Choir Of Angels

I personally have never heard a choir of angels. But I guess most of us if not all can say that. Yet when I think about it; what would it sound like? Melodic? Sweet? Soft? Overwhelming? It can be any of those things or none of those things. Guess, we'll have to wait until heaven to be certain. Yet there are moments when I think I've gotten a glimpse. The voices are sweet, tender, not always on key but delivered with much passion and joy.

I'm blessed to work at a Christian School. Every week we set aside a day to come together and worship God in His house. Occasionally when we are singing, the worship band stops singing and all you hear are the voices of hundreds of children lifting their praises to God. For me these moments are "Choir of Angels" moments. The sound is so pure, so loving, so sweet sounding.

Something happens when you get a group of kids together, teach them a song, they belt it out and regardless if it's perfect or not there is this magic about it. You're walking down the street and you hear kids singing, you have a tendency to follow it and seek it out. It's just so beautiful. It's welcoming. It's joyful.  It's simply pure.

 I had that experience today. Students from K-5th sang,

                    "God of wonders beyond my galaxy.
                     You are Holy, Holy
                     The universe declares Your Majesty
                     You are Holy, Holy"

The adults stopped singing and the room was filled with the precious tone of children worshiping their Creator. I live for these moments. The presence of God fills the place and we are in awe of His Spirit.

I'm grateful for these pockets of heaven. I'm grateful that God answers their worship. I'm grateful for these Choir of Angels.

Divine Appointments

As I take steps in this journey of restoration, I look back and remember the many blessings He has already given me. The one that keeps coming back to me is in the places I've found employment.

I have been working since I was 15. Part time at first and then when I got to college; full time to pay for my tuition. When I was in the university, God guided me to the first job that I felt was home, a Christian bookstore.

I had accept Jesus into my heart when I was 10 and had gone to church and learned about the Bible, but I wasn't aware of all this other material and knowledge that was available. Books, musics, cards and just copious amount of new knowledge. It was overwhelming and exciting. The people that I worked with became my second family. I met my maid of honor here. The bookstore became a sanctuary. Many important life events happened when I worked there. I grew so much. I look back on those days and I’m filled with great joy and happiness. It broke my heart when they had to close their doors.

But God had opened another door, a Christian school teaching job. The first year was not easy, it was actually quite awful. So awful in fact that I didn't return the following year. I felt so defeated and thought that I misheard my calling. That teaching wasn't my purpose. It was a time of doubt and sadness. While God healed my wounds from that experience, I did a year of substitute teaching.  God had intervened and I returned to my old teaching position the following year. I have been at my school for 16 years. In these years, friendships have been created and established, lessons have been learned and it's become home.

In both cases God has put specific people in my path to strengthen me, to challenge me, to love me, to encourage me and help guide me. In each place he provided divine appointments. Each person placed there for a purpose and for some a season.

I look back and see how these individuals help build me, mold me and help shape the person I am today. I'm thanking and grateful to all these appointments, even the ones that were terrible and heart breaking, because in each experience, I learned, I grew and relied on Him more. He never failed me then and he will never fail me now.

Grateful for His divine appointments.

Child of God

     

Child of God. What does that mean? What do we get from that? Why the title? 

For me it’s belonging. Someone is looking out for me. People know who I come from? 

If you think about how we are children of our parents and how that plays out in our life; you can see the value of being called a Child of God. 

Growing up my parents provided all my basic needs and even those not so basic. They protected me from any danger. They taught me life skills. They disciplined me. They were proud to be my parent. Regardless of any mistakes I’d make and disagreements we’d have, they still admitted knowing me. : ) I belonged to them and they were always looking out for me. Even now, I’m 40 years old, married for 15 years and when I get sick my parents still feel the yearning to bring me wonton soup, my favorite I’m sick meal. It’s warms my heart that they want to continue to be my parents, regardless of age. It’s a wonderful blessing. 

Just like my parents would do these things, so much more does God do for me. He looks out for me, protects me and shows me unconditional love. 

My parents are very involved in church. Growing up people tended to treat me with extra kindness, give me special treatment and assumed the best of me. It wasn’t because I was this super kid, but it was a reflection of my parents. People say all the time that children are a reflection of their parents, which is true, but the opposite can also be true. I had done nothing to deserve any special treatment, they did it because I come from my parents. Their attributes were put on me because I’m their child. I’m my parents’ child and I’m proud to hold that title. 

What more than to hold the title of a Child of God. God is loving, faithful, righteous, compassionate, gracious and laundry list of other amazing things. When someone sees me, I want them to see my Father’s attributes in me. I obviously have to show these acts but in that first impression, God’s name is, for lack of a better word, vouching for my character. Think about that, when you meet someone and in your talking you find out they are a Believer, your countenance and attitude changes. You get excited and you know that this person is good people. Now sometimes down the line that may be proven wrong but that first impression give them a lot of clout. 

Like with my earthly parents, I wanted to prove worthy of their name. So I would like to be worthy of God’s name too. God offered me a gift, Jesus, who sacrificed himself for me. Suffered agonizing pain, abandonment and fear so that I had the opportunity to spend eternity with Him. I only needed to believe and accept him. Why wouldn’t I want to be worthy of that?! 

