How many times have you told someone your story? Sharing mine is a relatively new thing for me to do, considering I was 20 years old before I discovered the freedom and the joy it brings. When I left for … Continue reading
Don’t Say No
Tag Archives: restoration
God Welcomes You Home
I’ll never forget when my son was six years old.
The sun was starting to set, and I stepped out onto the porch and called for him to come home. There was no response. I called again, but there was no sign of my son. Frantically, his dad and I searched the neighborhood calling his name. We walked door-to-door asking if our son was there. With each “No,” our hearts grew heavy with worry.
Eventually, with flashlights in hand, our neighbors joined the search. I felt my body go numb when my husband reported our son’s absence to the police. We were living out our worst nightmare—our son was lost.
Just before the police arrived, a neighbor’s van, on their way home from a ballgame, pulled into our driveway curious about the crowd that had gathered on our front lawn. My husband met them at the car and began explaining that our son was missing. He was interrupted by a faint voice from the back of the van. Continue reading
New day-New mercy, count on it
God’s loyal love couldn’t have run out, his merciful love couldn’t have dried up. They’re created new every morning. How great your faithfulness! Lamentations 3:22 – 23, NIV
His mercies are created new every morning.
The end of my day feels like it is three lifetimes too long. The kind of day I’d delete if I could find a button for it.
Overwhelmed by all that’s transpired I am face-to-face with my own mess. I am significantly humbled by my efforts to power through today’s circumstances in my own strength. I painfully survey the complete fail I single-handedly created in the span of 24 hours.
Between my need for control and giving fear a place to stay in my heart, I arrive at the end of me. Night finds me wide-eyed, overwhelmed, and achingly restless.
And then God shows up in the waiting room of my despair. Forever faithful is He, even when I am not. This time He leads me on a long walk down the path once traveled by a prophet. Continue reading
Dear God.
I enjoyed this particular evening to myself as I re-watched “Dear John.” Have you ever watched this tear-jerker? If not, grab a box of Kleenexes because it is a heart grabber! My heart was filled with emotion after the movie and I began to reflect…
Letter after letter was written, each moment of life was shared with one another from a distance, and they had a strong felt love for one another… on the other hand, the journey grew tiresome, hard, and seemingly not worth it. While they had not fallen out of love with one another, they had fallen out of relationship. By falling out of relationship their was a brokenness amidst them, a brokenness that only forgiveness would eventually heal.
WOW… when I re-worked that in my head (the story line), the re-sounding theme was relationship and forgiveness. As we fill our hearts and minds with the Word of God, we are hearing His love letter to us. As we respond in prayer, we are writing a love letter to Him. I try to imagine the Lord anxiously awaiting my love letter to Him everyday, the kind of letter that I not only unload on Him about my days, but also where I praise Him through and through. I never want Him to think that another letter may not come, and that I may fall out of relationship with Him! Do you grow tired and weak sometimes and feel like it is just not worth it, just as Savannah did in the movie? It causes a broken feeling, as if we are not whole. I know that when I fail to seek Him and when I choose to be distracted by what my humanly flesh craves, I am left empty and broken.
Amidst that brokenness we can be made whole again. Continue reading
From Folly to Faith-Building
“For I know the plans I have for you,”declares the LORD,” plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” ~Jeremiah 29:11
Marriages are restored through the Word of God alone.
When God, in His great faithfulness, gave me these verses, I didn’t know all the ways He was going to use them in my life! He used them in ways that only He can do so that I can boast only in Him as I look at the wondrous things He has done. I had given my life to Christ, made Him Lord over all, and He had removed my addiction to alcohol. The next step in His ongoing preparation of my life was to clean up the terrible mess my marriage was in. My relationship with Christ began to grow stronger as I learned to renew my mind with His Word (Romans 12:2) He began to speak to me about my marriage. As I read Scripture, God opened my eyes to see that marriage is a picture of what Jesus has done for the church. I saw the ugly picture my husband and I were painting for our girls, family and friends with our marriage. My heart broke as I looked at Maxie, my husband, and thought “if only he would do what God has called him to do we would have a good marriage.” This is the blame game and a trick of Satan where he tries to keep our eyes off of our own sin. I was prideful in thinking that I could change people. God taught me that He alone can change lives. He gave me Proverbs 26:4-5 to cling to.
“Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you yourself will become like him. Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes.”
I began to realize that I was the biggest fool. Continue reading
