Because I said so, That's why!

Years ago when I was growing up my dad had a shirt that said “Because I said so that’s why.” I hated when he use to use that phrase. Now that I am an adult and a parent I get the reasoning for saying it so much more.  My now three year old is always asking me, “why mommy?” or saying things like, “but I want too.”  In their three year old minds they want explanations and sometimes it gets really aggravating answering there constant why’s.  Sometimes the fact that I am the parent and I said so really is the only explanation I have, they should need no other reason.  And sometimes because it’s beyond their comprehension for why I am saying what I am it’s just easier to pull out the, “because I said so” phrase. 

How funny that many times I find myself questioning the God of the universe the same way. Why this or why that. For two years now I have really been doing a lot of questioning regarding why miscarriages happen, or sad things to babies and children, or my biggest questions that has often sent me into oodles of tears is “why did you take Per? Why did you make him suffer the majority of his life? Why, what was your purpose? What was the goal in forming such a sweet innocent boy only to put him through torture of cancer, not just once, not twice but three times? Seriously what was your purpose God? I have not been able to receive a real answer that has ever caused me peace.

Today I got a lot more peace don’t ask me why today but it was today.  While in church we were singing the song The Great I AM.  While singing the bridge to the song these following words really hit home,

The mountains shake before Him 
The demons run and flee 
At the mention of the name 
King of Majesty 
There is no power in hell 
Or any who can stand 
Before the power and the presence of the Great I am 
The Great I am The Great I am 
The Great I am The Great I am The Great I am

Great I am 
The Great I am The Great I am 
The Great I am The Great I am The Great I am 

As we were singing the first part of the song I was kind of in my own little mind having a private conversation with God once again asking him about Per and begging him to explain to me his reasoning for taking such a sweet life.  Then this song hit me like a hand upside the head.  I was talking with the Great I AM, the one and only God of the universe. Who was I to question him so bluntly like I have been the last two years? What made me think God should answer to me for all of the things He ordained for the world?  If mountains can shake and demons run and flee at the sound of his name and yet I have the audacity to stand before Him and question him as though he owed me an explanation?

The answer to my question was really one that I repeat on a daily basis to my three year old when I know he cannot understand my adult parenting decisions, “because I said so.”  Even though I believe God has a reason for all the things I find unfair that happens to babies and children in this world He does have a purpose for everything that happens under heaven.  Some of those reason I may never understand I just have to trust that he is the great and awesome I AM.

Falling in love- after I got married

Love is something that many of us just don’t get. We don’t understand it. We think it’s all about butterflies, shooting stars and orchestra’s playing in the back ground when we kiss every time. 

The truth about love is it’s really none of those things. Sure they may happen in movies but in reality love is about sacrifice. The greatest love you’ll ever know happened from a sacrifice that God put in place.  He sent his own son to come here to die for us because he loved us. There were no shooting stars when it happened, no orchestra playing romantic music in the back ground and no butterflies.  The truth is the sky went black as night, people shouted blasphemy the whole time and the only things flying around were probably flies and vultures.

In this picture of love, it was the greatest love ever given to us. We didn’t deserve it! The same goes for relationships even here and now. Our marriages, boyfriends or other loved ones shouldn’t have to ‘prove’ their love for us. Honestly, I don’t deserve an ounce of the love my husband gives me. Don’t get me wrong I’m so thankful that God has given him the ability to love me, but I am so undeserving of it more than I am deserving.

My husband is awesome. Sure, he makes mistakes (he’s only human) but he sacrifices a lot for me. He sacrifices time, money and tons of effort to make sure our relationship works. Now, when we first got married I did not even care that most of this happened. I will put it out there. I was so selfish. I wasn’t even in love with him. I was in love with the idea of being in love. I was in love with the idea of being married. But honestly, and he knows this, I was not in love with him.  It’s sad, so sad I know but I learned so much from it. He was doing all of these things for me because he loved me, he seriously fought for our marriage.

I kept telling myself he didn’t love me that if he loved me he would be doing so much more for me, that he would fight for our marriage that he would do everything I wanted him to. I thought that there would be shooting stars and romantic orchestra music in my mind and that in all terms of romance he would be that wonderful guy.  The problem was I wasn’t living in reality. I knew that those things happened in fairytales but eventually real life would take over and that stuff wouldn’t happen every day.

