I would like to be able to tell you that in the past year I...

Successfully kept to a diet and exercise regimen.
Better organized my stuff.
Moved out of our small condo.
Successfully treated my health problems and was able to get pregnant.
Never yelled or grew inpatient at my children.
Sold so many photographs on iStockphoto to allow my husband to quit his job and fall asleep in a hammock every afternoon.

Instead, I have to tell you that in the past year I…

Continued to wear the same size clothes I did last year.
Purchased a gym membership and only went to swim with the kids. I think I went to work out once.
Realized that I desperately need someone who knows how to organize.
Had several dreams where hubby and I were entertaining our grandkids in this condo.
Saw no improvements whatsoever with my health problems, and I still have no reason to buy these adorable maternity pants I keep seeing.
Probably yelled and grew inpatient daily with my kids.
Had a few photography jobs but didn’t sell a single photo online.

However, in the past year I also…

Was matron of honor in my friend’s wedding.
Did NOT have to have surgery of any kind. (a big accomplishment!)
Almost finished reading the entire New Testament. (I still have a few chapters to go!)
Successfully taught my daughter to start reading.
Improved my photography skills. (and just got an AMAZING camera to go along with those new skills. Thanks, Rebekah!)
REALLY improved my relationship with my husband. :)
Have increased my faith and love for my Heavenly Father.

In the next year, I am hoping to…

Become increasingly gentler.
Be courageous enough to help those who God puts in my path.
Measure up to the trust that has been placed in me by so many people.
Continue to place my trust and faith where it belongs – GOD.
Get into smaller pants.
Get into those maternity pants.
Have a level of contentment regardless of my circumstances.

Here’s to a great 2008!

May God bless you!

My thoughts exactly...

The Necessity of Faith

I firmly believe that we can not prove the existence of God. If it were possible, I believe there wouldn’t be so much talk about faith in the bible. If it were possible, none of us could doubt His existence. The gospel doesn’t make sense to us. That doesn’t make it untrue, but for us to judge the many in our world that don’t come to faith easily is ridiculous.

I also believe that one day God will not keep His existence hidden any longer. I believe that every single living thing will bow down before Him upon His revelation. I eagerly look forward to seeing Him receive the glory and honor that He deserves.

There are things in this world that make questioning our existence, our purpose and our origin unavoidable. These are the things that led the people of long ago to come up with myths and stories to try to answer these questions. Religions were born out of these attempts to explain the world around us. I really wish people didn’t consider Christianity a religion. Real authentic Christianity isn’t about rules and regulations. It’s a relationship with our Creator.

Christianity is about having a relationship with God through grace. The God of the Jews, the same God of Christianity, the one and true God of the universe and everything in it, created us and this world in order to have a relationship with His creation. I don’t know why, other than to bring glory to His Son, Jesus. But Jesus wasn’t really introduced to us until after we’d rejected His Father, God. Now don’t get me wrong. Jesus wasn’t created by God in order to fulfill His plans and draw us to Himself. Jesus has always been. He was there when the world was created. He always has been and always will be. We believe that Jesus is kind of a manifestation of God. They are One. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. He is able to exist in many places at once, in many times, in whatever form He chooses. We do not believe that when Jesus was born, that God left heaven to embody His Son. We believe He was in heaven looking down upon us all.

Huh?! As you can see, there is just no earthly logic capable of understanding this. Our brains just weren’t designed to understand. That’s why we need faith. And in many of our cases, it is blind faith because we can’t actually see the power that is changing our lives. But for those of us who have accepted the grace extended to us by God, through His Son’s atoning sacrifice on our behalf, we ARE changing. There is SOMETHING changing us. Even now, before we are to experience eternal life with God.

It is sheer arrogance that leads us to assume that human logic and reasoning is capable of figuring out the God of the universe. There are many that try though. All these people are looking for is a taste from that apple from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. See, we still haven’t learned our lesson!

In our faith, there is a response from heaven. I know that when I read the bible as a non-believer, it just didn’t make any sense at all. Now when I read it, I understand a bit. I can almost feel it. I don’t know how to explain that, but my faith doesn’t ‘seem’ so blind anymore.

