Time to prepare

Do you ever wish that you could just get a glimpse of what it is God is doing "behind the scenes" of your life? I know that if He were to give me that glimpse, I'd probably run away screaming, but today, I just wish I had a clue what He is up to. I'm sure I should just be thankful that He is moving and working. Don't get me wrong - I am very thankful! I just don't like not knowing what's up.

One thing I am sure of - He keeps telling me to trust and wait and in the meantime, prepare myself. Well, that begs the question...prepare for what? That's what I'm trying to figure out!

My pastor challenged us yesterday to spend this week re-examining our perceptions of who God really is and compare those with what the Bible says. I want to know God. I want to know Him like I've never known Him, because He is my everything. It's kind of funny - the theme scripture God gave me for the youth group is John 15:5 -

"I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing."

Apparently, God is helping me learn to live this verse, for I am reminded of it frequently, and am having to learn how to remain in Him.

I think I'm traveling a new segment of my faith-walk, and my journey is taking me through a part of the countryside I've never seen before. I can hardly appreciate the scenery for being bothered by the fact I'm in a new place. Isn't that silly?!?! I want to relish today and not waste it wondering about tomorrow, but it is hard - especially when there are things I have to deal with today that I'm tired of dealing with.

I just want some clear direction, but perhaps the more time I spend getting to know God, the less concerned I'll be with where it is He's taking me.

TGIF

All I want to say is that I'm glad it's Friday. It's been a long week and I'm beat! Maybe I'll have something more interesting to say later. :)

Sailing along

Just wanted to say that things are going much better this week. This week I'm having to close out our two golf tournaments, so I'm staying busy - and staying out of trouble! :) God is good...that's all I know!

One thing I've got to do is get back into my regular personal schedule. This past week-and-a-half has really thrown a cog in my wheel! I haven't worked out in almost two weeks now and I've been staying up until 12 or 1am every night! I don't know what's wrong with me, but I can't keep it up. I'm excited that I'll get to the gym this afternoon. I need a hard workout!

In addition to my physical health, I've got to get back in the groove of studying the Word. I've not been reading God's Word nearly enough because of my busy schedule, and I can tell it! Good grief! I am too easily distracted from doing the important stuff!

Well, time to get back to the helm...

I am proud to introduce...

My pastor has hit the blogosphere!!! His blog is going to be quite a read - I can assure you! You may love him - you may hate him, but I'll bet once you start reading, you won't be able to quit!

I feel like I've had some part in the birth of his blog. Randy's been reading my posts since I began my blog last year and I'd like to think I had some influence in his decision to join this world of thoughts and ideas. You know - I do what I can! :)

Anyway, I look forward to seeing what happens.

A quiz for everything...

Thanks to Rick for this new quiz. I haven't done one of these in a while so I thought it would be fun.

Take the quiz: "WHAT RELIGION BESTS SUITS YOU?"

True Christian
You are humble, gracious, kind and extremely Christ-like. You believe in the bible as your law, but read it in its original language. Perhaps you're not a scholar, but you're not an amateur either. You normally don't feel church is acceptable for your form of worship, and if anyone believes different from you, you might try to learn something from them.

I don't know how to read the Bible in it's original language, but I think the rest of it is fairly accurate. How funny!

loneliness

it's amazing to me how you can be surrounded by people and still feel lonely. it just sneaks up on you, busts through the door and sets up camp. eeeck. i'll be glad when it leaves. hopefully it won't be here long and there will be a long time before it shows up again.

Sometimes, it just gets old

I think the one thing I most dislike about being single is having to take care of everything for myself. If my car needs work, I have to make sure it happens. When something I own breaks, I have to fix it or get a new one.

Even though I have two roommates, I tend to be the one in the house that fixes things. It's not my roommate's fault, it's just the way it is. They even have a nickname for me. They've started calling me "Walgreens" (that's a drug store chain here in the south.) If anyone needs something, I usually have it - from bandaids and batteries to coaxial cables and extension cords. I don't understand how that happened. I guess I'm just weird.

