33...and beyond

Yesterday was a LONG day again too. I spent the whole morning and afternoon at the little league park cheering for some sweet kiddos during some exciting firsts. Even though it was cold, and rain, what fun seeing them try new things! After that I found myself with a mission. I have a wedding to go to on Saturday and I needed something to wear. So, I went shopping. If you know me well you know I HATE shopping. Like, I totally detest it. The reason I hate it so much is because it literally has never been fun for me. I have struggled with my weight all my life and a result, clothes are hard to pick out. My body looks weird in things or all the clothes in my size look like tents. I have never been "fashionable" per say and I STRUGGLE, not to just wear yoga pants and hoodie everyday. I don't feel comfortable in clothes BUT I do manage to come up with every day things that I feel ok in.  One thing I REALLY don't do well or often is get dressed up. Finding d...

"Miss Linda!!....have you seen the person who stole my purse?" "It's in your hand, my dear." "Miss Linda!!...I think that man over there is following me." "No, he works here, he is security guard it's his job to walk around." "Miss Linda!!!...that lady this morning offered me some gum...I should have taken that gum...do you have any gum?" "No I do not." "Do you know where I could get some gun? I really want some gum." "No I do not know where we could get some gum, this is a doctors office." "Miss Linda!!!...did you see me take that alcohol wipe and then put it back?" "Yes I did." "Why did I do that? Why did I put it back?" "I don't know." "I should have kept it...do you have any alcohol wipes." "No I do not." "Can you get me one?" "I don't have any." ...

SOOOOO...I wrote words last night and but they disappeared into oblivion somewhere. I have no idea where they went. Let's just be honest and say, it was probably the best blog I have ever written...too bad no one will ever read it. LOL Anyway, today is a new day. Isnt that one of the lovely parts about life? No matter how we screw up the day before, today is always fresh with room to have dramatic highs and lows. There is room to crush things out of the park and room to fail miserably. I love that about life. I love that whatever happens whether triumph or failure God is God and He is still good. He is reigning on the throne high and lifted up. Over the course of the last year or so I constantly find myself coming back to the statement that God is good. Tonight, from several different avenues, I was challenged by that thought. It seems so small. It seems incomplete. Sometimes when you dont know what else to say to a person who is struggling, it seems a little trite. A friend po...

I was challenged with a thought today that I cannot seem to escape. It's this. I. Hate. Weakness in myself. I tend to wind up in one or two places when it comes to my personal weakness. I either kill myself trying to conquer the situation or I beat myself up over and over for my failure. I am simply not ok with personal weakness. This most likely comes from a role I have accepted to be my own. That role is workhorse. I'm the get it done girl. I'm sorta like Vanilla Ice, "if you got a problem, YO I'll solve it." I frequently find myself making the statement..."I GOT this." But I don't always have it or the price of taking care of it costs me rest, relationship or potentially even robs someone else of an opportunity to take that role and shine. But if I can't juggle all the balls, if I can't keep everything clipping along the way it should, then I am weak and that is simply failure. I find this in other areas of my ...

As I grow older and continue to seek after the Lord, I am amazed how I, how am much an extravert, crave stillness. I crave solitude. I crave silence. This weekend, I turned off much of the noise, put my phone on do not disturb and spent time in stillness and living a simpler form of life. It was lovely. It was necessary. On Saturday afternoon I hung in my hammock in my brothers back yard and read to my nephew from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. As I read, I was stricken by the imagery. It was beautiful and eloquent yet simple.  I crave simple, more than I ever realized. In disconnecting for much of the weekend, yes, I missed chatting with my friends, but that was all I missed.  As I reconnected today and stepped back into all the pressures of regular life, I couldn't help wishing I were in my hammock in the woods reading CS Lewis or LM Montgomery. I think this has all been a lesson in balance. In order to connect well, I need to balance that conne...

We spend a lot of our life trying desperately to feel connected. We want to connect with people because we are created to enjoy fellowship. Of late, I am being reminded again of the power that also lies in solitude. Somewhere in our desperation for connection, we often miss the most important connection we can make. Connection with the Savior. This weekend, I am taking time to intentionally disconnect so that I can tune out the other sounds and here from my master. I am setting down my phone, turning off the noise and doing things like reading, writing, organizing, simplifying and sitting in stillness before the Lord so that I can hear him speak. I know my God does not hide His face from me. There is often just too much noise and distraction for me to recognize it. I want to see Him. I want to hear from Him. I want to know Him. The only way for me to experirience this, is to be intentionally intentional in the way I seek His face. The more I seek Him, the more I will fi...

Do you ever just feel totally helpless? Like the situations and people in your life are just too much and you have NOTHING to offer that could possibly make things better?  Been there.  Like kind of a lot. I'm there right now actually.  But it's ok to feel helpless because guess what? You are. I am. We are. We are all helpless.  But we have a helper. I work in a job that makes me feel totally under qualified and helpless basically everyday. Problems come across my path that I have NO CLUE what to do. But I have realized something and it has brought me to a place of freedom and confidence in the midst of my helplessness.  It's this, I don't have to try to play God, that's His job. MY job is simply to pray, speak truth and walk faithfully.  That's my job. My very wise boss often reminds us not to get in the way of the Holy Spirit when He is working. I have found that sometimes His process is pretty ugly. Sometimes he w...

