I Can't Do It Alone

So, last night I watched the new Clint Eastwood movie, “Invictus” with Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon with my family. I had spent the day shopping with my mom and my aunt and almost literally shopped till I dropped. Between getting a new Jessica Simpson purse and finding the perfect jacket on clearance to spruce up my winter wardrobe, I also got a little too much sun as I laughed and talked with two of my favorite people in the whole world. But it was worth it, we had the best conditions for a shopping trip: sun, fun, great deals (haha, that NEVER happens for me), and just great fellowship.

So you can understand why I fell asleep during the very last rugby match in the movie. Sports is so not my thing, but I love sports movies. However, watching the actual games in movies gets abit old. I woke up during the last skirmish or whatever it’s called and then was wide awake as I watched how battles are won.

In this scene, these men linked arms and pushed against the enemy as hard as they could and it’s almost like their strength was supernatural as together they took one step and then another and gained ground.

In the battle called “LIFE”, we’re told to go it alone. We're seen as weak if we reach out to others for strength. Well, in the last scene from “Invictus”, one man trying to stand against the other rugby team would have not only looked weak, it would have been deadly. Whether it's a team playing against another team for the prize, or a plattoon battling against a foreign enemy, or a group of friends who stand together thru thick and thin, we need eachother. When the whole team stood and pushed together, progress was made. Who are your team mates? Who can you trust to link arms with and push against the enemy’s flow of doubt and depression and temptation?

I have a team, an army if you will; hell hath no fury like women with linked arms, shields drawn and swords wielded. And the men who stand in the gap for me……there is no one like them. God bless the men and women who have gathered around me and who have beaten back the enemy with me. You are my heroes.

“Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you my Father in Heaven. For where two or three come together in my name there am I with them.”
Matthew 18:20

The Eye of the Storm

Have you ever been trapped by a storm? More specifically, have you ever been trapped from your house because of a storm? Yesterday afternoon, my mom and I were stopped by, we think @ least, 2 tornadoes. I've never quite felt like I did yesterday. Kinda panicked because all I wanted was to go home and hide in my basement with my family and my most precious items, journals, Bible, jewelry, my new dresses. I'm sure I could have found more things to add to my list of "most precious items", like my laptop. After being trapped in town for a half hour, we tried to go home and then we had to turn around and stop at the closest shelter, but we still felt like we were very vulnerable. There were alot of people doing the same thing, just pulling over until the storm was manageable to drive through. I have been in my own personal storm these past few weeks (or should I say, I’ve been the CAUSE of my own personal storm?) I’ve been going through the rooms of my heart hoarding and hiding my treasures, much like I do when I’m at home and there’s a tornado. In Genesis, when Jacob left his father-in-law, his wife went and stole her father’s gods and then later sat on them so he wouldn’t find them. I don’t know the significance of the whole story, but I do know that she had his idols in her tent underneath her. The storm brewing in my heart and mind was causing such a ruckus in me that in a sense, I was hiding my idols underneath me so they wouldn’t be seen and so I could keep them. Our pastor preached a sermon last Sunday about heaven and he mentioned what won’t be in heaven, one thing being marriage.

ZING!!!

Yep, that was one of my idols. Wanna know how I knew for sure? God always makes sure we get the point and then REALLY get the point, doesn’t He? One of the last points of the sermon paraphrased was this, “What’s so important to you that you’re missing Jesus and heaven for?”

Gulp!!!

Heaven sounds incredibly awesome and it sounds really wonderful, except for one teensy, tiny little thing: no marriage (I know for some, this is like a “Yahooo”- type of thing). I’ve known this for awhile, but I’ve never really dealt with how I felt about that missing from heaven. Can we say, “Idol exposed!!!”?

While waiting out the storm next to the old grange-type building, something in me gave. When there's a storm and I’m home, all I think about are my “treasures” and what I want to keep- don’t judge me and say I’m materialistic, I like my stuff!! Being out there, literally being at the mercy of God, hoping the tree leaves and branches were the only thing that were flying out there, I realized there wasn’t a thing I could do about the storm. I can’t save my stuff at home or hold my dog. All I could do was be in awe of the beauty of it all…OUT THERE.