Starting last week, our bathtub started backing up. I guess I shouldn't be surprised since there are three girls living in the house. Well, the day before yesterday it was backing up and staying backed up for a long time. We happened to have a little bit of this stuff called "Liquid Fire." Have you ever heard of the stuff?!!? It's truly amazing, but gosh it stinks!!! Basically it is sulfuric acid and it will remove any clog you have! So I used the little bit we had, hoping it would take care of the problem. Uh...no. Not gonna happen.

Well, today, I go and get a new bottle and when I got home, I poured half of it down the drain, waited the prescribed 15 minutes and started the cold water running down the drain. "Aha," I thought, "it worked!" But within seconds, I realized I had jumped the gun. The tub promptly began to fill up and the water wouldn't budge.

After consulting with my mom about her experience with the stuff, I decided to use the rest of the bottle. The directions say to wait until all the water had drained out, but if I had done that, I'd still be waiting. So I started pouring a little bit down the drain (the stuff went straight down the drain - it didn't even mix with the water sitting in the tub!) Then, I took the plunger and started pumping the drain. After going back and forth - pouring and pumping - the water finally went down and I poured the rest of the Liquid Fire down the drain. I waited another 15 minutes and, voila! Success!!!!! I must admit, I was proud of myself. For all of my wishing I didn't have to always tend to things, I do have a sense of pride when I can "fix" a problem.

Needless to say, it will be nice when one day I can let someone else tend to those kinds of things. At least, I hope I will marry someone who can tend to those kinds of things. :) I don't mind doing "fix-it" jobs around the house, it just would be nice to not be the only one to do it. *sigh* I guess I need to be grateful I can do those things, but like I said - sometimes it just gets old.

When in doubt, apologize

My mom gave me some good advice this morning. She told me that I should probably apologize for yesterday, whether I felt I was at fault or not. So I did. And she was right. It was the thing to do. All is well here today and we'll be just fine.

But...

I'm still not sure about the future. We'll see what God has in store for me. In the meantime, I'll keep on doing what I'm doing and wait on God. :)

Today, I nearly walked away

Change is in the air. Just as sure as I know my name, I know that some major changes are coming in my life. What does that mean? I really have no idea, but, for some time, I've known that I would not stay at my current job forever. It has bothered me a bit, to be honest. After all, God called me to this job. His fingerprints are all over the job and how He brought me to it, and I know that He has me there for a reason. So when I started having thoughts about moving on (about nine months to a year ago) I thought it was just me and that I was being silly.

Now I'm not so sure.

The past several weeks have really been a struggle for me. Just for the record, I love what I do and have thoroughly enjoyed my job. But I have really been struggling with thoughts of not wanting to do it anymore. The last time I experienced these feelings was when I changed jobs and began to work at my current postition. Needless to say, it's a little scary. I think God may be working in me to prepare me, but for what....I don't know.

So today, I almost quit. No joke. I have never had a week like this one. Without going into too much detail, let's just say it's been stressful. We had a major event yesterday and have another one on Monday. My boss graciously gave me the first half of the day off, so I got into work at lunchtime. Yesterday, there were some problems and we had a little "discussion" at the event that didn't help things (on my end) but we got past that and everything was fine today. I came in and started right to work on getting past yesterday's event. My boss told me what he wanted to get done, so I was working on those things. Toward the end of the day, I was working on stuff for next week when he came to my desk and asked me "How's it looking?" which really means - what are you working on and where are you with it. I got so frustrated. I started to just say "fine" but I just sighed, looked up at him and asked him "what do you want me to tell you?" It wasn't the the question itself that he asked me, it was the way he asked me. Again, I don't want to go into too much detail and beat a dead horse (to quote a friend of mine) but the end result was we got into another "discussion" in which my boss asked me if I enjoyed my job. I told him, "not this week" and he asked me if I wanted to do something else. I actually hesitated for a split second (or two) before I said, "no. I like what I do." But I must admit - I felt very disingenuous.