So what hope is there for those seeking to experience God in a way that could strengthen their faith? God sent us His Holy Spirit, a ‘person’ of God who interprets God’s will for us in a way. He also communicates our true needs to God when we don’t know for what to pray. He’s sort of like the mediator between God and us. He reveals our hearts to God and God’s heart to us. We don’t aurally hear Him. (At least not the majority of us, I’m guessing. But I’m not about to put any rules before God!) We receive Him once we begin to believe that God is who He says He is. And that He will do, has done, and is doing, what He’s promised.

God has taken the first steps. He created this world that leads us to ponder ‘who did this?’ He made a way (the Mosaic law and the sacrifices we were to make when we broke those laws) for us to make ourselves right before Him. He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to die as our sacrifice once we couldn’t make sacrifices anymore. And He’s sent Christians like me to introduce Him to the world. All we have to do is respond in faith, no matter how small. All it takes is a heart that’s willing to accept this crazy idea that there’s truth to what God has said. And then He shows up. And you don’t doubt anymore.

Inheritance

Paris Hilton’s grandfather, Barron Hilton, has pledged $2.3 billion, 97% of his fortune, to the Conrad N. Hilton charity. The charity assists mentally ill homeless people, tackles substance abuse and increases access to safe water in Africa and Mexico. A significant portion of the money will also go to the Conrad N. Hilton Fund for Sisters, a separate nonprofit organization that supports the work of Catholic sisters. Barron’s father, Conrad N. Hilton, had also donated a large portion of his fortune to charity upon his death.

I don’t know this man; I have no connection to the Hilton family (although I do believe I have stayed in a few Hilton hotels in the past). But I have to wonder, because it’s what I do, did they wait until they were about to die before they decided to give money to the cause of the suffering? Well, apparently the Conrad N. Hilton charity has been helping the poor for a while. It was established in 1944 but remained relatively small until Conrad’s death in 1979 when he left nearly all of his entire estate to his charity, created to help the most vulnerable people in the world.

So this family has been helping the poor for years. But what about the rest of us? We probably don’t have billions of dollars to donate now or upon death. What you leave behind may not make the news, but if you’re like me, you have at least thought about what you want your loved ones to receive after you’ve died. We document these decisions, and it’s sometimes a surprise to family members to receive something. Others expect it and even kill for it.

My question is why wait until we’re about to die to share our fortunes? My dad’s dad, my Papaw, had decided years before he died, how much he wanted to give to his children, and wrote them a check. He said he wanted to watch them enjoy it. I love that. My Mamaw died a month ago. My dad is going through his parents’ house today to clean up and organize the cherished family items that they had kept throughout the years. When my dad was in college, he studied art and had made these incredible portraits. One he did using pointillism, and the other with a scratchboard. They truly are amazing. They have been hanging up in my Mamaw and Papaw’s house for years. I emailed him recently to ask if I could have one some day, and he said he didn’t want for me to have to wait until after he’d died to enjoy it. So I will be receiving one soon.

I love this attitude of not holding on to things until after we don’t need them. It seems perhaps more loving to let go of things while we could still find uses for them. Like donating blood now, giving money to charity now, volunteering our time now.

There is a whole world happening behind our reflection in the mirror, and if we’re not careful, we’ll forget all about them.

Sad

Christmas is typically my favorite time of year. I am always thrilled when the stores start carrying ornaments and those little twinkly lights before Halloween. (I realize I’m not supposed to enjoy this since it really does reveal how over-the-top materialistic we all are, but I am always so eager to start the whole season that I look right past all that.)

I’m going to be completely honest with you. This season has been awful for me. I saw those first signs of Christmas in August (!?!) and started to get excited about the upcoming season. I got out my Christmas CDs early and was impatiently waiting until Thanksgiving so I could get out the tree. Usually I put up our tree before Thanksgiving because I just can’t wait anymore. But this year, I decided to wait until after Thanksgiving so that I could really focus on the things for which I am grateful.