When we started going to church and we both started living our lives for pleasing Christ and not others I really was struggling with myself internally because I knew that I wasn’t in love with my husband the way I should be. I wasn’t even sure I loved him all that much.  Sure I liked him and I could tolerate living with him and he was a great guy but, love, that one just had me stuck.  So I prayed and prayed and boy did I ask God to ever change my heart and my mind in the way I saw my husband.

A couple weeks into my desperation for God to change my heart regarding the way I looked at my husband and felt about my husband it dawned on me.  I saw him doing all of these things for me just simply because he loved me.  I had never noticed all the things he had done for me and for our child before. Yes, I will admit I was that selfish.  Sure prior to this I knew he was a great guy but in all honesty I really didn’t see him doing enough for us. But, in the long run he was doing way more than enough. Who was I to think he needed to fight for me? Who was I to think that the world and our marriage should revolve around my happiness?

In that moment it dawned on me ever so clear.  Love wasn’t about what he could do for me to get me to fall in love with him. It was about what I could do for Matt to make sure his happiness was fulfilled.  I stopped trying to be so selfish. I tried to make sure that I did my fair share of helping out around the house, and making sure he got him some alone time too and I started sacrificing things I wanted so he could have some things he wanted. I started actually fighting for his happiness. It was different than I had ever thought. When I started doing things for him because I was concerned about his happiness I realized that the more I worked and strived to make him happy and content the more I fell in love with my own husband.

There was no real defining moment of shooting stars and butterflies and rainbows and all the romance but there definitely was a day when I woke up and realized that I really had finally fallen in love with the guy I married. He was a great guy and I knew that from the start, but he became an even greater guy than I had imagined when I let go of my selfishness and started trying to actually love him. I stopped focusing on what he wasn’t doing for me and instead I started focusing on what I wasn’t doing for him but what I should be doing for him.

There still isn’t always romance in the air, but I do see it much more now than I did when I was the selfish one in the relationship.  I hear so often women who are like I was, saying that their husband’s aren’t doing certain things that they need to in order know that they are loved.  Here are my thoughts to that, start doing things for him and you’ll learn to find ways to love him, ways in which you never dreamed possible.  Stop looking for the fairytale and help write a new love story that would make the fairytale seem like a child’s dream because in all honesty that is what a fairytale is.  You have the ability to make a love story far greater than you’ll ever see in any movie.  You just have to stop trying to make your life a movie.  Man made movies and the dreams in those movies, and God can make so much better than that if you just surrender the idea of what you have and let him fulfill his dreams in your love life.

Learning to Pray

Prayer can be such a tough concept to really handle. I am not saying we don’t understand what prayer is, though I do at times still struggle with it. But the whole idea of talking to a God who we can’t see sometimes just seems a little overwhelming to our human brains at least if we were to be truly honest.

When I turned my life back over to serving God a little over a year ago I can honestly say that sometimes I wondered if he was even listening. I can even admit that there are times even now that I sometimes feel like he just isn’t really caring to hear my prayer at that moment. Though I know this isn’t true and God is always excited to hear our prayers.  However, this last sentence is always easy to say but admittedly for my feminine brain it’s not always easy for me to really believe.

A couple of months after I gave my life back to the service of living for Christ I had such a hard time coming to grips with the fact that God heard me or even wanted to really use my life. I felt like my prayers were only getting ceiling high and that was pretty much where they got stuck.  However, I am the first to admit I was not a strong person of prayer.

I believed prayer worked, but maybe just not for me. I had honestly turned my back on God several times in my life already so I often struggled with the idea that he even wanted to listen to me, after all he’s heard from me before how much I love him and then proceeded to walk away from him and ignore him for years at a time.  Why would this time be any different? I felt this constant question in my mind each time I prayed, so finally in desperation for God to really hear me I yelled at him to test my faith.  Ummm seriously that was DUMB!!!  Cuz boy did He ever take me up on that idea! And not only did he decide to test my faith but he took my family on a little joy ride with me.

So for about 8 months straight we have been in probably the low of the low.  Somehow my marriage became ever stronger than I could imagine, my faith became stronger than it’s been, and my prayer life well let’s just say there wasn’t an hour in my days that went by unless I was sleeping that I wouldn’t at some point stop to pray.

Now, this is the part where the idea of prayer really started to sink in. God was doing this awesome thing with teaching me more than one lesson at a time.  He’s cool like that, trying to kill two birds with one stone.  My faith was tested a lot to the core. And my prayer life also began. I of course started just by coming to God begging him to help us out, to help us make ends meet, to help us find a way to make sure Alex got to eat at night and we could find a way to still pay our bills.  It was amazing watching God come through time and time again right on time and just when we needed. This was when I started to realize I needed to trust him because he always answered my prayers just in the nick of time.

