Woo Hoo!

Guess Where My Hubby is taking me for my Birthday?!?!?

I can't tell you how excited I am!

I had really wanted to go down to White Horse in Indiana and

 take in one of their incredibly Holy Spirit led conferences and Hubby came up with the idea of doing this one with me for my Birthday.

It started out as a long shot, the kids need care, the dog 

taking care of...and I would need three days off work. I wasn't even sure if protocol would be in place for me to take time away during the school year. I had built up lots of lieu time, but still...

Everything fell into place so quickly....except my request for time off. I waited patiently as my boss tried to find out if and how I could do it.

The longer I waited, the more I believed Mark and I were to be there and was so excited at the prospect, then sooo nervous that it all hinged on me getting the time. I really began to feel yesterday, that it was a Daniel request and that the answer was being wrestled out in the Heavens..I recruited some warriors and waited...somewhat impatiently.

Today it was official...My principal came to tell me that they were more than willing to support my going away but had taken so long as they wanted a fill in so that I would not lose the momentum in my position that we had worked so diligently to gain this year.

It was actually in my best interest that they took so long, because I won't come back to near the back Log! Isn't God Amazing!!!

It Really is a New Season

On the first day of Fall, I posted a simple picture with just a few words on it....meaningful, to me but I had no idea how powerfully prophetic they were.

I can't even begin to tell you all that Holy Spirit is sovereignly orchestrating in and for me since that post...but WOW!

We tend to think of long hard winters as a time of barrenness...but summers have the potential to be long, hot, dry and tiring as well. It would seem many seasons have come and gone in my life with an unwavering knowledge of God's workings in my life...I can see the fruit, but it has been for the most part unseen and unfelt. 

I have so longed for the times when I could see and feel Him...to be overwhelmed by His presence and His workings in my life personally.

Through pain, I was drawn to a place of desperation and it was in that place that Holy Spirit began to woo me into a place of intimacy with my groom Jesus.

I was thrilled to just get to know my Jesus on such an incredible level....but I had no idea of all that would flow from that desire, pursuit and place of intimacy. 

He has brought me much needed rest, (in Him), He is continuing to show me the Harvest of good fruit in and around me, He is releasing me from some very old chains that have bound my heart more tightly than I could have ever imagined...and He is birthing a fresh anticipation in me...Hope is rising, and I so needed my hope restored.

It would seem that suddenly He is answering all of my heart's cries tangibly in front of my very eyes...and it is all so undeniably, sovereignly  Him. Not all that He is doing is "comfortable" but knowing He is the orchestrator and that it is for freedom and for my greater good, makes it sooo OK. 

Oh! to know His presence surrounding, filling, healing, restoring and simply overwhelming me. There is such peace in this place of Knowing Him.

What a Faithful, Faithful God we serve.

Imagine The Possibility

Bridal Love vs Bridle Love ....

Think about that for just a moment.

Very different images aren't they? Having spent a couple of years around horses as a teen, I have seen the largest, most stubborn of horses controlled by a bridle. I remember riding a very strong willed horse and being coached, "don't let him get his head"...when you control a horse's head, you control his whole body.

That is not what God wants for us, He doesn't want to simply control us through our intellectual commitment to Him. He wants our heart, to the point that we give ourselves over completely to Him...knowing the fulfillment that is mutually ours in this loving relationship. He offers us Bridal love...passionate, tender, fulfilling, compete, eternal Bridal Love.

This is one of the truths that I am finally beginning to grasp through Shannon Ethridge's book "Completely His".

It's not a new concept to me, but in all these years, I have not really been able to grasp it . I got "saved" literally, at 10. All I knew is that Hell was real and I didn't want to go there. I then learned of commitment and servitude, good Biblical truths...but a very different level of relationship from the next stage which was seeing God as my Healthy Loving Father. That, for me was ground breaking. Though I have even sat under solid wonderful teaching on Jesus the Husbandman, it never seemed to penetrate my heart. I understood it....sort of, but allowing my heart to truly KNOW it was another story. I think I am starting to...it's truly life altering. 

 

Within this concept of Bridal Love, Shannon shares a thought that I have been meditating on all week.

