Wake up my Heart!

You guys. It is a messed up world. It is a fallen world. There is badness/sadness just about everywhere I look. One of my absolute favorite fellow college orientation leaders was on a canoe trip this past weekend, stepped off a sand bar, got caught up in a current and drowned. Drowned. Leaving behind a wife and 2 kiddos. I have friends going through cancer and divorce and the drama that goes beyond what one would expect in normal day-to-day life. And all of that is enough to overwhelm a person. Completely. The other day for a moment I was just that. Overwhelmed. I messaged (notice that - not even texted, FB messaged for goodness' sake) a friend and I'm going to steal her idea for what she does when the going gets tough. She makes a choice to CHOOSE to believe that God is good. That choice doesn't make sunshine appear on a cloudy day or make the hurt go away or the questions stop. But that choice works on the heart. That choice says, "God, I'm going to trust t...

19  We love because he first loved us.   20  Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister  is a liar.  For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen,  cannot love God, whom they have not seen.   21  And he has given us this command:  Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister. 1 John 4:19-21 In the past couple of months I have noticed myself saying "I love you" to people I hardly know, or people I have known for a while but never told them that. They may think I'm nuts. I'm not. I'm just overflowing. :) God has called us to love our brothers and sisters in the Lord because HE FIRST LOVED US. His love overflows, so our love must too. It's humorous to me because this "loving" isn't something I made a conscious decision to do. It happened. All of a sudden, when I hug people, "I love you" just pops out.  It's funny how simple this idea is when I really think about it. There ...

Here's another post on a glimpse into my soul :) My whole life I have had self-esteem issues. Not because anything particular happened, I've just never been over-confident, or really even confident of much. This is one of the reasons that thoughts of this new "single" life have scared me. Nathan was my advocate. When I didn't have the confidence to speak up - in regards to so many things, he would speak up for me. When this all started to go down, that was a big fear of mine. My biggest advocate was going away. How was I going to get over that? How was I going to lose my advocate and somehow GAIN confidence? Wouldn't I just instead, enter a downward slope that led to even less confidence? Isn't that what the enemy was hoping? Let's have God enter the picture and see how things change :). When He isn't in the picture, all those negative questions are so loud in my head I can't move. But when he IS in the picture, it all seems to get better...

This weekend, I was watching Transformers Rescue Bots with my little man and loved some of the conversation in the show to the point I had to rewind it :).  One of the bots was a little big for his britches and commented, "I saved the day!" Another, the rule follower - the never any gray - kind of bot responded: "No you did not. You assisted the day when the day was not in need of assistance." Friends, that's me most every day! Doing what I think is my best, going along, trying to control what happens and when it succeeds I think - YES. I did so good. And God is shaking his head up there thinking, "My love, you assisted the day when the day was not in any need of assistance." Do any of you do that? Try and take charge of your life, or others? Do you try to butt up in there and "assist" when what you really need to do is step back and let God work? I feel like at the end of the day the reason for all of my "assisting" is t...