We always drive to Houston to visit my family for Thanksgiving and then spend Christmas here in Dallas. My dad’s mom, my Mamaw Rogers, was in the hospital with a blockage in her colon, and I was looking forward to being able to visit with her while we were down. Before we left Dallas, I didn’t realize that this was going to be the last time I would ever get to talk with her. Once we got there, things got much worse, and on the day we left to return to Dallas, my dad and his siblings asked the doctors to take her off of life support. She died 6 days later.

I found out yesterday that a friend of mine took his life this past weekend. I had talked with him the day before, and he had seemed fine. He was a believer, and I trust that he is in the presence of our Lord right now, without any more pain. Although I am glad that both my friend and my sweet Mamaw are dancing at the feet of our Savior, I am struggling to figure out how to manage my life without these precious loved ones.

As the summer shifts to fall and into winter, a lot of us can get the blues. There’s something about the temperature dropping and the shorter days and longer nights that causes us to sleep and eat more, which can lead some into depression. For most of us, these temporary feelings of sadness don’t really affect our day that much, and the joy of seeing our loved ones and celebrating Jesus’ birthday more than makes up for our seasonal stress. But for others, these feelings greatly impair their lives, causing them to take drastic actions like my friend did.

Job talked about having joy even though he was in unrelenting pain. As Christians, we are not immune to depression. Some of us just need some time to let the feelings fade, others need to seek and undergo treatment of some sort. But we can all know that though we sorrow, we do not sorrow as those who have no hope. Jesus was full of sorrow. Isaiah 53:3 says that “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.” He knows what it’s like to really mourn. And He knows each and every one of our hearts. He sees our pain when we plaster on the smile for our friends and family. He sees our tears even as we say we’re fine. He already knows how we are feeling and welcomes us to pour out our hearts to Him.

Last night, in a moment of overwhelming sadness, I just climbed up into His lap and shared my sorrow with my Lord. What a privilege it is to be able to do this! What a loving God we serve! I was reminded that there is “a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance” (Ecclesiastes 3:4). I can trust that these painful feelings of sadness will lessen. I can trust that my Mamaw and my friend are not in any more pain, and I can trust that one day I will dance with them, worshipping our God together as brothers and sisters in Christ.

We may be SAD with

Sorrow
And
Despair,

but we must always remember that we are also

Sealed
And
Delivered.

Job 14:17
My offenses will be sealed up in a bag; you will cover over my sin.

Psalm 34:4
I sought the LORD, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears.

Loving Our Neighbors

While watching the news last night, I heard this little blurb about a church in downtown Dallas reaching out to the homeless, and I was struck by how well they are extending the hand of Jesus to these vulnerable children of God.

After the city made it illegal for the homeless to sleep on the sidewalks in September, the First Presbyterian Church in Dallas opened its parking lot to anyone who wanted to gather there at night. They not only allowed the homeless to sleep there, they spent $6,000 a month to provide portable toilets, lighting and security for them as well.

As of tonight though, the homeless will be staying indoors. The city has agreed to extend the hours of the Day Resource Center to include overnight guests. They will take the homeless on a first come-first serve basis, directing any others to different shelters in the area. It’s a temporary solution, as Dallas will be opening a new multi-million dollar assistance center for the homeless in the spring.

The First Presbyterian Church is not unfamiliar with serving the homeless. On its website, it states that “It is important to us to position ourselves as a beacon of light in downtown Dallas and to reach out to those in need.” They have run a soup kitchen called “The Stewpot” for years which does more than just hand out warm food. It is a resource center where the poor and homeless and other at-risk individuals can come to have access to a dental and medical clinic, drug and alcohol counseling, a children’s day camp in the summer, a computer lab, and even a mail drop.

When I was homeless, I remember being advised to go to The Stewpot, although I never made it there. I didn’t realize that it was run by a church. It shouldn’t surprise me when I see news reports like this. It should be the norm. But with all the abductions, murders, and thefts that overwhelmingly dominate the local news reports, I found it wonderfully refreshing to see that a church is taking care of its community in such a tangible way. And in such a visible way that the local news station would deem it newsworthy. May we all strive to love our neighbors as well as they do.

Proverbs 31:20 She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy.

Isaiah 25:4 You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in his distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat.