DEATH....a Reward....

It seems as if when one person dies....more follow.  We have not had a funeral in our church in a while.  

A couple of weeks ago, one of our members lost his mom.  He was an only child.  The next week, we lost our oldest living church member....Mrs. Margaret Baker who was 91 years old and also another church member lost her granddaddy, who was the one that raised her.  This week another church member passed away and then, yesterday I posted about the pastor's wife that passed away from a stroke..............

Death is soooo hard on the ones left behind.  

And in the mist of our grief, we fail to stop and realize that if that person was a Christian..........they were just given their ultimate reward.  They are NOW walking the streets of Gold with, none other, but God himself.  How awesome is that?

We, being human, we want to keep everyone here forever.  I have a friend that keeps saying she does not want to die and does not want any of her family members to die.  She just wants the Lord to Come Back........and take them all at the same time.

If all of our family members are Christians....that would be WONDERFUL....

Unfortunately, we all have family members, friends, neighbors, co-workers or at least know  people who are NOT Christians.  They are not ready.  It is our jobs to take every opportunity we have to set an example and witness to them so that they will be prepared.

Heaven Gained Another Angel

Humanly, I am very sad to post this.....but one of our Tennessee Bi-Vocational Wives went home to be with Jesus this past Saturday.

Kathi Daniels from Gallatin, TN area.  Kathi had a stroke on Friday and never recovered.

Another example of how we NEVER know when OUR time will be.  I first met Kathi at a pastors' training event at Carson Springs Bible Camp.  I had been asked to lead the ladies.........which is WAY out of my comfort zone.  Kathi was so precious and encouraging.....and I could feel her prayers the entire time.

Her and her husband also came to the yearly Bi-Vo Retreat in January.  Please keep her husband, Buddy in your prayers and their church, where he was Senior Pastor.

Oops.....Lost an Hour...

I saw this on Facebook Saturday and thought I would share with you Ladies..............the Story of MY LIFE!  smile.

On a serious note.........I pray that everyone went to bed early and are feeling perky today!  Love you!

True Transparency

"It's okay to not be okay"

This is a saying that Matt Chandler says they use at his church, The Village Church in Texas.

For some reason, in our world of Pinterest perfection and Facebook facades, we have come to believe that we have to have "it" altogether all of the time. We put all kinds of crazy expectations on ourselves and allow Satan to convince us to think less of ourselves when we fail to measure up to the impossibly high standards we set for ourselves.

On top of all of this, life happens and it can be painful and hard. Whether our pasts and presents are our own doing or have been done to us, we still feel a responsibility to put our "best" face forward. Maybe even as a result of all we've been through, we put on a veneer and shut people out for various valid reasons.

For those of us who have grown up in the church, we know the "game" and how to play it in the pews and hallways of shiny sanctuaries. We know when to sit and stand. We know in which part of what song to raise our hands. We know the right words to say to keep everyone close, but not too close.

Dear Sister,  please hear me say, "It's okay to not be okay." Give yourself permission to hurt and feel. You CAN make mistakes. You WILL fail. I know this to be true, because we all do all these things: hurt, feel, make mistakes and fail.

It is here in our shortcomings and failures, where our deepest needs are felt. It is here where God gladly meets us, counting all our tears and, if we let Him, intervenes.

When we are vulnerable and honest with Him, He can redeem our pasts and give worth to our current circumstances. His grace covers it all.

Chandler often explains that we can't just stay "not okay," but the only way things can really change is if we are willing to confess that we aren't "okay."

In my last post, I pointed out that God knows all of us anyway. We may try to compensate with good deeds and polished prayers, but He has shown He loves us, sending His Son to die for us while we were still sinners and far from Him.

God is the first One we need to real with. Once we are open and honest with Him, confessing our worst and letting Him make us new by healing us from within and setting us free from the bondage of our own expectations - then we can be real with ourselves and with others.

It is in this transparency with Him, that we can live in a sincere joy for today and in an honest hope for tomorrow.... When He is that real to us, we will want Him to be that real to others too.

Life then is no longer about us, but God using us to show Himself to the world - That's true transparency, being so real that only He is seen....

FAKE or Focused

I am blessed that my husband is my best friend.

He is the one that I WANT to tell everything. If something good happens, I want to tell him. If something bad happens, I want to tell him. If something strange, unexpected, funny, or even the most mundane happens, I want to tell him.

As we have shared life together for nearly 20 years and I having told him all these things for all these years, he knows me pretty well. He can tell when I am feeling FAKE. I honestly, can't be FAKE for him very long before he picks up on the fact that something is "off" and he asks me what is up. (Most often, he is afraid he's done something to cause my "off" attitude in reality has nothing to do with him at all.)

We can talk about my FAKE feelings and he can offer his advice, but even as great of a husband as he is, he can't make those FAKE feelings go away. He can listen and pray with me, but ultimately the only One who can eliminate the guilt, insecurity and inadequacies is God.

For me to look to my husband or any other relationship to combat my feeling FAKE, I have made an idol of that person.... I am asking and looking and hoping that they can do something only our Creator, Savior, Loving God can do.

I know this, yet, I VERY rarely tell Him how I feel no matter how I am feeling -FAKE or even just happy or sad. When something happens that evokes a strong reaction in my gut, He is sadly the last one I seem to turn to talk about it.

Why?

In my head, I know He loves me unconditionally. In my head, I know He is intimately involved in my life. In my head I know He wants me to come to Him with even the slightest details. In my head, I know He can more than handle my emotionally baggage.

But.... In my heart, Satan ruthlessly attacks my most vulnerable parts and turns my focus on to anything but Him.

Several ladies responded to my first blog post this week by commenting on here and on my Facebook page. Their comments were similar as they talked about what they allowed themselves to focus on when fighting the feeling of being FAKE. They each reminded me that when those feelings of being FAKE start to rise, I need to intentionally turn my attention back to Christ.

This really got me thinking . . . I was preparing to encourage you to pray for someone for you to be "real" with, when the Holy Spirit convicted me that He was the One we needed to be completely open with in the first place.  He is the One we need to tell everything, EVERYTHING.

Yes, sometimes it is the hardest to take off the mask when we come before our God. It is so easy to listen to Satan's lies about Him and ourselves, believing that He doesn't really care or that we can only come to Him when we have our junk completely together. Maybe we've been taught that we can only pray in the King James and that it would be sacrilegious for us to tell Him honestly how we feel.

Let's think about that for a minute.... If God made us and loves us and sent His Son to die for us.... If He is all-powerful, and all-knowing and everywhere at once..... Doesn't He already know the real us? Doesn't He already know how we feel? Doesn't His Word tell us over and over again to come to Him and talk to Him, confessing and receiving redemption and grace?

Only He can change our heart. Only He can transform our feelings. Only in finding our identity in Him are we able to stop feeling FAKE.

If we choose to keep our focus on our feelings, we will wallow there and those feelings will grow, poisoning our ministries, our families and even our own health.

If we take those feelings and confess them to God, learning to be transparent and real before Him, we can learn and grow and become more like Christ.... Then, and only then will we have the ability to take the risks and be real with others. That ability won't be of ourselves, it will be the work of the Holy Spirit within us.

So, dear readers.... a couple of closing thoughts....

1. Are you putting someone else in God's position in your life? Are you looking to or expecting some person to provide the friendship or the confidence or the healing that only God can provide?

2. If the answer to quit feeling FAKE is found in focusing on God, (which I believe it is) how do you do it? How do you do it and how do you maintain that focus on Him?

There are definitely times in my life where I do expect my hubby or one of my friends to fill that void. And there are definitely seasons in my life that are harder to keep my focus on Him. I do NOT have it altogether. I need your input, and I think it is safe to say others do too....

How do you go from feeling FAKE to finding focus?

Feeling FAKE?

Do you ever feel FAKE?

I mean do you ever get dressed in your Sunday best clothes, walk in the doors of the church and smile when all you want to do is stay in your jammies, go anywhere but the church and have a good, ugly cry?

I have to confess, even recently, very recently, this has been me. I have felt so very FAKE.

I sang the hymns and shook the hands and smiled the smile because I knew that was expected of me, being a minister's wife and all. People were watching after all. I'm not just making that up either, being paranoid or self-absorbed.... I had them actually tell me.

As I thought about it, I realized that this charade isn't limited to us ministers' wives. It is not even exclusive to the Christian either, trying to portray that their life is easy and perfect because of their faith in Christ. With the added pressures social media has placed on the average American woman to be extraordinary in her daily balancing of life - no one is immune from from this feeling of being FAKE.

Why is it so hard to be transparent? Why is it so difficult to be vulnerable?

There is risk involved. Rejection. Judgment. Chastisement. Our reputation. Our spouse's standing. Our child's acceptance. Financial repercussions.

What will people say if they knew what you were really feeling this morning? Even worse, what would they think or say to someone else?

Please don't hear me say I've got the answers on how to be vulnerable and transparent. I am not even convinced that we always should be. Remember, I started this post by saying how very FAKE I have felt so very recently.

I do know how it feels to feel FAKE.

When I feel FAKE, I feel like I am dishonest, purposely letting people believe that I've got it altogether. I feel guilty because my head tells me I have been so blessed to be focused on whatever issue that has caused me to feel the need to be FAKE. I feel alone and isolated as if no one truly knows me or would even want to know me. Depression is never far behind the loneliness.

So... what do we do with our FAKE feelings?

These feelings are real and restricting. They paralyze us and keep us from living the full lives that Christ promised us in John 10:10. The Thief has a big time stealing our security, killing our joy and destroying our community.... all from feeling FAKE.

I thought I'd use my turn to blog this week to see if we could discuss how you've learned to handle these feelings or maybe just even give you a place to confess that you know the FAKE feelings I'm talking about.

Can you relate? Have you ever felt FAKE?

Why Did You Get Married?

Why did you get married?  It’s a fair question.  Why DID you get married?

My reasons for getting married were part Godly and part fleshly!  Since I had only been a Christ follower for a short time all I really knew was that I wanted a Godly marriage.  I got married because I believed it when people told me we would be better together than we would be alone.  I believed that he would make me happy.  I believed that it would be his job to meet all of my emotional, spiritual, physical and any other needs I might have.

What I learned was that many times my marriage would look anything but Godly.  That many times I would much rather be alone than with him.  That there would be many times that he would make me unhappy and I was so disappointed to learn that his job was not to meet all of my needs!

But I discovered all of that while we were engaged and before we even said “I do”!

So, why did I get married?  Sometimes I forget.  Sometimes I need to go back to the very beginning (Are you now adding ‘a very good place to start.  When you read you begin with A-B-C when you sing you begin with Do-Re-Me”?  Got the tune in your head now?  Ok, let’s continue) and remember what it was that drew me to him in the first place.

It was in the spring of 1974 that I first remember seeing him.  He was playing the banjo with the other musicians at our weekly Young Life leadership meeting….leading worship is what we would call it today….not sure what we called it back then! 

He was adorable.  Long hair, blue eyes, focusing on his banjo, not singing…I was attracted to him and intrigued by him….who was this ‘new guy’?  I was super excited when we broke up into small groups…and I found myself sitting next to him!!  We all sat cross legged on the floor….we were instructed to share prayer requests and then pray for the person on our left.  Well….I was the person on his left….and he was to pray for me!!  How precious!!

My excitement was short-lived because, apparently, I was much more fascinated with him than he was with me!! When he began his prayer he prayed for DIANA!!  Diana?  Not Dana!!  Who in the world was Diana?  I wasn’t even significant enough for him to remember my name!! 

Sometimes the enemy will lie to me now and tell me that if he really loved me he would remember _______________!  You can fill in the blank!  The blank could be anything from remembering to pick up something at the store or remember what I like to order or any other insignificant thing that causes me to focus on me and dissatisfaction.

Fast forward to the fall semester…Our paths crossed periodically and then one night he called and he asked me out.  I was so excited!! Ernie picked me up and we headed for the Spaghetti Warehouse in Dallas.  Since we were in Fort Worth, it was a good 45 minutes to an hour so we had ample time to talk. 

We got to our table, read over the menus, and were ready to order.  I had dating experience and this guy was a seminary student so I knew to order the cheapest meal on the menu. 

Waiter to me:  “What would you like?”  “I’ll take spaghetti, no meatballs, no salad please.”

Waiter to Ernie:  “What would you like?”  No words come out of his mouth.  He looks at the waiter.  He looks at me.  He looks around.  He looks down.  He turns red.  He looks embarrassed.  And says, “Ummm….I’ll just take an extra plate please.”

Wait!  What did he say???  “I’ll just take an extra plate??”  The waiter looks at him.  The waiter looks at me??  I shrug….I have no words.  I ordered the cheapest thing!!  I’m thinking to myself, “Did you not even bring enough money to cover both meals???”  This is nuts!  After what seemed like FOREVER, he smiles and says, “I'll have lasagna!!”

Ha!  That was so funny!  And fascinating.  And scary.  And cute!!  And adorable!!  I loved it!  Took me off guard.

However…..to this day that man cannot give a straight answer!!  What was fun and cute and interesting and fascinating then can sometimes be not fun and annoying and frustrating today!!  See what I mean?  See how the enemy takes what is good and makes it bad??

From the moment he picked me up, throughout the 45 minute drive and during dinner he kept telling me that there was something he wanted to do that he had never done before on a first date.  It was odd.  A little disconcerting.  Somewhat fearful.  Over and over he kept saying he wanted to “do something” but would not tell me what it was.  Who was this guy?  Did I really know anything about him?  Just because he was in seminary didn't mean he couldn't be a serial killer or rapist!!  (Vain imaginations still plague me to this day!!)

After we ate and got back to the car I could tell he was nervous.  He kept lingering and acting rather strange…and saying he wanted to do something he’d never done on a first date before.  THEN he asked me to scoot over to the middle of the car!!  (That was when there were no consoles and we could actually sit in the middle….but it was reserved for relationships that were way farther along than ours was!!)  What did you say??  You want me to sit in the middle?  Next to you??  Close? 

However….I scooted!  What in the world??  He became more and more nervous and had such a hard time coming out with whatever it was he wanted to “do”.

Finally he spoke.  He said he had been in several relationships and they were not centered on Christ.  It was his desire that ours….regardless of what the future looked like….would start out focused on Him!!  And he wanted to pray with me over our relationship and what it would become, if anything.

I was overwhelmed with joy and appreciation and relief and gratitude!  I had never experienced anything like that before and I knew he was someone special.  We prayed over our new, unformed relationship, giving it to the Lord, asking Him to take it, giving our future to Him....it seemed so odd yet so normal.  We didn't have to worry about what was to come of it....there was much peace knowing it would be OK because we had given it to Him.  Little did I know that we would spend the rest of our lives praying together!!

We got back to my apartment and he walked me to the door…..I have no recollection of what we said….because he shocked me one.more.time!!  He kissed me!!  He kissed me on our first date!!  THEN after he kissed me he stepped back, looked me straight in the eye and said, with all seriousness and conviction, “I didn’t think Christian girls kissed on the first date!”

What did you say???  I was dumbfounded.  I had no response.  I was mute and angry and shocked and happy and confused and laughing.  I loved it and I hated it!!  I was entertained and I was shocked.  And this was only the beginning of what our relationship would look like!

Our first date is somewhat indicative of our relationship.  He continues to dumbfound me and confuse me and make me laugh.  He keeps me on my toes and I never know what he will say or do next.

Take a few minutes and think back to when you and your husband first met.  What attracted you to him in the first place?  Was it the way he looked?  The things he said?  What he did?  Stop now and thank God for bringing you two together and tell your husband! 

You might be in a season where you do not like him very much right now….you might need to remember why you married him!!  And, perhaps like me, the very thing/s that brought you together might be the very things the enemy uses to pull you apart. 

Happy reminiscing!