Now, let me pause and say that I couldn't believe he asked me that question. Truthfully, I do enjoy my job and I have never had so much "trouble" as I've had this week. The guys I work for are very good about telling me how much they appreciate me and thank me on a regular basis for the things I do for them. And, as far as I know, I've never given any indication that I'd rather be somewhere else - because I haven't ever felt that.....until this week.

Anyway, we "had it out", so to speak, and I think we're ok or will be ok. I'm sure once we get past next week's event, we'll have a meeting to discuss this week. My boss likes to discuss things. I'm praying about it - asking God to show me where I was at fault or need to change and how I need to respond to my boss. I don't know what it all means. I've never been this disatisfied with my current job and I don't know for sure where this feeling is coming from. All I do know is this - God let me get absolutely miserable in my last job so that I would even think of looking elsewhere. I don't want to have to get to that point again. If He has somewhere else for me to be, I'm ready to go there. I'll do whatever He wants me to do and go wherever He wants me to go.

In spite of the unease of this week, I know that God is in control. He is doing something within me and perhaps this is just a by-product of that. Everytime there is growth in my spiritual life, every other area of my life is directly affected. My life started changing in major ways when I became the youth director at my church. Only God knows where it will all end up.

The hurricane cometh!

Although I live in central Mississippi, we will feel the effects of the hurricane before the week is out. You would not believe the traffic coming from the south!!! I have a friend from Mobile who was traveling to McComb, MS with her parents last night. She called me around 9:30 to get an update on the weather and told me they had traveled about 2 miles in as many hours! My uncle and aunt left Gautier at 7:30 pm and made it to my parent's house at 5:30 this morning - a trip that would normally be 3 hours, tops!!!! Unbelievable!

It appears this is going to be a very rough storm. Keep all those people who live on the coast in your prayers. I know they all pray they will have a home when it's over.

Spiderman in church

I just love kids. They are truly unique! Today in church, my nephew provided one of those "Kodak moments" for which you wish you had a video or digital camera to record it.

A couple in our church officially joined today, so after giving his intro and speaking to the couple, our pastor asked everyone to stand and extend their hand towards them as he prayed over them. My roommate was standing next to my four-year-old nephew and just happened to look over at him as everyone was extending their hands. She about lost it when she noticed his arm was extended and his hand was in the "spray web" gesture made popular by Spiderman and acted out by kids across this nation pretending to be him.

Of course, she elbowed her sister and she about lost it too. By then, other people on the pew noticed and were chuckling under their breath. What makes it so funny is that he wasn't trying to be funny! He was sincerely reaching his hand out in prayer. It's just that he is such a Spiderman freak, it comes out in the smallest ways. You should see the way he jumps around the house.

Since none of our family actually saw my nephew's actions, we got a good laugh when my roommate shared the story.

A little change

I decided to use the comment feature provided by blogger.com, so any comments left prior to today will not be available. I think this feature will be more functional.

Also - I've enabled the feature that will allow you to email any of my posts to a friend. Go ahead, spread the love! :) Feel free to share any of my wit and wisdom with your friends! Ha!

I highly recommend...

This is the best cd I've listened to in quite some time. It is simply beautiful. The name of the group is "Amici Forever" and the title of the cd is "The Opera Band".

If you like opera, this is a fabulous cd to add to your collection. But - even if you're not really that fond of opera music, I still think you would like this cd. Anyone who loves and can appreciate good music will like this cd. I guarantee it.

How do I know? Well, the only reason I even found this cd was because one of the songs on it was playing in the background at Borders bookstore. It was so incredible, that as I was walking through the music section, I came to a complete stop when I heard it playing. I immediately flagged down a sales associate to tell me what cd was playing. I'm telling you - it is just that good!

Of course, music always speaks to me. I can be in a crowd of hundreds of talking people and still be able to zero in on music that is playing. I thank God for His gift of music in my life. I hope I can pass that along to others in some way.

Don't just do something....sit there!

