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See A Victory – Music Monday

I know many of you may be feeling really out of sorts right now.  I’ve personally been a mix of so many emotions that it’s really hard for me to even begin to put things into words. I’m sure you have had many of the same feelings as me.

Worry over what this virus could cause to happen with your finances and health of not only yourself but also that of your family and friends is very real right now and can be very overwhelming.

Life is hard right now – But no matter what we have to keep looking up. In the middle of what doesn’t feel so good, we still have to try our best to keep our eyes fixed on what IS good-  even if it has to be on a day by day or even moment by moment basis.

Live each day inside of itself and let tomorrow stay right where it is inside of tomorrow.

Just for today – let’s keep rejoicing in all that is good in this world.

Rejoice in the goodness of people.

Rejoice in the goodness of not our physical things, but the things that matter to us most, like our families and our friends.

Let us rejoice in God and the fact that through it all he is and always will be here with us.

And He IS GOOD!

God is so much more than any of us can ever begin to fathom and He knows what’s happening in the world right now and when this is all over we will see a victory and I’m pretty sure we will be better than we were before the virus all started.

When I turned on my radio this morning “See a Victory” by Elevation Worship was playing.  As I was singing along the words made me realize I can now see all the victories I’ve had in my life that at the time seemed almost impossible to ever have a good outcome.  I hope you have time to listen and also I hope you can find peace today and know that when this is over we will all see a victory!

Your Most Important Message of the Day

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You’ve checked your e-mail, your Instagram, and your Facebook, but have you checked your  Bible today?

If you haven’t you really should because your most important message of the day is most likely waiting there for you  🙂

No Bible?? You can get a free one for your phone or your tablet here -> YouVersion Bible App

Neighborly Love

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When I was a kid every evening after dinner everyone in our neighborhood would come outside to the front of their homes. Most of the adults would be hanging out on their porches visiting with one another and us kids would be riding our bikes or playing games like wiffle ball or tag in the middle of the street.  Everyone seemed to know and like each.

Nowadays, people seem to be a lot busier and don’t tend to hang out on their front porches like they used to but, no matter where I’ve lived I have always managed to get to know most of my neighbors and I realize that though they have all been different they still always have two things in common –Neighbors are an important part of one another’s lives and neighborly love is something that I have always been a part of.

Neighbors are the familiar that surrounds you when you go outside of your home and somehow they make you feel secure when you’re on the inside your home too.

Neighbors watch over one another’s children and homes, keep an eye on packages delivered, and help one another fix things. I’ve had neighbors borrow eggs, butter, and sugar and they’ve returned the favor back to me also.  I even had a neighbor once who text messaged me pictures of a family of turkeys that she saw hanging out in my front yard. I would have missed them had she not messaged me!

Neighbors somehow feel like an extension of my own family.

About a year and a half ago, after living in the same neighborhood for 18 years, my husband and I moved.  Though I was excited about our new adventure I was also a little sad about leaving our old neighborhood behind.  Our first summer here our next door neighbor started bringing us homegrown tomatoes from their garden. Their kindness continued all summer long.  They then went away on vacation toward the end of the summer and told us we could come over and pick all the tomatoes we wanted while they were gone!  Those homegrown tomatoes were not only yummy but most importantly they were a gesture of kindness that made us feel welcomed and also let us know that we were also a part of our new neighborhood family.

Jesus told us to –“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:31 NIV)

My whole life I have been a part of neighborly love even before I knew Jesus told us to love them.

I really can’t imagine going through my life without having a neighborhood family.

How about you?  Do you have a neighborhood family? How have you experienced neighborly love?  Do you have a special neighbor or what is so special about your neighborhood?  Share a line or two about your neighbors in the comment section below… or better yet if you have written a blog post about neighbors go ahead and share the link.

Since this post today is about sharing neighborly love I would like to invite you to leave via -> this link to Compassion International’s website.  When you click the link you will find out how you can share neighborly love with a child in a neighboring country by helping to protect them from Malaria. There is no obligation so please on your way out go check it out!

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful day!

Don’t forget to leave a comment I am looking forward to hearing your stories!

 

 

Never Ending Winter

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This Winter season has been extra long for me this year.  As many of you know I had a weird illness since September that caused me to be dizzy and to have to stay home and not able to do much of anything. On top of the illness our winter in Missouri, this year was brutally cold with lots of snow, ice, and long dreary gray days.  Up until a couple of weeks ago, I was beginning to think I may never see warm sunny weather again!