My prayers did start off each time being really selfish.  They were never huge elaborate prayers.  They never last probably more than 2 minutes but they were directly from my heart asking God for guidance through my day or help with the finances. 

A few months went by that God was always answering prayers and turning another fiasco into a miracle for us before he finally reminded me to use some manners. So each time I got an answer to a prayer I realized I needed to add to my prayer life. All he needed and wanted was a simple.  “thank you GOD!”  Usually I would add in an “your awesome!”  Just because that is how I felt. Each time my heart really was thankful and each time it was like new all over again he truly was AWESOME!

How funny though that over that period of time I really did learn how to pray. I still don’t pray long elaborate prayers, partially because my brain is ADD and I can’t stay on one topic of conversation for more than 5 minutes without completely getting distracted and usually thinking of something else entirely different.  Towards the end of my wonderful life lessons of faith and prayer and constantly seeing the amazingness God I started knowing that he will continue to be evident in my life as long as I stay faithful to him always.

But the big part of my learning experience I had was after the struggle we went through subsided a bit. I realized for a while that I started backing of on my prayer life. I was missing out on my every day little chats with God and I was starting to desperately miss him.  It wasn’t even the miracles I was missing it was just feeling the few moments of peace and love I would get whenever I would go to him with a quick prayer.

 I realized that my prayer life could be more than just requests for things I need or thank you’s for answered prayers.  God created prayer to be an open communication with him always.  He wants to hear my every heartfelt comment for him, such as “I love you.’ Or “good morning God, the sunshine is so nice, Thanks for making it a sunny day,” or even, “God, that was wrong of me please forgive me.’  One of my most common prayers during my day is, “God, please help I am angry help me control my temper and anger.”  God seriously wants to hear it all, and he wants to be a part of my life just like my husband is or my friends are.

When I hear the verse I Thessalonians 5: 17 “pray without ceasing” I think this is what Paul really meant when he was instructing them to pray.  We need to keep our daily lives open to God, inviting him into every detail.

Children standing up for Jesus

Yesterday was one of the best days I have ever had teaching a Sunday school class to children.

All the kids were sitting down to color a picture and a little girl decided to tell everyone that, “Jesus isn’t really real.”  The room went dead silent. I looked up along with the other teacher in the room and I asked her what she had said, thinking I probably just misunderstood her. So she repeated it again but with much more sincerity. “Jesus isn’t real! My mommy and daddy told me he’s not real.”

I have never been so proud or impressed by a bunch of little boys and girls standing up for their faith to someone who opposed Jesus. The first little boy looked right at her and said, “Jesus is too real, I know he is I talk to him all the time.”(so proud of this little boy because he is usually one of the shyest kids in the room) Then another little boy in our class who has gone through so much the last 6 months said, “Jesus is real he made me better.” At that point the rest of the class jumped in to help defend their, “Jesus.” So cool to hear a bunch of 4&5 year olds share their faith and why they believe Jesus is the real thing!

She didn’t say anything back once they all started talking to her about how real Jesus was. I hope she really took to heart some of the things those kids said to her.  Though I never want to stand against a parent and how they choose to raise their children, I do hope that she went home wondering if her mommy and daddy just might be wrong this time.

Very happy to know that what we’ve been working hard at teaching these young minds really is sinking in and they do know the difference between what is real and what is fake.  “But Jesus called the children to him and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.  Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” Luke 18: 16-17

Christian doesn't equal Free & Easy Life

One of my friends got me to really thinking today about certain aspects about my relationship in Christ. She brought up an interesting point that she needed prayer to help her deal and understand with knowing that God never promised our walk through life after surrendering our lives to him would be easy. So, I went home and had some time to think. I really wanted to help but didn’t have an answer. I didn’t have my Bible next to me but I prayed and while I was praying selfishly about some other things, pretty much feeling sorry for myself, God seemed to really lay on my heart, “be thankful I do not do to you what I did to my servant Job.” OUCH!!!

Many Christians today think when they ask Christ into their lives it’s the end all to their problems and frustrations. We don’t have a full comprehension of what our life really will be like. We think it’s going to be pretty skies with rainbows and butterflies and all sorts of nice things.  Not saying there won’t be sunshine sometimes but that is not what Christ says our lives will be like. In fact just because we are ‘devout Christians,’ doesn’t mean any sort of promises of a perfect filled life.  In fact Jesus pointed out otherwise in Luke 9:23 ”whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” Meaning we have a cross to carry and our life is not going to always be full of happy times.