This was the title of my pastor's message on Sunday. It was based on 1 Samuel 13 where Saul jumps the gun and is disobedient to God because he didn't think things were moving along fast enough. Because of his taking charge and doing things his way, he ended up losing the kingdom and ultimately the presence of God in his life - and didn't even realize when He had left! Yikes! It is another confirmation in my life that God is teaching me to wait....and listen....and trust...and totally surrender everything to Him...and did I mention, wait? I told a friend tonight that I wish God would just quit talking to me (NOT REALLY!) I'm very glad to know that God is speaking to me. Means I'm still "in"! :)

Seriously though, each day that goes by just reinforces what I hear God speaking in my heart. The other day, I posted about surrendering everything to God, but I have since realized that I've just begun that journey. Silly of me to think that it was a one-time "surrendering" and then all would be right in the world. Ha! I now see the foolishness of my wisdom - I don't have as much as I thought I did! Surrendering is a daily, no wait....hourly....oops, wrong again...minute by minute thing! At least for me it is. I will admit, there are stretches of my day where it isn't an issue, but that's usually because at that moment I don't have time to sit around and think about things. I get into trouble when I have free time. :)

Today, we had a staff meeting, and my boss had us pair up and put into practice Romans 12:15, which says, "Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn." He asked us to share something we were rejoicing over with our partner and then pray for one another, specifically mentioning them by name. I shared with my co-worker that I am excited by what I see God doing in my life. This whole lesson in trusting and surrendering is exciting to me - even though it is at times painful. Just the other day, I was really struggling. I was feeling depressed and just didn't want to be around others or do anything. So, I started examining my heart to determine what was really the core issue. I made myself think of all the things God has done in my life and began to thank Him for those things. Then I asked myself why was I depressed. The thought went through my head that "Christy" was having a hard time dying. That part of me that has been warring with God over this whole surrender issue was not happy and was making me miserable. All I could do after that was laugh at myself. One of these days, I'll look back over this period of my life and think how silly I was for all of my attitudes and struggles. At least I hope I will. But for now, I am a bit glad for the struggle - it means that something is happening. I guess it really is like childbirth (although I don't know the reality of that experience!) If there wasn't the struggle and pains of labor, there would not be the birth of a child. And, so I'm learning, that is true in our spiritual life as well. If we are not feeling the pain of being outside of our "comfort zone" and having what is comfortable taken from us, then we probably aren't really walking in the path God has set for us.

Anyway, I will continue to learn to sit and wait on God and listen closely for the sound of His still, small voice so that when He does speak, I will be ready to do what He asks. Oh, I can hardly wait! :)

What a nice guy

I live in an interesting neighborhood. It is in a part of town that was once the prime neighborhood of doctors, lawyers and the upper echelon of society. These days, it is the dividing line between the last section of our city that is considered upper class and the ghetto. Literally. I live on a main street - which is always busy - and if you go over a couple of streets in one direction, you can find any type of drug, prostitue and den of iniquity you can imagine. A couple of streets over in the other direction, you'll find some people from the artsy segment of our local society as well as a few doctors, lawyers, young couples just starting out and a rather substantial homosexual population. As I said, it is an interesting neighborhood and I love being a part of it!

So tonight, I went to the grocery store in the center of this neighborhood to pick up a few things. This store is an interesting establishment in itself. Located in the strip next to it is an old-time drug store (that still sells milkshakes in the tall soda glass), an antique store and a novelty store that sells decorative items. I think there may be one other store, but I can't remember for sure. Needless to say, the people who shop at this grocery store tend to be regular visitors - not because the store is modern or offers a wide selection of items - but because it is in a central location. Very convenient. Anyway, because of the neighborhood (remember the rough section of the hood?) every night there is an officer from the Sherrif's department standing guard. The guy is huge! He must be about 6'10", african-american, looks to be in good shape, and is obviously not someone you would want to tie up with. In spite of his appearance, he is the most awesome guy! Every time I go into that store, I've seen him go way beyond his duty as an officer and pitch in and help bag groceries, direct store traffic or tell folks where to find things. Tonight I went in there and the store was way short in staff, so the line began to build up. The man jumped right in there directing those people with just a few items over to the Information Desk to get checked out and was helping to bag people's groceries. I watched him as he talked with several people as he did his thing. There was this old couple in there who he apparantly knew and he yelled out to gentleman, "Hey, Pop!!" It was so cool! What was even more awesome was to see how the other people waiting in line began to smile at each other and went out of their way to be courteous in the difficult circumstances. It was almost like a scene right out of a Norman Rockwell painting! How cool is that?

