Skip to main content

June 18: 3 gifts from your Heavenly Father

  • Wonderful time to drink in His presence and feast on His word. This was a day where I had extra time to devote to the LORD. I spent several sweet hours with Him.
  • His nearness which was my good, my comfort and my delight.
  • Perseverance to stay dependent on Him for strength and wisdom over the course of my whole day. I was feeling tired and unsure of what to offer my clients, but He sustained me and directed my words.

June 19: 3 gifts you became today in serving

  • A Barnabas. A son of encouragement.
  • A listening ear.
  • A heart of compassion.

June 20: A gift bent, beautiful, loved

  • A gift bent down was exchanging a kiss and a hug with Ava, Noah AND Kingston before I even left for work. What a great start to my day!
  • A gift beautiful was celebrating progress and healing with a client who has known deep pain. Hearing that person talk in a way that made God's transformation within them become visible on the outside. Seeing the seed of hope begin to grow up in a place that has only grown despair for many years.
  • A gift loved was knowing that my parents took themselves to Magic Waters just to hang out in the Lazy River for an hour before dinner.

June 21: 3 gifts found in light

  • Forgiveness. When I chose to bring my sins and failures into the light, then Jesus can forgive them. For as long as I choose to pretend that they do not exist, that I am justified in my feelings or actions or that they are not a big deal, I make the darkness my home and remove myself from God's cleansing and loving light.
  • Safety. Sometimes I fear the dark. Sometimes I fear what I cannot see or understand; that which is just beyond the light of my vision. In the same way that I appreciate how the natural and artificial lights remove the physical darkness around me, I appreciate how God's light removes the spiritual darkness around me and delivers me from sin.
  • Sunlight dancing across my car. It reflects off almost everything as I drive and the small points of light race across every surface. They warm everything they touch and I like to watch them glitter here and there.

June 22: 3 gifts that are difficult

  • Living far away from some of my favorite people
  • When other people have what I want
  • Small beginnings

It's been "all hands on deck" in our house to help Patrick with his statistics class. As a result, I haven't been to the House of Prayer as much as I usually am. It was weird. It was also disconcerting in the sense that I felt more vulnerable than I usually do. I realize that investing regular time in prayer, both at the HOP and away, creates a sort of insulation around me. Temptations are a little less appealing, offenses are a little less outrageous and my worries don't get as much air-time in my brain. I continued praying while away from the HOP, but I missed praying in community and the peaceful atmosphere of that little room in the basement of the Hallstrom Center. I'm thankful, in a way, because I believe that serving in this house is part of my mandate from God and a lot of times it feels hard. So, it was nice to be away and really miss it. And, it's been delightful to come back. Like a huge sigh of relief or taking off uncomfortable shoes when you get home. It just feels right to come to this place, to wait on the Lord, to sing, to pray, to read, to listen, and to love.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Back to School

Well, after four years away from school counseling, I have decided to return. Yes, I'm keeping my private practice in counseling. I will be reducing the number of clients that I see on a weekly basis in order to work 20 hours a week as a school counselor at Rockford Christian Elementary School. This comes in the midst of conversations that I have been having with God about desire. In fact, pursuing this position kind of started those conversations. My good friend Mackenzie, who works in the business office at RCS, told me about the position innocently enough. She wanted me to have the information about the position in case I had any counselor friends who might be interested in applying. What neither she nor I could have known, was how desire would stir in my heart as soon as she started to describe it to me. There are things that I have come to absolutely love in private practice counseling. I love being my own boss, setting my own hours and having complete freedom over...
1 comment
Read more

When Creative Desire Stirs

The past 3 months have felt crazy. And during all these months of crazy, busy activity in my life, desire has been stirring in the background of my heart. I read things that other people write and feel myself come alive. I talk with people and hear things that God is speaking and want to write them down and share. I listen to music, sing to the Lord and long to create something that will help other people to connect with God in worship. It has been over two months since I touched our piano. Or any piano, for that matter. This is also my first blog post in almost 3 months. Crazy months, yes. But, 3 months all the same. I feel sad about these things. And scared to start again. What if I have lost everything that I had developed? But even fear of the possible frustration of starting again has not been able to change my desire. My desire has only been stirring and growing all this time. My desire is to resume creating. With piano. With words. This is week 9 of my training for t...
Post a Comment
Read more

31 Days to Keep a Tender Heart: October 18

  Always be joyful. Keep on praying. No matter what happens, always be thankful, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus. I Thessalonians 5:16-18 Ann Voskamp quoted this passage in her blog recently. Then, I read it in my one-year Bible for October 12. Seeing it twice within a week caught my attention. Verse 16 is: Always be joyful. This sounds like a command to me and I don’t think God would command us to do something we can’t do. If He tells me to always be joyful, then I believe that it is always possible for me to be joyful and that this is what God desires for me. Verse 17 is: Keep on praying. I hear another command. And, it follows the first one, which I understand to mean that prayer is related to being joyful. The joy provokes the prayer; the prayer sustains the joy, or both. Either way, I like how God has placed these two directives right next to each other. Verse 18: No matter what happens, always be thankful, for this is God’s will for ...
Post a Comment
Read more