Today I spent a lot of the day in focused prayer over a particular issue. I had a sinking sense it wouldn't go the way I hoped and it didn't.  The reason I had that sense was because as I prayed each time I really focused my heart to pray about it the thing I heard in my spirit was the quote, "but if not, He is still good."  It's a quote I have loved for a long time now in regards to what I wrote yesterday about having open hands and releasing things like dreams in such. Tonight however the Lord brought me (in His perfect timing) to the origin of that quote. It comes from Daniel, from the story of king  Nebuchadnezzar building the statue of himself for the nation to bow down to. This, of course, was blatant idolatry and Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who were devout young followers of the Lord, could not bow. The price for failing to bow was to be tossed into a fiery furnace. When Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego refused to bow, they went round and...

I have been thinking a lot lately about how blessed we are as a society. I have mentioned this a few times lately…and I don’t want to seem obsessed, it’s just something I really enjoy. I have been rereading the Anne of Green Gables series again. There is something about springtime that makes me need to reacquaint myself with those “old friends”. As I swung in my hammock and read the words of Anne of Windy Poplars the other day, a line struck me.  Anne was writing a letter, to Gilbert of course, recollecting a particular dining experience she had had at the wealthiest home in the small town of Sommerside, Maplehurst. The line that struck me was one in which she was describing the grandeur of the whole affair and highlighted the fact that, “the water was cold.” Gun to my head, if I had to say my very favorite thing to drink, it’s ice water.  I LOVE cold, cold water. I keep to water bottles with me most days at work, one on my desk that I am drinking from and one in ...

I wrote a little about this the other day. The lord seems to be asking me to let go of things. Another common theme right now in my heart is "Open hands". I am a story teller to the core of my being and so, often when I am interacting with a struggling client, I tell them some kind of story to give and example to what I am trying to help them with. One of my favorite is about the monkeys.  Apparently the tribal people in like South America (I think) have a little trick when they hunt for monkeys. They take a coconut and hollow it out. Then they attach the coconut to a tree or something stable with one small hole in it. Inside, they place some kind of treat. Something the monkey would really like to have. Now, I guess that monkeys are pretty stubborn because what will happen is the monkey will com along, see the coconut, discover the treat, reach their hand in to get it annnnnd bam! They are trapped!  Why are they trapped you ask?  Well, they are t...

Today is Easter. The day that we celebrate the power of the resurrected Christ.  I'll be frank. This morning, was not my finest hour. I didn't sleep well, I was frazzled. I had a lot to get done. There were eggs to stuff and hide, crafts to wrangle, songs to rehearse. So much to do, so little time.  I really didn't take time to stand in wonder of what this day really means. As I write these words, I'm once again in my hammock.  The sun has dipped from the sky. For the last hour I have laid here doing but watch the sun slip past the horizon. The Lord has painted a one of a kind vision across the sky that has taken my breath away. As I laid here listening to the birds sing, feeling the breeze and watching the sky, I was reminded of words from psalm 8. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you ...

Today was one of those kind of beautiful days where it feels like you're getting a little tiny glimpse of heaven right here on earth. The weather was spectacular, the sun shone, and for the first time the promise of warm summer days was in the air.  Something that I'm realizing more and more and perhaps have always known, it's how much of a free spirit I am. I've been told many times in my life that I'm a bit of a hippie. Are used to think it wasn't true but on days like today I can't help but acknowledge it. I'm the kind of girl who loves wind in her hair sand on her toes and warm sunshine at her face. I'm the kind of girl who likes to frolic in a field of daisies and fly kites.  This week I bought a hammock. This purchase makes my hippie soul sing. They came in the mail yesterday and I spent a tiny bit of afternoon off and I had reading a book there. This morning I washed my hair and then swung in my hammock was a breeze dried it.  ...

Another verse in scripture that I love is Galatians 1:10. Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ. As a born people pleaser, it is easy for me to look for my affirmation from the people that I am seeking to please instead of from the Lord. The enemy is very quick to take any lack of affirmation and toss it in my face as being unloved in someway. "People don't actually care about you. They only like you because of what you will do for them or because you are funny. Don't think that they actually care about your heart. When life gets tough, your basically on your own." It's incredibly obnoxious because he has used this tactic over and again in my life and it is not true. There has never been a moment when I have been on my own. As a servant of Christ, I do not need affirmation from man. I am seen, known and loved with a passi...

As I roll over the hill onto the second leg of this journey, I have been thinking a lot about where I am going. Two themes have been coming up a lot in my heart or late. 1.) releasing or letting go of things 2.) dying to myself daily There is a teaching that I have listened to multiple times by Priscilla Shirer called Releasing Your Grasp. There's a statement that she makes in that talk that resonates deeply with me. "It's hard to throw a surprise party for someone who won't get in the car." I know I have mentioned that one of my favorite verses is Ephesians 3:20 "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us..." I have also mentioned that I adore the character Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables. I find her relatable because she is creative and imaginative. I have always had a wonderful and creative imagination. That's why I love Ephesians 3:20. To me what...