So you know when your kids are small you're pretty much in control of their life experiences? There is a sense of comfort in knowing that you personally are making sure your kids are safe and that any outside influences are, for the most part, controlled by you as a parent.

Then it's time to let them go to school, gulp, and trust that others will keep them safe and watch out for them. However you can no longer control what kinds of worldly experiences your children will encounter in any given day inside the confines of the school. You are thrilled when they come home with great stories of wonderful friendships and adventures. On the flip side though your heart aches when they come home in tears because someone wasn't so kind to them.

As followers of Christ we pray that God will be there because we can't, that God will watch over and protect our children. That He will keep them safe, that the bullies and the mean girls of this world will leave our children alone. That somehow our children will walk through the halls of their schools, grade school on up, unscathed by all the evil that sin has brought into this world.

Rarely though does that happen.....

Often times the travesties are things that can be overcome, talked out or ignored. However, sometimes the evil in the world comes storming through big, and loud and painfully and no matter how hard you try, it can't be over looked or forgotten, you can't wish it away or pretend it didn't happen. How do we deal with this? How do I deal with this??

To back up a bit, when my oldest daughter was a freshman in high school she was raped, at school, during after school hours. She didn't share this information with us until she was a freshman in college, therefore ways we might have dealt with this had we known at the time it happened were not an option for us.

In the past year I have really struggled with why did God allow this to happen? I know He was there with her, He told me so. Yet He did nothing to stop it. I know all the reasons in my head, I know that He can work all things for the good of those who love Him. I know that we have freewill and we make our own choices. I know that she will now have a testimony to share with others and that God can choose to use her experiences to share His glory with others. I'm also now painfully aware how empty those words can seem having to struggle through this personally.

In my search for answers and ways to get past this, because I am not okay with feeling or thinking this way, I found a video tonight by Perry Noble who talks about having a child like faith. Something that can be so hard to achieve. Something he said really resonated with me. You know how when your child gets to be somewhere between 2-3 no matter what answer you give your child or how many times you rephrase it or change your words, no matter what your answer is, the child will look at you and say "why"? Many times our answers are what they are because we can see the bigger picture and the child can't. We see what is ahead or we have experience with the outcome of a particular situation that the child whose never experienced those things has no reference for, therefore, cannot understand why our answer is as it is.

We as Christ followers are referred to as children of God, not adults of God. This makes me think that maybe just maybe when I'm asking why, God is telling me an answer that I cannot completely understand because I cannot see the bigger picture. I don't know what's ahead, I haven't experienced it and I have no point of reference for it.

So thankfully, I have now come to a place that I will no longer question God with my "why", and trust that He knows what the whole picture is, what the greater plan is. It's not going to be easy, and I will have to capture thoughts daily and have to pray through this continually. At least now I have come to a place where I have some peace with this.

yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will be joyful in God my Savior. Habakkuk 3:18

I want you to read something, but before you do, I want you to understand that this is not a post about homosexuals in anyway, this is a post about how we are called to love. So many people under the guise of Christianity spew such unkind things about those that they don't feel live the life that they think they should. However, Jesus tells us that is not our place to judge, our calling as children of God is to love, love everyone, not to judge. The pastor that wrote the letter to this woman, did exactly what God tells us to do, he did not judge, he loved her where she was at. I pray that I can be the kind of person that loves without judgement. What a much kinder world we would live in if everyone just did what we were made to do...Love!

Here's the article I'd like you to read, called My Train Wreck Conversion.

The author of this letter has also written a book, I have added it to my "to read" pile called Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. 

Unforgiveness is a sin. I know this. I also know that unforgiveness keeps me a prisoner, not the person I'm not forgiving. What if the person you're having a hard time forgiving isn't a person......it's God. How can it be God? God doesn't do anything wrong, how could it be He that I need to forgive? It doesn't make sense to me either, but when I think of this pain I have, it always comes back to the fact that God let it happen. I totally understand that we live in a sinful world and that the things that happen are a product of the sin. I also understand that God was there when it happened. I know that God works all things for the good of those who love Him. I know all this stuff. I also know the pain that this has caused my daughter and my family. I also know that my God is a powerful, awesome God that can stop anything, can make anything happen or not happen.

Today as I was reading my book it talked about forgiveness, and this all popped into my head. So I opened my mouth and said I forgive the person that was the cause of all this, and I felt nothing. I've forgiven him long ago, but yet I have all this anger and frustration and bitterness about it and again I find myself asking God why He let it happen.

Maybe this isn't about forgiveness, maybe it's about trust, trusting that God knows what He's doing. That He has a plan for all of this and I'm just not seeing it. Huh; maybe that's what this is about. The problem is, I've no clue how to get to that point. Sigh. This is not an easy journey.....

Horrible things happened on Friday, and it was in the news, it was on the internet, it was in every day conversation by people it didn't personally affect. It is sad the horrible things that happened. However, what is sad is that people seem to be drawn into the media and the sensationalization of it all. The what ifs and the how comes. I just bet that if you asked any of the people that this horrible thing happened to, they'd just want all those cameras to go away, all the news media to leave them alone in their grief. They'd want people to quit talking about it all. At least that is what I would want. When I'm in pain and hurting from horrible things, I don't want people in my face about it. I don't want to have to keep talking about it, rehashing it, reliving it. I just want to be with the people I love and the people that already know all about it. You want to do something for me, pray, pray for me, pray for my family, just pray.