Child of God, it’s value is priceless. 

My Love

On this journey, I want to take each day and count my blessings. Sometimes those blessings are deep while others may be the simpler things in life. Today I want to focus on one of my greatest blessings, my husband.

I’ve known Scott for over 2 decades now. We have been married for 15 of those years. We met when I was in college and have been together ever since. I have learned so much from him. I’ve grown in ways that I never thought I could.

Our time together hasn’t always been a bed of roses; but despite where we where at, valleys or mountain peaks, he has been by my side always in love. 

Scott is a man of few words but plenty of action. His heart has always been drawn to serve. He glows when he is helping others and he never asks for anything in return. Seeing his selflessness is inspiring. Just one of his many gifts.

He also knows himself. He knows what he wants, speaks his truth and fiercely protects those he loves. He has taught me to be brave, to be bold and to speak my truth. These lessons where learned very early in our marriage. He would ask a question or make a suggestion and me being a people pleaser just always went with what he wanted. At one point he got so frustrated with me that I wasn’t giving him my opinion that he just refused to choose.

 Here was a man who wanted my opinion not a yes woman. That was a breakthrough for me. This man didn’t want to make unilateral decisions he wanted a partnership. Having my voice heard, acknowledged and respected was mind blowing. He gifted me with the value of my voice, thoughts and ideas. 

I’m thankful more today than ever that the Lord put Scott in my path. He is a wonderful partner, a loving friend and a very needed encourager. 

Truly grateful for my best friend, my love.


Side note - The above image is from one of our favorite comics, Catana Comics. Every time we read it, we see ourselves. WE LOVE IT! 

Restoring Hope Through Gratitude

   

    Starting a new year always has you reflect back and acknowledge your failures, success, happiest moments and your greatest pain. You view these events objectively, with wisdom and hindsight. That is what I have done, but I just haven't look this past year but several years.

 
   There has been a current theme in my life these past few years and with each year that passes the theme just became more present. As I reflected back I saw that my one disappointment grow into a void. Granted this was one HUGE disappointment and I felt that I was betrayed by the one person who had never failed me. It's very difficult to admit this; let alone write this down. My disappointment was with God.

      Let me explain. Five years ago my biological clock became very present. My window for a safe pregnancy was closing. Once you hit a certain age, it gets more complicated and the fact that I had another health issue complicated matters even more so. My husband and I had prayed for a child, multiple children in fact. We had prayed for guidance. We had prayed for direction. Others had been praying for us. But God remained silent. As time passed that silence made me angry. There was this desire in my heart to have a child, yet it wasn't being met. I had people come to me saying that God was going to keep his promise and that I just had to be patient. With each day, week, year my hope for a child died. The reality of our situation and circumstance; a child in any way, biological or not, wasn't going to happen. When this shot of painful reality set, my spirit was damaged. My hope was gone. My purpose unclear. I didn't want to seek out fellowship or participate. I was closing myself off. I didn't want to go to church. I just didn't want to. Before I more on, I want to make one thing clear. My belief in Christ and all who He is and all that He does never stopped. What occurred was I was hurt and in pain and the person I would normally go to was that one I felt hurt me.

I came to realize that isolating myself from things regrading God wasn't good, but I just couldn't work my way back. I had underestimated my grief and my pain. Hope was a distant memory. I wasn't sure what to do. Then an unexpected  New Year's Eve message provided a glimmer of hope.

The speaker had 5 points regarding when we go through trials and how gratitude can restore hope.

1. Hope Can Be Lost
2. Keep Praying
3. Set your mind on the Lord (on His Love, His Compassion, His Goodness)
4. The Lord is all you need
5.Seek the Lord while you wait for Him (expected trust in the Lord)

The passage he spoke from was Lamentations 3:18-26. As you could probably guess solely from the book, that the people of Israel were going through some serious hurt, pain and disappointment yet the author Jeremiah found hope in the void.

Hope can be lost. "...My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the Lord." v3:18  I'm experiencing this moment. My hope is lost. The fact that Jeremiah experienced hope being lost actually made me feel better. Here is a prophet of God, a man who spoke with God and saw his greatness first hand can have his hope lost, then I'm in good company and not a failure in my faith. Acknowledging that my hope is lost is important but I needed to identify why my hope was lost. I was angry at God for not delivering a child, that's why. As I started to ponder that statement, I realized that this desire/need for a child had consumed me and it had became an idol.

This desire had become unhealthy and took over my every waking thought. My mind and heart were consumed on how unfair it was that we had no children. All the different scenarios of those having what I wanted made me frustrated and angrier.  I had lost my focus. Losing my focusing cause me to lose my hope.

So what am I going to do about it? Well the whole of point of the speaker's message was that yes Hope can be lost, be can also be restored, through prayer, setting my eyes on all of God's wonderful attributes and gifts, knowing He is all I need and to continued to seek him even when He is silent.
So I going to do just that. I'm going to daily write down what I'm grateful for, pray and seek Him daily and I'm going to keep this blog to journal my journey.

I pray that this be a place where I can process, explore, vent and have a record my restored hope through gratitude.