Thursday, January 27, 2011

Handing Over the Heart

I love how God speaks through His Holy Word. I love how you can have a favorite Bible verse (and I have many!) and read it over and over and over again and then one day, it just comes alive for you. It’s almost as if God kept this verse on your heart for all of these years so that He could really demonstrate its’ true power in His divine timing. Today that verse for me is Proverbs 3:5. I love this entire passage but this particular verse says ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding’. It is a pretty popular one for sure. Here is how I am reading this verse today:
‘Trust in the Lord with all your HEART and lean not on your OWN understanding’…you see where the emphasis is, right? On my heart and my own personal understanding of my heart. Thank God that He knows my heart better than I ever could. My heart is certainly troubled, as never before, but it is safely in God’s capable and loving hands! What better place for a heart to be, right?
Last week, I was moving full speed ahead with the divorce. I completed all of the paperwork, met with my cousin (in family law) to go over things and make corrections, got her the corrections and was working with her on a time to get everything notarized so I could march to the courthouse and file. It felt awful, and horrible and wrong and icky, but nothing was going to stop me. Except God. Friday night I was at a monthly women’s event at church and God stopped me in my tracks. He started speaking to me again, where He has been silent for quite a while. I now think that’s because I was shutting Him out! He clearly told me to ‘wait’, which He had been saying all along…but I probably just drowned it out, as I was more comfortable leaning on my own understanding, on the world’s understanding. It would be so easy to run, to shut out this pain, to take the easy route and rid myself of it all. God’s way is not always the easy way, but it is in the difficulties of life that we grow in Christ and we grow in our understanding of God’s incredible goodness and holiness. So, I am back to waiting…I don’t know what I am waiting for, but the true beauty is that I don’t have to, because God already does. And so it all comes down to trust, trusting in Him completely and NOT leaning on my own understanding. I have an incredible peace around me and within me and I know that God is drawing near. And for now, that is just enough.
May God bless all of you as well!

Monday, January 24, 2011

New look...same me

I'm starting over. In lots of ways I suppose. I needed a new place to call my 'blogging home' so here we are.  Don't worry, it will get much prettier here in the coming weeks...I'm getting myself a little makeover too. It took me quite a while to come up with a new blog title too...but here it is. The title is kind of twofold, first and most important, it demonstrates the light for Christ that I always aspire to be in my life. Regardless of the level of messiness in my life, there is always one constant, which is the love of God in my life and the joy that comes only from Him, despite my circumstances. He is the reason for the joy and the 'light' within me, even now, even here in this dark place.

The other reason for the title is for this little light of mine, Benjamin.


You'll be seeing lots of him and hearing plenty of stories I'm sure. I feel like I have been out of touch for so long, mostly because I have. My sweet boy is crawling all over the place now and trying to pull himself up on furniture. I don't think it will be long before he has that mastered, he is so strong! He truly is a light in this dark time and I am so very grateful for him every moment of every day!

I hope that all of you have been doing well too, I promise to be checking in more often than I was on the other blog. Part of the reason I wanted to start a new one is that I had to go to private on the other blog and I just wasn't liking that at all....it was certainly more trouble than it was worth. So, here we go...a fresh start!

God bless you all!