Now the media and people have to hash out the what ifs and the how comes. Instead, why can't we just say it's time to take responsibility for our own actions, that we need to be held accountable for what we do. That it's not this other persons fault because they did this or that, or because they didn't do this or didn't do that, or if we only had better rules or regulations. If only..... How about if everyone quit worrying about what everyone else was doing right or wrong and just became accountable for their own actions and reactions and they made sure they were doing what they were supposed to be doing. Quit looking for things or people to blame everything on.

I'm not cold and heartless, yes I cried, yes it hurts my heart, however, it is not my pain to bear, it is not my business to be part of their very private, personal pain. My business, should I choose to accept it, and I do, is to stand in the gap and pray for those families, that's it, nothing else.

Wanna experience God doing some AMAZING things? Amp up your prayer life!!! I am blessed to belong to a church that believes strongly in the power of prayer. Even more blessed to belong to a women's group that is just starting to realize the power we have in Christ through prayer.

Now I'm not talking your grocery list kinda prayers, I'm talking Holy Spirit lead prayer, the kind of prayer where you're down on your knees getting real with God. The kind of prayer where you don't do all the talking, the kind where you take time to listen as well. That is when God speaks, God leads, God shows up!! I know you're thinking, I don't have TIME for that kind of praying, I'm telling you MAKE time. Once you experience God through prayer you won't want to pray any other way, you will, but you'll LONG for the kind prayer life where God speaks to you.

The book we're studying in our women's group is called Intercessions by Joy Dawson. Here's a list she gives that takes you through some steps for praying. Give it a try!

1. Praise God for who He is.
2. Make sure your heart is clean before God by giving the Holy Spirit time to convict should you have any unconfessed sin.
3. Acknowledge that you cannot really pray affectively without the Holy Spirit's enabling.
4. Deal aggressively with the enemy. Come against him in the all powerful name of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Sword of the Spirit-The Word of God.
5. Die to your own imaginations, desires and burdens for what you feel you should pray for.
6. Praise God now for the remarkable prayer time you're going to have.
7. Wait before God in silent expectancy, listening for His direction.
8. In obedience and faith take action to what God brings to your mind, believing.
9. If possible have your Bible with you in case God wants to give you direction or conformation through His word.
10. When God ceases to bring things to your mind for which to pray, praise Him and thank Him for what He has done.

Now do you have to follow a list every time you sit down and pray, no of course not, however, making your prayer life more than just the grocery list of things that you'd like God to do for you is so powerful. You WILL see things happen and God WILL talk to you, if only you take time to listen!!

This has been a difficult and interesting 4 days. 4 days is the number of days I've been off of Facebook. At first it was about what I should be doing if I wasn't spending time on Facebook? I wandered aimlessly through the house for a bit, I saw all the dusting that needed to be done, the laundry that was waiting for me and the floors that needed to be washed. I quickly went into panic mode thinking there was no way I was going to fill up my time with housework. That can't possibly be what God meant when we told me to fast from Facebook. So I put on my art clothes and headed to my studio, and that's pretty much where I've been when I haven't been working. I've been productive, which is good right? Except I'm not feeling like it's good. I mean, yes, I've been praying a lot, and praising a lot, which is what I do any time I'm in my studio, and well, most the time when I'm not in my studio. So what am I learning from all this?

What I'm learning is actually quite surprising to me. I'm learning that there are things that happen all during my day that are pretty awesome, God shows up all day long!!  I've learned too that I can't keep these things to myself, I need to share them. I need to share the way God blesses me, ways that He speaks to me, things that are AMAZING that He does all day, every day!!!  If nothing else it's renewed my dedication to discipleship and evangelism.

So, with new eyes, and full awareness of who He is, and how He shows up in my life, I am returning to Facebook so I can share it with all of you.

Every once in a while I get to a place of comfort, a place where everything feels good, feels right, it's mostly a good place. However, it's also a place that makes the anxiety creep up in the back of my brain every now and again and put me on full alert. Usually when I'm in this place it becomes abundantly clear that this is just a resting area. That it's just a pause in life giving me a moment or two to recharge and get ready for the next big thing. As usual, when I see that next big thing coming around the corner, I tend to try to look the other way, to pretend I didn't see it and inevitably that thing that I'm trying to avoid is looking me right in the face and to ignore it would be near impossible. Usually that next big thing is another change in my life that God is calling me to make. Not that I don't want to do what pleases God, I do, but oooo change is so hard. Especially when it's something that doesn't feel to me,  like it needs to be changed. However, I know that "tap on the shoulder", that "whisper in my ear" that tells me otherwise. I've also discovered, this time, as with many other times, He doesn't stop at the gentle tap or the whisper, sometimes He screams it at me loud and clear so that I cannot deny Him, so I cannot pretend I don't know what He's telling me.

Here's the kicker though, I know that if I just surrender and do what He's asking, He will bless me for it. He will use me in new and exciting ways. He will reveal Himself to me in ways I've not seen before. I so want that!! So if that is the case why does it feel like I need someone to pry my fingers away from that thing I'm hanging onto so tightly?

I've got lots of praying to do, and lots of listening to do so I know exactly what this looks like for me in His eyes. Now, where did I leave that white flag of mine?