To catch those up who don’t know about my life over the past year here is a quick run-down : In February 2017 my husband and I paid a large sum of money as a down payment to a roofing company to put a new roof on our home. The roof was supposed to be put on in March of that year.  March came and went but there was no roof put on and the company was ignoring our calls and if they did answer they would put us off.  In May I finally canceled the roof because I felt like they were scamming us and never going to put the roof on.  June, July, and August were spent trying to get our money back from the company and then paying ANOTHER roofing company in August to put on the roof.  The first company never gave us our money back and in August the new company installed our roof. Also in August – my husband filed in small claims court against the first roofing company to try to get our money back. September – my husband and I went to small claims court and were met at the judge by an attorney for the roofing company who asked to have the case moved to trial by jury and filed a third-party petition against me for slander against the roofing company because I had contacted the Better Business Bureau, the state Attorney General, and wrote review about them on Angie’s list in the attempt to get our money back.  The roofing company took our money, never gave us a roof, but now they were suing me for $25,000.00!  It was around that time that I one day while I was at work I was suddenly hit with dizziness that felt as if the whole room was spinning so bad I may fall off the Earth.  From that day on I was dizzy almost every day of my life and spent several months going to doctor after doctor trying to figure out what was wrong with me.  What had started as dizziness soon progressed to sound and light sensitivity, and I could not do anything with a screen such as computers or TV. I had memory issues, panic attacks, and soon even depression. If you can name it, I pretty much had it.  I ended up having to quit my job because I was too sick to do it plus my husband had to drive me everywhere, I went because I couldn’t drive because I was dizzy. If I had a good day and did go anywhere then I would get carsick or if not carsick I’d be worrying that I might become dizzy.  It got a point that I couldn’t even go to church on Sunday’s because the music and the stage lighting caused me to be dizzy.  I will stop here because it just suddenly dawned on me that my ‘brief rundown’ has turned into a full-blown story in itself.  If you’d like to read the much longer version, I did write a few blog posts about my illness this past winter which can be found here – Vertigo, Panic, and Feelings of Insanity, When the Struggle is Real Keep Going Even if You Have to Do it with Your Eyes Closed, My Plans Aren’t Your Plans But Are Your Plans Mine Even Though They Don’t Make Sense?

Between the illness, being sued, and all the dull grey days of Winter this was probably one of the coldest, darkest, and longest seasons in my life I remember ever having.

Before all of this craziness happened, I led a pretty busy life and I always considered myself a pretty happy person but now looking back I can see that I was probably not as happy as I led myself to believe I was.  I was always rushing here and there and was always feeling overwhelmed with all the things I had to do but never doing much of the things I wanted to do.  I now can see that the things I wanted to do were things that I had been putting on the back burner that those things were truly important for my own well-being.  My job for instance – I was in the church building every day but I know now that I was actually pretty far away from the church on other aspects. Meaning my relationship with God. I know that sounds weird to say but now looking back I can see that needed to step back away from church in order to actually see just how far away from God I had moved.

Before I was ‘stuck’ at home I never had time to just calmly sit and read my Bible. My prayers were rushed more like a checklist and I barely journaled anymore because I just didn’t have the time. It was like my spiritual life only happened when I could fit it in.  Ya I know you can read my blog post where I always mention that but oddly even though I figured it out several times I never actually followed through with what I had learned until I was ‘forced’ into having the time to follow through. Bad… I know but now I do follow through … most of the time.

This past Fall and Winter has probably been one of the longest, coldest, darkest seasons I’ve been through physically and mentally in a very long time but all seasons do come to an end and even though I had small glimpses of sunshine here and there throughout the winter it wasn’t until about February that I started seeing the large rays beginning to shine through and this time they actually began staying.

My time stuck at home had given me a whole lot of time to begin connecting with God on a deeper level and also I was feeling a little better physically.  The dizzy spells were becoming less and less and I know my triggers that set off the dizziness now with stress being one of my big ones. Looking back, I can connect the whole roof scam and being sued by them as probably my breaking point and what set this whole illness off.  I have always been a stuffer of my feelings most of my life. Never telling people when I’m sad or upset and I usually just go about my days clinging to the good stuff and not paying much attention to the bad.  Now I can see that the bad I’d been stuffing finally caught up with me.  A person can’t stuff those feelings down inside without finally running out of room inside to stuff them and I think maybe I just broke because I was too full.  Through all of this, every doctor kept telling me I needed to get the stress out of my life but really how do you do that when it’s coming in from places you can’t stop??