Though Job was around way before Jesus was ever born he was alive and considered to be a blameless and upright man, a man who feared God. A synonym for the word blameless could also be guiltless, or innocent. So Job was considered to be an innocent man who obviously was living in all the ways honoring to God.

Now what is my point, the rest of Job’s story is the point. It is written in the first chapter of Job a conversation between God and satan and God literally gave Satan permission to destroy everything in his life only he was not allowed to kill Job. God allowed this in order to test the strength of his fear for God. Satan started by destroying all his crops and animals that he had and even took all of his children from him. But Job was faithful when those things were taken from him and worshiped God anyways.

Then Satan, being unpleased about this went back to God to push further and received permission from God to harm Job’s physical being where the man broke out into sores all over his body.  And my favorite part is he says,  “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” (Job2:10b) Even though this man went through a literal hell on earth and he did not know God’s reasoning, he still continued to praise God.

So yes, the answer is yes, we may go through a lot of rough things in this life.  Being a Christian doesn’t save you from pain on this earth, but it does give you someone to constantly go through life with that you can hang on to.

 I just pray that God never gives permission to Satan to destroy my life in the way he allowed him to destroy Jobs in order to prove that I will still be faithful to him no matter what. But for now it's just a great reminder to be Joyful in all things no matter what my circumstances. 

A Real passion

Passion is a word I so often here now that I am involved in different types of ministries and things within the Christian church. I hear people so often say, I have a passion for Kid Zone, or a passion for Christ. I have always mentally on my own defined passion as a burning, yearning, experience I feel in the pit of my stomach concerning something (and no not the heartburn/gas kind) It’s the word that means that whatever I am doing usually I have some goal in mind as to how it is going to fulfill my passion or passions for things in this life.

So I looked up the word ‘passion’ in the dictionary on line to see how they would define the word: 

1.       Any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling, as love or hate.

2.       Strong amorous feeling or desire; love; ardor

3.       There were other ones to but not pertaining to the type of passion I am referring too.

So then of course I had no idea what ardor really meant so I had to look that up too. A great warmth of feeling; fervor; passion. Or Intense devotion, eagerness, or enthusiasm.

This to me was the perfect definition of how I feel about something I say I am passionate about. People know your passion by how you react and put your whole heart, mind and soul into something.  Most people have a passion for their spouse and their kids to see them happy and healthy and invest a lot of their time into them because they are so passionate about them.

In the Christian church I hear so many people say, “I have a huge passion for Christ.”  So, that means you would bend over backwards for him, devote your undivided attention to him daily, be eager each morning to sit and chat it up with him and just be so full of passion for him that the people you work with and interact with on a daily basis know you are passionate about your relationship with Christ and 100 % dedicated to Him. There would be no question left in anyone’s mind that you are a true follower of Christ and whole heartedly His.

I see so many people when they go off to school they choose a profession they are passionate in.  You hear teachers all the time say how passionate they are about their students. You also know they are because all they do is talk, talk, talk about their students and their job almost to the point that if you do not have the same passion all you want to do is tell them to stop talking.  My friend who is going to school to be a teacher, it’s her love, her passion to teach. She loves kids so much and you can tell. She loves spending time with them, playing with them, teaching them, holding them and doing everything with them.  She has a true passion for children and teaching and education. I just love her passion for what she does.  She is genuinely passionate about everything she is trying to achieve. 

With Christians we are suppose to portray that type of passion for Christ. Do not tell me you are passionate about being a Christian and being a follower of Christ if the person you interact with many times in your life who doesn’t attend church with you would not be able to tell if you were a Christian or not.  If you are not portraying your passion about Christ and his love for you the way you would talk about your passion for your job, or your husband or kids then stop talking the talk until you can talk the talk and walk the walk. When you have the true passion with Christ you will no longer have to talk it because people will just now it.  My friend who is going to school to be a teacher has never told me the words, “I am passionate about teaching children.” I just know she is because of what she does, her actions show it.  If you are truly passionate about Christ, you won’t have to announce it with your declaration of saying, “I am passionate about Christ.” You’re talking about him none stop and doing things he wants you to do and the actions which you show every day all the time will be proof of how much passion you really do have for God. I pray that this year my life will become ever present and people will always be aware of my love for Christ.  I want to have the passion for Christ that overflows to the point of being like that teacher who doesn’t stop talking about her classroom who sometimes can get annoying, but in a good way. When we have a passion for Christ we will then have a true passion for other people and the goals in everything will change.  Our goals with life will become more concerned with helping peoples souls and leading them to find the same happiness in which you have found and teaching them that they can have the exact same passion in Christ as you do even if they are passionate about other things in this world. 