I was reminded of a storm my family drove through in Texas and Oklahoma a few years ago with our Chihuahua, KD. She was freaking out at the lightening that was hitting right around us and the loud thunder and she couldn’t calm down. Finally, when my dad stopped to check things out, my mom took KD out of the car and put her on the ground outside. It immobilized her and made her calm down. She put her in the back with me and KD just got as close to me as possible and started kissing my face. Her fear was still really real, but she knew who she could trust. It was a lesson to us all about how God is with us, He makes us face the storms in our life; He even leads us to them so that we’ll have to learn our dependence can only be on Him.

How ironic that the end of my heart’s storm came in the middle of a tornado.

How odd that God would calm me down while I was in a rocking car. It’s supernatural.

How ironic because I had just told my mom the day before, “It seems unnatural to give up my dreams!” Her paraphrased reply was, “Then you’re at a crossroads.”

How ironic that my heart took one step and then another while I was immobilized waiting out a storm.

How ironic indeed….

"God made my life complete when I placed all the pieces before Him...Every day I review the ways He works, I try not to miss a trick. I feel put back together, and I'm watching my step. God rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to His eyes." 2 Samuel 22:21, 23-25 The Message

Man Looks At the Outward Appearance.....

I love colors. I love stark lines and polka dots. I love anything that is girly and pretty and fun. This site is so me now I can't believe it. When I first started this blog, I wanted it to be welcoming and colorful. Mostly women will be looking at this site and I wanted to present them, er you, with flowers. I know men will also be joining us on this journey, so I didn't want to overwhelm you, er them, with my girly-girlness. I want EVERYONE to read this and I want anyone's imput.

I want to take the time now and explain what the colors mean to me:

The pink and black-polka-dot-ribbon look is just totally me. I was playing around with different looks all day and when I saw this one, I giggled and clapped my hands in sheer delight. My mom, who was watching me and giving her input from time to time, said, "If you have this response, this is the one you need to go with." I prayed all day that God would help me figure out which look to go with that was viewer friendly and that was totally me, something that would bless us all. He totally answered!!

The purple titles and blog description are specific because WE ARE ROYALTY!!! If we have claimed God as King of our lives, we are royalty. I wanted it to stand out, I want it to shout it out: YOU, MY FRIEND, ARE ROYALTY.

My mom helped me pick out the maroon-ish color because it blends really well with all the other colors. Scripture will always be in bright red because it's God's word and it needs to be treated with the utmost of respect, color is a really good way to do that, in my opinion.

So, while I wanted to avoid the whole "girly" look so that women and men would feel comfortable and be comfortable reading my blog, I decided that being me was what was most important.

After all,

"God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and in TRUTH." John 4:24

My prayer for you as you read thru this and as you look at my new and improved site, that you will see how freeing it is to be ourselves. If something causes you to giggle and clap your hands in utter delight, go with it. Ok, I know not everyone reacts the same way I do, but however you respond when God shows you that your little details are from Him, I pray you are able to reach out and bask in His love for you and see how personally He really does love you.

Man may look at the outward appearance, but remember this:

"The LORD looks at the heart"......Bring yours in truth, love.



*1 Samuel 16:7

Gems in the Desert

About 2 1/2 years ago, I became free. From the time I was conceived right up until then, I’d been in spiritual and emotional bondage. In my mind’s eye, using my imagination, I can picture this person in chains. I’ll be honest, for a long time, I was comfortable in those chains of guilt and fear. I got so used to them that I forgot they were even there. But, as is so His habit, God made me stumble on all the roadblocks that kept me from living a life of freedom and I’d cry out to be set free.

I was happy, healthy, normal child and then a pretty abnormal teen as I was still happy and healthy. However, there were always those trigger points that would just make me so aware of how unfree I really was in my heart and mind. When the ladies at my church started doing the “Breaking Free” study by Beth Moore, I couldn’t go, but I bought the study anyway. What took them 10 weeks to complete took me a year and a half as one layer after another of chains was painfully removed from the wrists of my heart. (Do hearts have wrists? I don’t know, but let’s pretend that they do, ok?) Between the study, sermons, and life, God opened up my heart. And then a miracle happened: I was free, confessing sins of old and realizing that being a product of rape affected my very psyche from the time I was born and shaking off old lies that kept me “securely” in those chains.

