us that evening and danced with us. We had so much fun. This man started showing up at several of the dance places we were at and started asking me to dance with him. He told me once that no woman has been able to follow his lead, like I did. Well, we wound up marrying and we still love to dance at wedding and such. Contrary to popular wisdom, divorce is hard, no matter how awful the marriage was. In some respects it is like death. All the hopes and dreams we started with are gone. I also remember struggling to find out “who” I was going to be as a “not married.” So, I was in mourning and then I danced and found a new life.

For many years I knew pain. I grew up in pain. My first marriage knew lots of pain. I even remember being addicted to “drama” for a very long time. I knew how to relate to drama, to pain and I did not know how to relate to peace and contentment. As I began my faith journey though, I found that God was teaching me how to overlook harsh words, how to accept people who did not like me. As I learned how to let go of pain, literally “Let God, Let God,” I found that constant despair was disappearing.

Since I have retired, I have found that my memory is not what it once was. My doctor is checking on me frequently, I may have some sort of dementia or such. At times I am very scared. I repeat myself a whole lot. It is frustrating to those near me. Sometimes I even hear myself telling God how afraid I am. What scares me as well is that if I had to do my job again, well, I couldn’t. I don’t have it there anymore. I found great comfort the other day when I was talking to Junior and he told me that my thinking was getting clearer and more focused. I wanted to kiss him.

Moving has been a long hard process, a process we are still in the middle of. My energy level isn’t what it once was. I have had numerous cases of what I call the “crud.” Sinus infections, ear infections, bronchitis and all of this since we began the process of moving in November. As we settle in though, I find those “God” moments. We felt we were to move. We prayed and this house became available. Daily as we sit and look out our windows, sit on the porch, well, we believe we are where we should be. My energy level is bouncing back, the crud is not occurring as often. My mind finds such peace as I drink in the beauty around me.

I am learning that some days suck, and then there is tomorrow. Once more I learn that it is “hope” that gives me the strength to face the “crud” and then I also have learned that fun, contentment and peace are right around the corner. I guess this brings me back to the song, “There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven.”

May I ask you, where is your “hope?” Do you have “hope?” May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you.

Love

Janet

June 6, 2009

Greetings My Friend,

As we were preparing to move, we had a friend doing some repairs on our home helping us out. He is a man we both look up to. He has a lot of wisdom and when he tells us about things he has run into in his life; well I tend to listen with an extra ear to what he is saying. He was telling about a lady who had accepted Christ and began attending church. She went for many years and was praying that her brother would come to know Jesus. She prayed that prayer for many years. Her brother was killed instantly and it appears that he never accepted Christ. She was angry at God because she had prayed for him and he never came to Christ. She stopped going to church, stopped believing in Jesus. At first when I heard it, I thought “No Duh!.”

I kept reflecting on this story and I realized that I had been praying this prayer for many years now myself. Each day Junior and I pray for our children, our family and friends along with neighbors, co-workers etc. I pray that they would know Jesus, accept his gift of salvation and also for blessing and protection in their lives. There have been many times that we have seen Christ working in their lives. To my amazement, each of our children has a job, have a place to live, etc. God is taking care of those we love dearly in many ways. The more I thought about this story I realized that I thought that “just” because I prayed for them to know Jesus, that they would one day accept Jesus into their hearts.

I have this silly saying I say often. “If I say please, well that means you have to do it.” I found myself realizing that on some level I had that attitude about the ones we love one day coming to know Christ. I prayed for them to accept Christ, and then God would make them accept Salvation. The more I reflected on this story, the more I realized that they may choose not to accept Christ as their Savior. One of the things I have grown to love about God is that He is a gentleman. God does not push Himself on us. We have the choice to accept His love, His grace and allow Him to be the center of our lives. I repeat, we have the choice to accept Jesus as our Savior or not. Well, I have to admit, that one hurt a whole lot. I want the people I love to come to know the Jesus I love. I want them to find the sweet peace He brings to our lives if we allow Him to be the center of our hearts, our lives.

I almost felt God asking me, “Will you love me even if ….. they don’t accept me?” I felt myself struggling before answering God. In the end, I decided to love God first, to be honest though it was a struggle.

I started to reflect on God even more. As I recalled various stories, well, I saw again how God has created each of us with the opportunity to choose. Satan was the most beautiful of all God’s creation and Satan wanted to be God and chose not to follow God. Eve allowed Satan to deceive her and we are the result of that decision. We have choice – God created us to choose, not to be robots.

Through the years I have heard of people praying for loved ones to come to know Jesus. Some people have prayed for decades and then one day that loved one accepted Jesus. Some accepted Jesus many years before they died and went on to have a wonderful walk with the Lord. Others have accepted Jesus on their death beds. I believe that God wants me to continue to pray – even if they have not accepted Jesus. I believe one of the lessons I continually learn from the Lord is to learn how to think of others. Many times when I have thought of something or someone besides myself, well, I’ve been able to grow or to move past pain, a struggle or some road block in my life.

As I reflected on all of this, another thought came to mind as well. A few years ago a co-worker commented how could there be a “God” when people will throw their babies in a dumpster, why wouldn’t God save that very innocent child. I had a hard time responding to that question in my heart, to her. As the years have passed though, I began to see that God gives us a choice and for many of us we choose awful things, to dump a baby in a dumpster… you name it. God gave us a choice. More often than not, we choose what feels good at the moment instead of looking to God and asking Him to help us decide on life. We choose to live life our own way as well and then when we get in a mess, well for many of us that is when we want God to clean up the mess.

At times I find myself grateful having a “before” and a life “after” story. I can see the very unhappy woman I once was and now I am a very content woman. I know pain without hope and now I still often have pain, but I have hope. God is teaching me. As I read my Bible, as I pray and as I fellowship with other believers, I find that my life has moved from constant turmoil, to sweet contentment. Just because I accept Jesus as my Savior, I am not freed from day to day fear and anxiety. In Jesus though, I have hope and hope can really give me strength to face life. Will I ever be perfect? No. I can’t in this life. God will teach me, lead me and in that I find hope.

Life here on earth is a learning process. To me it is a preparation for the “here-after.” If we choose Jesus, well, we will one day be in heaven and working and fellowshipping and what we learn will be used in heaven in some way. If we don’t choose Jesus, life will be a constant struggle, full of pain – pain I cannot imagine. I pray, that each one of you think hard about your opportunity to choose.

May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you.

Love

Janet