Is it possible that God created sunsets, the ocean, the color pink and chocolate because He knew I would LOVE them?

It caused me to think of another situation...a friend had been traveling way out west and saw a book: Pink Princess Tea Parties, She told me, she immediately thought of me because I love all of those things and bought the book to bring home to me. It was such a sweet and very unexpected surprise, (thank you Shari), but if I let my imagination wander just a wee bit, is it possible, that God, knowing I would be thrilled with such a gift, had the store carry it and display it at just the time and place that Shari would be shopping , see it and think of me? Maybe that thought verges on vanity...but maybe, just maybe, He cares for us that much.

My little girls, (don't tell them I referred to them that way please), made gifts and cards for their daddy's birthday yesterday. They knew we had purchased gifts and even cards from them, but they knew their daddy's heart and they knew what he would love and cherish, and they created it.

Could God have been thinking of me and what I would love and cherish, when He created chocolate beans and my happy flower Pansies?

For me, these are extravagant thoughts...but the more I meditate on these ideas, the more I realize my God loves me enough that it is most certainly quite possible indeed.

WOW! WOW!! WOW!!!!

I am Thankful for so many things this Thanksgiving weekend...The Love of  a God who is gently wooing me into a place of Bridal Love and all of the many gifts He has showered on me from the beginning of time.

For this amazing family He has created and is raising through me...truly a miracle!

For friendships...most definitely a gift to treasure.

I am thankful for all of the beauty he surrounds me with,  from the amazng Autumn colors to blazing sunsets, to the most girly of all colors...PINK.

He IS good...AND He Really , Really Loves US!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

The Extraordinary Proposal

I started a new book on my lunch hour today by Shannon Ethridge, Completely His. I actually purchased it in the spring with a number of Shannon's other books, but am just discovering it's gems now. I got so excited about this particular revelation, I just had to share it with you. I have been in church most of my life and been taught on communion and the last supper countless times, but not with the understanding that only comes from knowing the traditions of the jewish people of Jesus' day.

In Jesus time, when a marriage was being negotiated and proposed, the bride to be did have a say in whether she would marry her potential groom. Once the price had been negotiated, the groom would poor a cup of wine and offer it to the bride. This was a pivotal moment, the bride could reject the cup and the groom would return to his  father's house rejected...or she would drink from the cup, signifying that she was willing to receive the groom's life and was offering hers in return. 

Once she drank from the cup, the groom would return to his father's house and proceed to build a room on to the home for himself and his bride, this is where the marriage was to be consummated. Only after the room was completed and everything was in order for the bride, would he return and receive his bride to himself.

Soooooo, after Jesus had spent time in the garden wrestling with God over the "price", he shared a meal with His disciples then poured the wine and offered the cup to each disciple...it was His proposal to his bride! After the disciples had received the cup accepting the proposal, Jesus  told them He was going away. The disciples were upset, but Jesus said:

"Don't be troubled, you trust God, now trust in me. There are many rooms in my Father's home, and I am going to prepare a place for you. If this were not so, I would tell you plainly. When everything is ready, I will come and get you so that you will always be with me where I am"

John 14:1-3

Talk about perspective! Not only was Jesus asking us to remember all that he did for us on the cross...(the price and all that it entitles us to), He was asking us to remember His proposal and our acceptance and that He is getting everything ready to come back and receive us as His bride for all eternity.

Does that not make communion an even more intimate and personal experience?

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

       

 

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

        

 

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

        

 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Author: Robert Frost

Lately, I am taken back to a little school in Nova Scotia, to my grade 5 discovery of this, my most favorite of poems..."The Road Not Taken".

Even then, at such a formative age, this poem held such meaningful imagery .

I remember wishing I could paint all that it brought to my imagination.

I have been pressed, it would seem on every side, by the burden of seeing a harvest in loved ones' lives that is anything but desirable. 

I have questioned myself, God and others about the stark differences between my life and theirs that have at times threatened to overwhelm me.

Today, I ponder Robert Frost's poem and it's meaning as well as imagery once again...could the answer be that simple?

I chose a different path.