Since then, I’ve been learning how to live as a free woman. And this morning is when it hit me, THIS IS MY DESERT!!!! Ok, so that might not be so earth-shattering to you, but it is to me. I’ve read the passages in the Bible that have talked about the desert like,

“The LORD will guide you always; He will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.” Isaiah 58:11

Or

“In a desert land, He found him, in a barren and howling waste. He shielded him and cared for him; He guarded him as the apple of His eye, like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them and carries them on its pinions. The LORD alone led him; no foreign god was among them.” Deuteronomy 32:10-12

There’s even a verse in Hosea,

“Therefore I am going to allure her, I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her….” Hosea 2:14- I’ve gotta break right here and just say, “I LOVE THIS PASSAGE!!!!” If you have a Bible nearby, please read the rest of the passage, it’s awesome!!!

When God freed the Israelites from the Egyptians, He then led them into the desert. And it would seem like whenever He frees anyone, the desert is His place of healing and restoration. Maybe because a desert is the least likely place to find healing and restoration; to learn how to depend on Him, maybe we have to be stripped of everything else but Him. One of the things I love about the passage in Hosea is that in vs 17, He says He’ll remove the names of baals from her lips.

And that brings me back to my realization this morning, some would call it an epiphany. This is where I am: I am free, I am a woman who’s been delivered by God from things I never thought I’d be free of, as well as things I never knew I needed to be freed from. But He has indeed allured me to the desert. But sometimes those “desert” times are just that: hot and dry and just miserable. Like the Israelites in Exodus, part of me has wanted to go back, I remember one time in prayer, God revealed one such chain and I literally grabbed my wrist and begged Him to leave that on there. I didn’t want to deal with it. But I knew I was already freed from it, it was now my choice to begin to let God heal or stay in bondage when the lock to the chain was wide open. Believe it or not, at the time, it was a really hard choice.

I’ve pondered all these passages about the desert and how God provides and cares for His people and seen it as impossible for me. I believed it for them, but not for myself. Until today. Today, God has shown me that my desert has been blessed with His mighty hand. I’m living those passages of Scripture I’ve been pondering. While God has blessed me, He’s also disciplining me, similar to how He disciplined the first freed captives in the desert (Exodus). He’s training my heart to hear His voice, He’s training my feet to walk His path, and He’s training my mind to embrace His plans when all I can see is the hot, dry desert. He’s training me to be usable. And He’s revealing the idols I’ve worshiped and little by little, removing their influence on my life, i.e. “removing the names of baals” from my lips. He’s teaching me to love Him with an undivided heart. And He’s teaching me to believe Him.

When I look at the desert, all I see sometimes is the barren ground- the unanswered prayers, the unmet desires of me and my family and friends, the way life always seems to fall apart all at once. And sometimes it’s quiet. Too quiet. It’s deafening, it’s so quiet. I’m forever being tempted to doubt God, doubt His provision, His personal promises to me thru His word and thru hearing His voice….awhile back. The golden calf isn’t that farfetched when I drop my legalistic veil and realize I would have at least been tempted to give up my gold, too. What am I saying? I give up my gold all the time in pursuit of idols, too!! I stand with the disciples when they asked Jesus in amazement, “Then who can be saved?”

Jesus’ reply is literally timeless as He’s proved it over and over again,
“With man, this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Matthew 19:26

My point? Thank You, Jesus, and hallelujah!!! And thank You for this desert!! If there’s anything I want, it’s an undivided heart for God.