I think it’s more in how you deal with stress is how you remove it from your life. Don’t stuff it inside where it can’t be dealt with or it will eventually end up eating you alive.

From where I sit now I can finally see that good stuff can be found even on a bad day but it is okay to acknowledge when things aren’t going so great. I realized now that it really is okay to be not okay.

During this season of my life, I have also learned to say no.  I have learned that if someone gets upset with me for saying no then that’s their problem, not mine. Also, now that I have said no a couple of times, I have realized nobody was upset with me anyway. HA 😊

I can see now that quitting my job was a good thing too.  I still love my church and of all the jobs I’ve had in my life being the church secretary was my all-time favorite.  So, when I say that quitting the job was a good thing, I know it probably makes no sense to anyone else except for me. But the best thing I have noticed is that now when I am at church, I am there for one thing only and that is God 😊

Also, I’ve realized that I’d been neglecting the things God called me to do.  Write my blog, finish the book I started and rekindle family and friend relationships that I’d let drift away because I didn’t have time.

Over the past month, my new neurologist has started weaning me off the medicine that another neurologist had given me for the brain stem migraine diagnosis. His plan was to start me on a different medication that has fewer side effects but as time has gone on, I’ve started feeling like my old self again so I haven’t had to take the new medication. I feel like I am finally waking up from this nightmare I’ve been stuck in and now that I am waking up when I look back and can see that October through January is one giant blur to me.  I never realized when I was traveling through it all just how dark my winter season really was and to be honest, I was worried that it was never going to end but the best thing in all of this was Jesus. He was always with me the whole time and no matter how bad I’d feel he kept pushing me forward. Making me get up out of bed in the morning when I didn’t want to get up. Sending close friends to check on me at just the right moments. He kept nudging me to read my Bible and he was the one with me on the nights I couldn’t sleep.  He pushed me forward toward springtime and on those days when I thought I couldn’t go on anymore he carried me.

Be still my heart… His love for his children is a love like nothing else. I was the one in one hundred and he came looking for me.

The roof stuff is still happening but, as far as my health goes I feel like I’m on the upside. I can feel the warmth of Springtime outside but most importantly I feel the warmth inside of me once again.   I know that this long dark Winter season is finally coming to an end and like the rays of sunshine in Springtime make the flowers bloom, I can feel God’s love for me cracking away at the icy chill of this long winter season so that I to can now bloom once again.

Taking the Leap

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I have 3 grandsons. The two older boys are close in age, 7 and 8, and the youngest is 3.  Whatever the two oldest boys are doing the little one is not far behind trying to keep up.

A few weeks ago, as they were leaving my house, my daughter opened the door for them to go to the car the 2 older boys sprang out of the door like they had lightning bolts on their feet. For one split second, the youngest had a bit of worry on his face quickly replaced by determination as he leaped into action and began running to catch up with his older brothers.

Even though he is the little guy his split decision to leap into action left me realizing that to him his size didn’t matter, and he wasn’t going to let anything stop him from keeping up with his older brothers.

He had complete faith that he had what it took to keep up with the big guys.

Wouldn’t it be great if we adults had that sort of faith?

I think our years of getting knocked down by life sometimes stops us from trying out the harder stuff.  Sometimes we even freeze up on the stuff God asks us to do to, never taking a leap of faith to trust him to give us what we need to accomplish it.

In my grandson’s case when mom saw the older boys running ahead, she told them to wait, meaning for them to wait for her, but in the second that they waited little brother was able to catch up. He didn’t care that mom making his older brothers wait was the reason he’d caught up. All that mattered to him was that he was right beside the big boys and his little face was beaming with joy to show that he was now a part of the big boy club even though he was just a little guy.

What would it look like if we adults had that same kind of faith like a child? What would it feel like to be presented an opportunity by God to do something harder than we think we have abilities to do and then we then took the leap of faith and we succeeded?

But Jesus looked at them and said to them, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Matthew 19:26

Think about this – What joy are you missing right now because you are afraid to take that leap?

 

I Can’t Stand to Look at Christmas trees – Don’t let the title fool you, I love Christmas!

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I can’t stand to look at Christmas trees this year.

I love Christmas with all its twinkling lights, and the tree in my house has always been one of my favorite Christmas decorations. But this year because of my vestibular migraines the beauty of the lights within my Christmas tree’s branches feel like poison to my brain. All it takes is about 10 minutes of looking at or even toward a lit Christmas tree to wreck my whole day.