Ok so maybe I am on a soap box here and I’ll get off of it. But I am just frustrated a lot lately hearing the words about being so passionate from Christians but I would never know it unless they told me and even with people telling me it’s hard to believe them when they don’t take their passions for Christ outside of the church walls and parking lot. When you actually have a burning desire and eager or excitedness about Christ you spend time with God digging in His word each day and trying to get to know him better and then moving mountains to make sure you can get that time in each day then you can say you are passionate, but then you won’t have to say anything because people will just know it.

Passion is about having an over abundant amount of love and joy in something. Having a strong relationship with Christ brings about both love and joy.  Christians need to have more of a passion for their personal relationship with Christ than they do for their religion in Christ.

The new years resolution

So every year I find something about myself which I would find challenging to change.  Ok so really it’s not all that challenging, like quit smoking, losing weight and things that are normal new year’s resolutions which usually get forgotten about as fast as they are said. So this year I wanted to challenge myself a little more. My first thought was of course loosing weight, but that is not really something I want to call my new years resolution because I have been doing that since before the new year ever started.  I wanted to dig deeper this year, find something with a real meaning that didn’t imply a vein desire for myself.  So in order to find my new resolution for 2012 I sat and thought for a while reflecting on 2011. I have never really sat and pondered on my past years, I just see them go by and see a new year come and go and don’t really reflect on what I have done or haven’t done.

My reflection of 2011 was actually very happy and built a little confidence in myself. I realized so much had happened in 2011. I started it off by finding out I was pregnant with Elijah and then from there started getting involved in our church. Since then I have been blessed with so many new friends that I could have never imagined finding and been blessed by growing in my spiritual walk with Christ. I’ve been excited this past year to become a part of many other peoples lives and find ways that God has blessed me through these individuals and hopefully ways that I have been able to be a blessing to them as well.  It’s been exciting this year to see my son Alex learn new things about the Bible and become openly excited about going to church and learning Bible verses and stories that will hopefully impact him the rest of his life.  It has been more than amazing to watch my husband grow spiritually as well. He is such an inspiration and a huge help on the days when I need spiritual inspiration to keep the faith and keep holding strong. It’s been so much fun this past year to sit back and watch him grow in so many ways and become the man he is and watching him change into a godly man.  He’s become my new inspiration. Of course to top it all off we gained a new cute addition to our little family, Elijah.

 I can’t say 2011 was a perfect year. There were ups and downs but as I sat and pondered about my past year I realized when I started I was clouding much of this happiness of 2011 with thoughts about things I wish I had done better, things I wish I had done at all and things that downright made me depressed that I hadn’t done correctly.  Not that I was thinking only on the negative things but I did let them cloud in on the good things which happened this past year. Then I realized what I was doing and forced myself to stop. Then I realized what my new resolution should be. Instead of focusing on bad things and letting them cloud and ruin the good things, I need to always focus on the good. I want to strive to see the good in everything not just in some things or on days when things are all going my way but I need to focus on being joyful in all things and loving people no matter what they may say or do to me. My goal in my life is to live up to God’s expectations for each day of my life that everything I say and do brings honor and glory to Him and that when I do enter heavens gates I will hear 'well done good and faithful servant.'   I figured if I was going to make a new years resolution this year that I needed to pick something that would help bring me closer to my life goal.  Philippians 4:8 says "... whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things"

I want to live up to this verse,( and so many others) but this is the one I am really striving for this year. Instead of focusing on things that I don’t like that I potentially could let wreck my day (and other peoples day) I need to think on positive things. I know if I change my way of thinking it will impact my way of acting and reacting when things aren’t going exactly how I think they should or when I look back and feel like I should have said or done something different. If I think on things that are true, noble, right, pure, and lovely then I will be focusing on good things that will form positive impacts on not only my life, but also on my husband’s life, my children’s life and the lives of all those I come in contact with. With my goal in mind to serve Christ with my fullest potential I know the first change needs to be my attitude and in order to change that I need to change the way I think.