A few years ago, I had the gall to ask my mother if she ever felt like adopting me and my brother was God’s second best. After a night of agonizing grief on her part, she woke me up the next morning (yes, I know, the irony of me sleeping that night is hysterical) by sitting on my bed and giving me her pearl/diamond ring, saying with tears in her eyes, “You are a pearl of great price and a diamond in the rough.” Then she reminded me of the story Jesus told in Matthew 13:45-46, “He went away and sold everything he had and bought it.”, as well as the story of how pearls are made: with a lot of agitation between the clam and the grain of sand. And then she told me the story of how diamonds are made: in utter darkness and with much pressure. We were just in Seattle visiting relatives and I was reminded of this when we came across earrings that were made w/ volcanic rock from Mt. St. Helens.
I know many of the people reading this are in your own era of “desert-ness”. My prayer for you is that you will become increasingly aware of God’s provision and His blessing in this dry, barren time in your life. You’re not alone, if anything, you’re more the object of God’s affection and attention right now than any other time, if that’s even possible because there’s not a time when we’re not the object of His love!!! Don’t be afraid of the desert, love. Embrace the God who led you here to train you so that when this time is over, yours will be an undivided heart that no enemy, no force can take from you the treasures you acquired in your desert. Because trust me, there is much treasure to be found, starting at the feet of the Master, Jesus Christ.
If you’re anything like me, I’ll bet you’re hoping your desert time doesn’t take 40 yrs, but however long it takes, I’ll bet you and I come out shining like precious and rare gems. That is His promise, after all.


“Because of your great compassion you did not abandon them in the desert….You gave your good Spirit to instruct them….they lacked nothing, their clothes did not wear out nor did their feet become swollen.” Nehemiah 9:19a, 20a, 21b

Woman In Mirror Is Stronger Than She Appears

When I was first learning to read, I loved reading wherever I was. The very first word I recognized in the real world was “Stop”. The very first sentence was on the rear view mirror, “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.” All these years later, that sentence is reverberating in my head. And now the rear view mirror I’m talking about is not the one attached to the car.

I was sitting around the kitchen table with my family one night and the conversation turned to the past, most specifically my unusual childhood. From the time I was 4 until I was about 14, my family raised our own chickens and turkeys for Sunday dinners, and Thanksgiving and Christmas. What that means is that we raised them from baby chicks in the Spring and then come late Summer, early Fall, we’d butcher them ourselves. It sounds gruesome now, but some of my earliest and happiest memories are of those years. When I was 4 or 5, I remember singing to the naked (freshly plucked) chickens and praying for them to get teeth so they could eat real food. The fact that they were headless slipped my tiny mind as I asked every question under the sun. This is where I learned everything about “guts ‘n’ stuff”. I laughed so hard I cried as my mom and grandma got so silly gutting those birds. It may not have been the most conventional classroom, but this is where my biology class took place. Everything I learned out of a textbook came back full force as I recalled “butchering days”.

Looking back, this is also a portrait of part of who I am. Remove the germ phobia, the perfect makeup and hairstyles, the manicured nails and the picture-perfect way I try to conduct myself at all times and I’m the little 4 yr old covered in blood and feathers and drenched from rinsing the chickens out in the tubs. That was my job: rinsing, after my mom finished gutting. Sun burnt with messy hair, I was a happy and healthy child. I don’t believe my calling in life is to work for a butcher, but I know that whatever it was that made me clutch the freshly slaughtered chickens to my chest like they were my babies is still in me.

I believe that it was strength, the gift to live within the moment and not let the grossness of it all even faze me, it wasn’t gross at all, it was life and I loved it. What made me this wild child? And how can I get her back? Her, with all her freedom, her radiance and her fearlessness? I realized as we chattered on and on about the “good ol’ days”, that I’m stronger than I realized as I looked at my pampered life of today. I have the luxury of talking myself into being freaked out about germs and other gross stuff. I realize that I’m a self-made woman and that’s not all that flattering, if I do say so myself.

My niece will be 7 weeks old this week and recently, her mommy told me that she loves her “tummy time”. My sister-in-law told me that Tamara gets up on her elbows and pulls herself up a little. In listening to the cute little anecdotes, I’m remembering something else of my childhood, something that speaks of the strength I’m talking about now. I was born with club feet and contracted polio at 2 months. The club feet were a sign of a terribly stressful life survived inside the womb. I believe based on the little history we have about my birth parents that I was a hair’s breath away from death the whole time. When I was 2 days old, I was put in an orphanage and that’s where I was sick w/ polio. I was moved from that one to another orphanage where I caught another strain of polio. God protected my life and 4 months later, I was delivered into the hands of my parents and I’ve been here ever since. For eleven years of my life, I lived unashamed of my disability. I was even proud that I was different. I wore shorts that showed off my skinny polio-stricken legs, and if people noticed, I didn’t care. Then, all of a sudden, I “grew up”, started wearing long skirts and more jeans and hid my legs for the sake of “modesty”. What started out being a noble reason became a shield behind which to hide. I’m now 25 and I’ve begun doing battle on my mindset toward my disability and my still skinny polio-stricken legs. I’m tired of hiding behind any shield other than the one that Jesus Christ holds out to me: The shield of faith.

