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.

Sick Day

I am not sure at what point it happened, but somewhere in the past week, I went from fighting seasonal allergies to fighting a bad cold. It was a PA Day yesterday, which would have been a perfect opportunity to call in sick and rest up, but there was a staff meeting planned and some of the topics covered concerned my position.

When my boss heard the bug in my voice she apologized for giving it to me as she had been sick earlier in the week while we were meeting over attend. issues. I assured her I was well drugged and would be OK. Half way through the meeting, I was getting very stuffy and couldn't figure it out, I'd taken some pretty good stuff. At the break, I reached in  my pocket and found the 2 capsules I'd thought I'd taken that morning....I guess technically I'd "taken" them but in my fog, I missed out on the actual ingestion of them. 

(It has nothing to do with being blond either...I can see the smirks you know!)

I discovered something about us females today.

We are caretakers by nature.

Both Maria and I were quite miserable by this morning, which pretty much went unnoticed by the males in our home, but not Jianna. 

Since supper time last night, she has been trying to get me to eat salad..."but it's healthy mom".

Soup, Ok, but how many of you out there, really feel like sitting down to a nice crunchy salad when you feel ill?

When I refused a salad for breakfast, she peeled me an orange and fed it to me segment by segment, (popping a few in her own mouth as she did). "It will give you vitamin C " she declared.

Then she decided she needed to make pancakes and asked me would I like some and would I like them with or without blueberries?

It's a pretty big job for a 7 year old to make pancakes and she always had Maria's help in the past, so I said which ever was easier for her. She thought for a minute, "are blueberries healthy?"

"yes they are"I said.

"I'll make them with blueberries".

She stuffed as many blueberries as she could get into each of my pancakes and was very proud of herself for doing so.

Along with drinks and my iron pills, she brought me an apple...

I don't know who ever told her that old saying, "feed a cold, starve a flu", but boy was she going to feed this thing right out of me!

When I said I couldn't eat the apple right now, she left my room.

Upon her return, she handed me the  following schedule she'd written down:

12:30-1:00 read

1:00-2:00 sleep

2:00-2:05 apple

2:05-2:45 play game

Now, Jianna had not counted on the fact that Maria would fall asleep beside me and with the terrible gurgling in her chest, there was little opportunity to fall asleep; but just as I was starting to dose off ... In pops my little nurse, (at 1:59 to be exact), "time for your apple!"

The fact that Jianna had written the schedule down, pretty much set it in  stone in her mind and I knew I would never have the strength to get well at all if I expended what would be necessary to convince her otherwise.

Funny, how she was totally fine with the game taking much longer than the allotted time though...mind you, she certainly took note of it.

Thank Heaven for Little Girls...because the boys would let you starve to death on your sick bed!

PS: It seems my Little Nurse is not yet off duty, it's 7:19 and I was heading for a shower, when Jianna asked me had I taken my iron pill with supper. I had to confess, I'd forgotten. You should have seen the appalled look on her face, like I'd just undone all her hard work in one foul sweep!

Maybe, the little nurse should have added it to my schedule!

When You Know You Don't Deserve it:

It had been one of those days. You know the kind...the ones that leave you feeling like you just can't do it all, after all. Work had been long, tiring, and trying. I'd felt behind the eight ball most of the day, so I ate at my desk and worked thorough my breaks...never a very good plan.

I was glad to finally put the work day aside and retreat to my haven of a home for a little reprieve before the troops arrived with their mountains of homework to supervise, dinner to make, laundry...you know, the mom stuff.

This year, I am the first one out of the house in the morning so I am never quite sure what might face me as I walk through the front door. This day, the sink was FULL of dirty dishes, the dishwasher needed unloading, there were lunch-making-crumbs scattered over all of my counter tops...

But the last straw was my eldest daughter's PJ's. 

Not on the floor or the couch where I often find them, no, they were on my kitchen counter! Why? Is there ever a good reason to leave you PJs on the kitchen counter...especially when your bedroom is DOWNSTAIRS.

She wasn't there, but my hubby was.

 Yup, my frustration all came out in one sentence..."I CAN'T DO IT ALL!!!"

I really needed to sit down and veg, or better yet pray, but I couldn't stand the mess and got to work, threatening to let everyone fend for themselves for supper.

Hubby went back to work and my kitchen and my emotions were all tidied nicely before my kiddies came through the door. We got through homework and I even got to relax while the girls peeled potatoes for supper.

I was in a much better frame of mind when Mark arrived announcing he had a surprise and I had to close my eyes....

He'd had the florist put together a beautiful bouquet of deep red roses and perfect white lilies and if that were not enough, he bought this huge candle arrangement that he knew would remind me of my beloved ocean...(so glad I'd made a supper they all loved!)

When Maria asked what the occasion was, I explained that sometimes your hubby will bring you gifts because you got cranky with him.

Her response...."SWEET!!!"

OK, so maybe that wasn't a "mother/wife of the year" life lesson to give to my little girl...I'll have to work on that.

I do have a feeling she will need a husband as understanding as her mother's though.

Happy Autumn!