Before this Christmas I never knew there was a such a thing as migraines that you can’t feel yet will cause you to have to retreat from certain types of lighting, sounds, smells, and activity or you will end up with your head feeling like it’s pulsing and being pressed in from all sides, causing you to feel so dizzy you can’t think and want to puke your guts out!

I love our Christmas tree and love all its glitter and white lights and no matter how much it bothers me I insist on keeping it turned on every evening just as we always have.  But I haven’t been able to enjoy it this year and have been pretty much staying out of the room it’s in or I sit with my back to it.

To be honest, even though I’ve tried my best to be joyful this has really caused me a lot of sadness this year.

But then today I discovered something as I was passing through the room with the Christmas tree in it. As I was walking through the room I had my eyes averted away from the tree so as not to see it when suddenly they landed on our nativity set. The moment I saw it I suddenly realized that our nativity has a light in it and it’s always on every day all day AND this is the one lighted Christmas decoration that does NOT cause me to get nauseous when I look at it!

I found it very interesting that the one Christmas light in my house that I actually CAN look at is the one light that is shining over baby Jesus lying in the manger. Could it be that maybe Christmas is still Christmas even without a beautifully lighted Christmas tree?? Well of course it is! What really makes it Christmas is that Jesus was born on Christmas and the Christmas holiday is supposed to be a celebration of HIM. Jesus came to save the world on this day all those years ago and He is the one true light of the world.  This also made me think of the shepherds on their way to see him on that night so long ago when he was born. Under the cover of night, they were led by a bright shining star to a baby who was the very first Christmas gift ever given to us.

Just like God used the bright and shining light of my nativity to lead me to see him among all this junk I’ve been going through this year.

Jesus is what Christmas is really all about and with or without Christmas trees, Jesus will always be here.

I think not being able to look at my Christmas tree this year actually caused me to receive a very important gift.  The gift to see what’s truly most important – that Jesus is the only light I will ever need.

Without Jesus, there would have never been a Christmas in the first place. Jesus is the light of the world, and we ALL need him more than anything.

He is the greatest gift we have ever received.

 

 

Dear Readers,

My wish for you today is that your Christmas be filled with all of the joy, love, and peace that comes from Jesus. He is the one and the only true reason for the season may you see him as you go about your day today and every day. Have Merry Christmas!

Terri

My Plans Aren’t Your Plans But Are Your Plans Mine Even though They don’t Make Sense?

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In order to stick with my plan of focusing more on God I knew something in my busy life had to go. One thing I knew for sure I needed to address was the fact that I had two jobs, Travel Agent and Secretary at my church.  Both were part-time and I liked both jobs but also knew that keeping up with both of them was becoming harder and harder to do. I really loved the travel job, plus it allows me the convenience to work from home but then, on the other hand, I loved the church secretary job too. Of the two Church secretary was my favorite plus being the church secretary also was the job that seemed to make the most sense if my goal was to be closer to God.

So I decided to give up the travel agent job and toward the end of last Spring, I began referring any new customers that I received to other agents and then I continued to service any existing customers planning to quit once they had all traveled.

My plan was now perfectly in place.

Without new customers coming in and only having to service existing ones the travel business had pretty much nothing much going on anymore that I had to do, so things seemed to be on the right track.

The last week of August was the first indication of the crumbling of my perfectly built plan when I had my first attack of vertigo.

By the end of November, my plan was in full crumbling motion.

Here is an excerpt from one of my previous blog posts to give you a little bit of an idea of what was going on – “It’s been really hard to keep going when it’s the normal activities in my life that are making me sick. I can’t watch TV, or be anywhere with fluorescent or LED lighting, or those new energy efficient light bulbs.  We changed all the lightbulbs in our house.  TV, I try to just listen but forget and find myself looking at the screen. I can’t get on my tablet for games.  Texting has pretty much become a thing of the past unless it’s a quick one. The sounds that bother me are weird. Things like soft sounds, like clicking or change jingling or certain voices.”

If you want to know more you can visit these blog posts:
Vertigo, Panic, and Feelings of Insanity
When the Struggle is Real Keep Going Even if You Have to Do it with Your Eyes Closed

Because most everything I do at my church job was on the computer I could barely do my secretary job. Add to that, I couldn’t think or remember things very well, plus I didn’t really feel comfortable being alone in the building because I was afraid I’d fall and no one would be there to help me.

