So for the past couple of weeks, I have been doing a lot of praying about the decisions that are coming up in my life.  These are major decisions that will change my life and the direction that I'm going in.

I've really been seeking God about the direction in my life in the area of ministry.  I've been volunteering in the 3rd grade room for the last year and a half now.  My ultimate goal has always been to move up with my class through the years and plant myself in the high school room.

I remember when I was in high school and it was a nightmare for me.  I had no one I could really talk to and if I had, some things that have happened in my life might have turned out differently.

God has given me an unconditional love for kids in this area.  My 3rd graders are special and have a LOT of potential.  I am very excited to be moving up with them to the 4th and 5th grade room and to see what God does in their lives....and love on them while they are growing up :)

I've been thinking a lot about love lately.  Jesus said that the first commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul and your strength.  He also said to let the little children come to Him and do not hinder them.  And in order for us to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, we need to be just like a child.

Children have such an innocence and a purity about them.  Their love is unconditional.  I find that the more I love God, the more like a child I become.  And I'm not talking about in mannerisms.  I'm talking about in innocence and in purity.  Psalms 51:10 says to 'create in me a clean heart and renew a steadfast spirit within me'.

I love being able to love on my kids and they love to love on me.  If the world could be this way every moment of every day, my life would be complete.  There is nothing that I love to do more than to love on people.  It is what I was created for.

Many times, people get hurt by other people and they build up walls of defense around their hearts.  These walls harden hearts and they become porcupines and they hurt others.  It's a vicious cycle - one that I have learned to break with forgiveness.

Hurt is manifested as fear, which turns into anger and goes into rejection, bitterness, depression etc.  The longer that we choose not to forgive, the more the root grows, until it becomes normal for us to act out of that hurt.  This is where walls are built.

Forgiveness, on the other hand, breaks down those walls and is the beginning of a tender heart.  The ability to love and give love is the second greatest gift that I have ever been given.

I do not claim to know it all or even to have figured everything out.  What I do know is that God's unconditional love for me has helped me more in the healing process than anything else in my life has.

The more I love Him, the more I trust Him and the more I depend on Him for everything, the more that He gives to me - and I am not talking about material possessions - I am talking about love and peace of mind in the midst of my circumstances.  I am also talking about the joy of the Holy Spirit and so many many other promises that He has given me. I want to leap and dance for joy!  I want to sing and press in and drink of His love for me!

Find a little time today to seek God out and let Him love on you!  Be blessed my friends :)

I thought I would take the time to write today, since I haven't written in a while.  This is what happens when my life turns into a tornado lol.  I love being busy - most of what I'm busy with is the volunteering that I do through my church, which is fun.

I'm learning that I can learn new things without having to be perfect.  I can be human and make mistakes and learn from them.  

This weekend, we had a conference (I'm not sure that you could call it a conference, but that's what I'm going to call it for now) called Kairos.  Kairos is a meeting between you and God.  Our time is filled with praise and worship, teaching and prayer.  It is inviting God to come down and bless us with His presence.

I got a call for this about 3 weeks ago to do graphics.  Let me tell you, I was excited!  For those of you who don't know what graphics are, they are the words that go up on the screen when we sing our songs.  It's the background, the power point presentations etc. I love it because it gives me a chance to see praise and worship from a completely different perspective.

I love music.  Anything to do with music and I have probably done it at some point in my life.  Music was one of my outlets when I was in school.  I played in band in school and joined the choir at church - I remember when it was still small lol!  Music was and still is one of the ways that God ministers to me the most.

You know it's powerful when the sound team starts getting choked up and tears well up in our eyes.  God just has a way of touching you wherever you are when you invite Him in through praise and worship.

The last week has been tough on me - but I've never lost my faith.  God has been teaching me that I need more discipline and self control in my life - and I agree.  My problem is is that my flesh doesn't want to submit to that.  So I war with myself in my thoughts and the struggle becomes too much at some point and I just give in.

So, in order to have balance in this area of my life, I have been slowly pulling in people who are going to not only hold me accountable, but will have an impact in my life in the long run.

Not only that, but I have been pressing in to God through reading my bible, prayer and praise and worship.  

The misconception that a lot of people have, and that I used to have, is that when you and God get down to the nitty gritty, they're going to feel something afterwards.  This weekend wasn't about feeling for me.  Just the opposite in fact.  It was learning to trust God even when I didn't feel any different.  And it was believing that He had done a great work in me regardless of how I felt.

Many Christians think that God is a "feel good" god.  Tell me, where in the Bible does it say that?  I have searched the Scriptures diligently and still haven't found that verse.  So I am learning to live my life the way that God wants me to....not whether I "feel" like it or not.

Now, I am not saying that feelings aren't ever involved.  I am saying that there are times that God gets us to a point in our lives where we have to rely fully on Him instead of what we feel.  Personally, it's a test for me and I'll tell you why.

For years I based my relationship with God on the "good works" that I did and the "feeling" I got from being at church.  Most of that feeling time took place during praise and worship.  So, if life was so good, then why did I fall away when times got tough?

Because my house was built upon the sand instead of the Rock.  When the storms came, my good works and feelings didn't stand up to the wind and rain.  They tore up my "house" and left me in pieces once more.

So during my 20's, I struggled with being at the church for a couple of years and then falling away.  So what's different now?

The difference between the person I am today and the person that I was when I was 25 is where I have my identity.  It is that simple.  You see, my whole life, people have placed expectations on me.  I grew up in a performance based home.  I was only accepted if I did everything perfect.