I'm almost positive the man knows Christ. You don't see people going out of their way like that unless they have a knowledge of true love...the knowledge of a Man who died to save us all. As I was walking out of the store, this officer had resumed his position at the door, so I stopped to tell him how much I appreciated his willingness to go above and beyond the call of duty. What a blessing he was to me because of his actions. I can only hope that I would inspire someone else in the same way.

This could get interesting...

I don't know what God is doing, but He's up to something! I know He's been working in my life, but today our pastor shared that he felt God was telling him we (our congregation) should get ready.

"Ready for what?"

*crickets chirping in the background*

I've also sensed this in my own life. We've been seeing some incredible growth that can only be attributed to a move of God. I mean, we haven't done anything special - except of course, be available to be used by God.

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm in a new place in my walk with God, but today I sensed that I've only scratched the surface. I was driving home, contemplating all the things that have been happening, and reflecting on how I feel like I am in a place of brokenness, when the thought ran through my head - you've only just begun. Yikes! What do you mean?!?!? There's more? Does that mean it will get worse before it gets better? Oh Lord, you've got to be kidding!!!

*no answer*

I know what He's telling me. I guess I should be glad that at least He's given me a "heads up" of sorts. All I can do - or want to do - is cling tightly to Him during this time. Like I said, this could get interesting.

Another first...

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart; lean not on your own understanding. In everything you do, acknowledge him and he will direct your path." Proverbs 3:5-6

For the first time in my life, I am actually able to live this verse. It is a wonderful place to be. I've always tried to trust God and felt like I was giving everything to Him, but I was kidding myself. This past week - I have done it.

I guess it is because I have finally surrendered everything to Him. My heart and mind are now together in understanding my need to depend on God. Does that mean I still don't have moments where I struggle with emotions or my own desires? No, not at all. But now, I have learned to deal with those emotions and desires and place them at the foot of the Cross, and yes - leave them there.

I must have Jesus. I can no longer try to live things my way. I hope I will stay in this place of brokenness. Unfortunately, I know me, and I'm sure I will have to sacrifice myself again, but for now, I am so at peace with my Lord. I know He is taking care of me and I know that I will receive His best blessings in my life.

How awesome it is to be in this place. God is so faithful and true.

One other thing...

I know my posts have been few and far between here lately, but I'm going to be better at keeping up. It's weird how not blogging leaves an empty place, but honestly, I haven't wanted to blog very much. Perhaps I just needed a break from the blogosphere, too!

God is so good

I just wanted to say that I love God more than anything. He has, once again, proven Himself to be so faithful and He has given me everything I need - just when I need it. How can I ever complain??

All praise goes to Him!

Vacation's over.

Well, it's time to go back to work. I wish I didn't have to. I could use another week off!!!! Unfortunately, our schedule at work doesn't allow for that. However, I think I'll be taking some days as soon as I can. I've got some people I need to go visit, so I won't be letting my days get wasted this year!

Anyway, it was good to be off, but I didn't get done hardly any of the things I had planned to do. I've got staff training I have to finish by next Tuesday (the 31st) and I had planned on working on that while I was off. Of course, I didn't even look at it! At this point, I don't even care. I wish I didn't have to do it at all!!! I almost don't even care that I'd get a letter in my personnel file for not getting it done. Almost. So what that means is I'll be working on it every night this week. I think I'll be able to get it finished. In fact, a couple of my staff are supposed to come to the office so I can help them get theirs done. I'll be working right alongside them! Maybe I can get most of it done at work - then my nights will be my own!!

*Sigh* So much to do, and so little time to do it!

There is some good news in my life - the youth group has taken off and seems to be exploding! I had 4 kids last Saturday, and then this weekend I had 10!!! That has to be a record somewhere! :) I am truly excited by what's taking place. It is God's work, I'm just awed that He is letting me go along for the ride! I'll try to post more on "my kids" this week.