Things eventually got to a point that my husband had to drive me almost everywhere I needed to go and some nights I didn’t sleep at all.  I could not plan anything especially getting up and going to work after I’d been awake all night.

I felt like I was living in a fog.

The hardest part of the whole thing is that I haven’t been able to go to church much either because we have screens for words to the songs and pictures, sound coming through a microphone, and colorful lighting on stage behind the Pastor.  All of that stuff is wonderful for a normal person but when you are having vestibular migraines it’s like being tortured. When I am there I feel as if I’m in a rocking boat and can barely keep my eyes open because the lighting and sound make me nauseous.  I’ve tried wearing sunglasses and earplugs but those only give minimal help.

I spent most of September, October, and November going to various types of doctors to get to the bottom of it all and trying my best to continue to work. Church services became hit and miss and turned into going when I felt good, but when I was there I would begin to feel terrible anyway.

Even though I love being the church secretary after a while I had to take off work and spent most of my time at home.

Even though its been a rough few months the weirdest thing has happened during this time. I have been learning HUGE stuff about myself and also about God.

The biggest thing I’ve realized is that no matter how much I may think I have my life planned out, it’s most likely not going to go my way…..Okay wait that’s not true,  I really have known forever that the most well-laid plans will usually not play out as I expect them to and for some reason I really have a hard time letting go of the idea that I am the one who is in charge. So really what I should have said there was that  the biggest thing I have realized is that GOD is in charge

Even though I love being the church secretary in the first week of December after much praying I realized that God wanted me to let the secretary job go. But then once I knew that God wanted me to resign it took me about a week to actually tell my boss I was resigning, That’s how tightly I was holding on.

While I was telling her I was quitting I had a hard time doing it without crying. When I feel uncomfortable or sad I tend to say stupid things to make myself laugh even though most likely they aren’t funny. I am not sure why I do this and can’t remember if I did it or not when I quit but I do remember catching myself rambling on and on before hanging up the phone.  But then the strangest thing happened after I hung up…Peace.

And peace has been what I’ve felt ever since that moment.

God had shown me that just because I want something that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is really mine to have. He has also shown me that when my hands are closed because I’m hanging on tightly to things that aren’t meant for me then I can’t receive what he is trying to give me that IS meant for me.

So now I am in the middle of God’s plan which wasn’t what I had planned but it really does feel good to be on the same page with him.

Another thing I have realized in all of this is that I don’t have to be in the church building to be close to God. Okay, I did already know that too that but for some reason, the truth in that statement has hit me harder now that I can’t be there all the time.

God is everywhere and if I seek him, I am sure to find him, no matter where I am.

I still ask questions like – “Why am I here stuck at home?” or “What is my purpose in all of this?”

But then I also realized that even though I gave all my travel customers away I had never totally quit that job.

God never planned for me to quit being a travel agent. That was all me on that decision and  I have now decided I am going to take the next customer that calls because for now, it still fits in with his plan whether it does or doesn’t make sense.

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking out the window the man who lives across the street came out of his house and walked down the street. Almost every single day he walks down the street at about the same time and then later in the day he comes back home at the same time again. I am pretty sure he is walking to his job. On that day I suddenly felt the urge to pray for him and then a few minutes later someone else came out of their house and I had that same urge to pray fpr them. A few hours later it was the mailman and then the lady next door. The urge to pray kept coming up for every person I saw out the window all day that day.

I can’t explain how I feel about this other than to say that it does feel as if it is important for me to continue to do this when I see someone outside.

So I guess that is one of my new jobs now.

Jeremiah 29:11 says –  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.

I know for a fact that God does have a plan for me and right now I am smack dab in the middle of it whether it makes sense or not.  I also give up on trying to perfectly orchestrate what seems to make the most sense to me and I will just go with God’s plan. I know from experience that His plan always seems to go a whole lot smoother.

As far as my sickness goes, so far we have not found anything for certain that caused these vestibular migraines to happen just a lot of what triggers them.  I have started taking a low dose of Propranolol which is supposed to make them not happen as much. I have noticed that over the past week I am feeling a whole lot better and not having as many of the episodes plus I am also able to ditch the sunglasses in brightly lit rooms.  I did still have to put in earplugs at church last Sunday to quieten the sound and I did still get dizzy but it wasn’t as severe as it has been.

I think the medicine is working! Yay!

 

Amazon Smile for Smiles

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Help bring more smiles to these Kiddo’s faces by shopping with AmazonSmile this Christmas.

Did you know you can shop and Amazon and at the same time help children in need?

It’s so easy!