My point isn’t me, or my disability. I give that to you as an example of the strength God gives babies. I believe that God has given babies the strength to live and thrive. We’d never live to adulthood if as babies we weren’t as strong as we are. I also believe based on my own life, the less dependent we become on someone else taking care of us, that unless we choose to depend upon God’s strength, we begin to lose that strength He equipped us with. Call it a loss in muscle tone. We are flabby when it comes to being strong in the LORD unless we’ve been working out. But, as it is with our bodies, when we start working out and keeping at it, we gain results. The results I want to see in myself and other unattached woman are a gain in dignity and a loss in “singleness” depression. Because trust me when I say, we’ve lost our dignity as women unattached. If we can’t see it, the male race can, and it ain’t pretty.

Our womanly value does not rest on gaining a man or having children. If so, we’d be seeing happier and more secure wives and mothers than we do. Our own mothers would be more restful and less cranky if their value solely rested on having obtained the status “motherhood”. And divorce would be on the decline instead of the rise. My example of how going from singlehood to being married and becoming a mother does not define you as a woman comes from a lady I’ve seen around town who’s got to be the crankiest mother I’ve ever seen. Her children, nor her, are to be envied as she yells at them and slaps the tops of their heads. Clearly, motherhood hasn’t defined her as a woman, or if it has, it’s not a pleasant definition.

One of my most favorite things to do is to hang out with veterans of marriage and childrearing. On occasion one such victim, I mean veteran, could be a man, but most of the time it's women. I don’t intentionally hang out with them to gain their insight, I just always have hung out with them and I have gained so much from them. One such woman being my mother. If there’s anyone I can learn from, it’s her. She’s the picture of a praying, believing, fighting, loving wife and mother. Her relationship with God is one I envy. She’s fallen on her face many a time before her God and had fights she wondered if she’d recover and instead, seen His love and grace. I’ve watched her believe God and in my disbelief cried out, “I want that!!” I’ve watched her grieve to the point of physical pain and sickness over what God has taken from her and seen Him give back tenfold. I’ve seen God’s hand of blessing on her and been filled with holy jealousy. And in the last month or so, I’ve watched her become at rest with God and His plan for her life, no matter the cost. Nothing rocks her anymore. She still has her days of pain sometimes, but they’re becoming fewer. But her life is different now, her whole outlook is, “God will take care of me, whatever comes up, He will guide me and show me. I just have to trust Him.” She’s now the epitome of the Proverbs 31 woman who laughs at the days to come. I find that annoying when I read it, but when I look at my beautiful mother, all I can say is, “I see it, I want it, LORD, I want that!!!”

In hanging out with my mom and having coffee with friends who are the aforementioned veterans, I’ve learned that different men can have the same affect on different women, the veterans of marriage and child rearing have all said the same thing about their husbands. Men who couldn’t be more different, do the same things that drive their wives nuts. Women who couldn’t be more different say the same things about their husbands and their children.

If there is anything I’d like single women to understand today it’s that THERE’S MORE TO LIFE THAN JUST WAITING FOR MISTER RIGHT. Not that that’s not important, it is; but there’s a life to be lived out there and not just so we appear busy to the men we’re ignoring so they’ll notice us. We, as a whole, have been living as if it’s the all encompassing thing when in reality, NOW is when God wants to use us and HERE is where He is calling us to give our all in whatever we do for Him. “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Matthew 6:34

I want to close with one of my favorite movie lines from the end of one of my favorite movies, “Secondhand Lions”:

“Those men, from Great- Grandfather’s stories, they really lived?” Oil sheik’s great-grandson
“Yeah, they really lived,” marvels an amazed Walter.

Let the same be said of you and me.