All you have to do is add the word ‘smile.’ in front of the normal Amazon web address, (smile.amazon.com), choose Compassion International as your charity, do your normal Christmas shopping, and then when you are finished shopping Amazon will donate 0.5% of your purchase to Compassion!

How AWESOME is THAT?!

 

I am Chosen and So ARE You

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What does it feel like to not be chosen? Or how about being chosen last?

How about picking teams in gym class when you were a child in school?

Were you the person who was chosen first? Or were you always chosen last?

When I was a child my family wasn’t much into sports. We didn’t play sports or watch them on TV and we didn’t go to football or baseball games either. I also didn’t have an athletic bone in my body or really even care to have an athletic bone in my body.

Because of my lack of athletic abilities, I was pretty much guaranteed to be chosen last in gym class for any type of team sport game.

Here’s a classic example of what usually happened when I played team sports.

I was in 5th-grade gym class and kickball was the game.

Most days when we played kickball and it was my turn, I would kick the ball and someone from the other team would catch it right away causing me to never make it to any base, I was usually an easy out.

This day was a little different though.

This day I actually kicked the ball so high that it went soaring over everyone’s heads into the outfield.

I was horrified.

Why was I horrified you ask?

Because I never got this far in a game so I wasn’t for sure what I was supposed to do next! Everyone on my team was yelling, “run! run! run!” So run is what I did. I ran as fast as I could go to first base, but I didn’t stop at first. When I got to first base I’d heard the kids yelling and clapping so I decided I would keep going. I finally stopped on second base.

I was so happy!

But that happiness was very short-lived when my teammate who was ALREADY on second base said, “What are you doing?! Go back to first base, you dummy!” just as someone from the other team threw the ball at me and yelled, “Out!”

By now the kids on the other team were laughing at me and my own team was super angry with me.

I really had no idea as I’d rounded first heading for second that two people weren’t supposed to be on the same base together. I was so embarrassed that I just wanted to melt into the ground and be invisible for the remainder of my school life!

As you can see sports were not my thing and if I could have had it my way, I would have been perfectly happy to have skipped the whole gym class thing. Had there been a reading team or and art team those would have been the teams for me.

Not to sound braggy but I may have even been the first pick for an art team or some sort of speed reading team.

The funny thing is… well… actually the not so funny thing is… that I never saw that I had an art talent as a child.  All I could see was the fact that nobody ever chose me to be on their team because I was terrible at sports.

Ephesians 1:3-14 says that we were chosen by God.

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he[a] predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace 8 that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, 9 he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.

11 In him we were also chosen,[d] having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purposeof his will, 12 in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. 13 And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritanceuntil the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory. Ephesians 1:3-14 NIV

It doesn’t say we were chosen because of our talent, our knowledge or how good we are.

What it does say is that He chose us long before He created the World and He chose us to be holy and blameless in his sight.  He predestined us for a relationship with him through JESUS!

How cool is that?? We don’t have to be good at anything at all. Because WE were already CHOSEN! Can you believe it God chose each one of us because he wants us on His team?

In the world, we live in its easy to focus on what we are not good at instead of what we ARE good at. We tend to focus on what our friends are chosen for when actually God gave us each our own special talents to use for what he chose US for.

God doesn’t want me doing things just because other people do them or like other people do them.  He chose ME to be me and I am good enough because he says I am already on the team. And what he gave me is what I will use to play the position he chose me for.

The same also goes for YOU.

You’ve already been chosen to be on ‘Team Jesus’.

So what do you say? Your spot is open waiting for you to fill it, nothing else required except that you believe in Him.

God chose YOU!

YAY TEAM!

 

 

Winter is Here!

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You never know what you’re gonna get as far as the weather is concerned in Missouri.

The unusually hot weather we had most of September and October led me to believe that Fall was never actually going to happen this year.  But then at the end of October, the tree leaves had finally started to turn which is really late in the season for us.

We then had about  2 weeks of cooler weather and now today I wake up to SNOW!

YAY!

I love how the leaves in our yard are still a mix of 3 seasons right now.  One tree still has full green leaves on it, another is bright red with Fall leaves, and lastly, we have another that has lost all of its leaves. I guess that barren tree along with the snow means that Winter is going to, has actually arrived.

BOO!

I’m not really a winter person, but if we have to have Winter then bring on the snow because I really do love the snow.  I just wish the temperature could be just a teeny tiny bit warmer when it snows… Okay, make that a LOT warmer 😀