The problem was and still is, that I am not perfect.  God is working upon that perfection in my life, but believe me when I say that I am far from being perfect anytime soon!  So unless Jesus comes back, I just need to work through the things that God is dealing with me on.

The real change was when I figured out that I was putting my identity and my faith in people - who will always fail me at some point in their lives.  When the blinders fell off and I started seeing God in me and all around me instead of high in the sky, it was a paradigm shift of the highest magnitude for me.  My world literally went from a slant to straight.

I believe that in that moment, God changed my life forever.  There is no going back for me - there is only moving forward.  Is my life perfect?  Not by any means.  But life for me is more rewarding than it ever has been.  

My faith in God has grown.  I've learned to depend on Him totally - the way that I did with people and failed miserably - and He hasn't failed me yet.  My trust, my love and my focus is solely and completely on Him.  I have a true desire to get to know Him more, to find out the promises that He has for me, to talk to Him, to just be with Him.

I think about God from the first moment I wake up until the last thought that I remember when my head hits the pillow.  The song 'Dance With Me' by Jesus Culture has stuck with me lately.  I have it on repeat in my car and you would think that I would get sick of listening to the same song over and over again.  But to be honest, it has become the cry of my heart.  Listen....

'Won't you dance with me, O Lover of my soul, to the song of all songs.
Romance me, O Lover of my soul, to the song of all songs.

Behold, You have come, over the hills, up on the mountain.
To me You will run, My Beloved, You have captured my heart.

With You I will go, You are my love, You are my fair one.
The winter has passed, and the spring time has come'

Have you ever had it to where life is going great and all of a sudden, it just hits you sideways?  That is what happened to me in the last couple of days.  But God has been faithful and is restoring to me what has been lost.

These are the times where I am thankful that God is always there.  It is so wonderful to know that we have a God that loves us and keeps us through the difficult times in our lives.

I have been through many different storms in my life and honestly, trusting God didn't come easily for me.  I am a very tangible person.  I like to see and touch things - to know that they're real.  So for me to believe in a God that you can't see used to be a bit of a challenge for me.

I was taught even as a young child that you couldn't depend on anyone but yourself.  The old cliche 'if you want something done right, do it yourself' comes to mind.  Even though I grew up in the church, I was a very independent and stubborn child.  Kind of like a horse that takes its bit between its teeth and runs with it.

So, when life's storms would come up, my house always fell - like the house that was built upon the sand.  Trusting and depending upon God were foreign to me - even though I did grow up in the church.

Much of my life was based upon performance at home - and that's the way I viewed God.  If my performance in the church wasn't perfect, I got discouraged and depressed and felt like I was a total failure.  I would believe the lie that I had messed up and God didn't love me anymore - nor was I worthy to go to heaven.

But the world's way never worked for me either.  I ended up being disoriented and confused much of the time.  Letting my flesh get whatever it wanted made me a miserable person indeed.  I will never be that person again.

Every day is a new day.  And with each day that arrives in my life, I love God a little more, I trust Him a little more and I lean on Him just a little longer.  Also, reading the Bible every day has helped tremendously in my life.

I am not lying down and being a doormat for people or my emotions or my flesh to run over me.  I cast down everything that exults itself against the knowledge of God in my life.  I take thoughts captive in Jesus' name.  And I'm not afraid to tell people about Jesus or about what He's done in my life.

So when life hit me sideways, my heart sank to my feet for a split second and I had to wrestle with different thoughts and emotions that flooded my being.  And I realized that I had a choice.  I could look at my circumstances and let them get me down, or I could look away from everything that distracts to Jesus (Heb 12:2) because He is the Author and Finisher of my faith.

And for the first time that I can ever remember, I trusted God completely - and my house stood against the storm because it was built upon the Rock!

May God bless you and keep you my friends!

Today begins a fresh journey in my life.  Today, I take my first step into financial freedom.  This has been something that has plagued my life since I was in high school.

If you read the last few posts, you will find that I was struggling with my emotions and deciding whether or not to go back on the road.  Forget all that!  God has given me a plan and I see light at the end of this very dark tunnel.

Now I've always been good with numbers - even took accounting in high school, but I've never been able to balance my own checkbook.  It always ended in disaster.  I was never really taught how to manage money.  So when the technology came along that resulted in online banking - I was thrilled!

I went to college for accounting when I was 19 - and that was a super hard year.  My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer 2 weeks after I started college.  I worked 2 part time jobs, did choir and drama through my church and was taking 15 credit hours at the college.  I had too much on my plate, but being at home was miserable.

To be honest, I really hadn't figured out at the time what I really wanted to do with my life.  Then came the credit cards - and the spending.  Back then, a shiny new toy to show off was just the thing I needed - til the feeling wore off and I had to get something new.

Needless to say, I dug myself into a hole real fast - and it only got worse.  To say that I was a surface Christian at the time was the truth - everything I'd done in the church was me trying to get to heaven by doing good works - though I didn't know it at the time.

Creditors started calling and I started ignoring them, going on with my life as if everything was just peachy....which couldn't be farther from the truth.

In my 20's I would fall away from the church for a couple of years and then come back for a couple of years.  During this time in my life I was still searching for my identity - and still doing the things I did before.  

Something had to change - and it did.  I got married.  I was 25 and became a step mother and a grandmother all in one day.  He was 20 years older than I was, but what I didn't know was what a horrible turn my life had taken.

Everything was put in my name.  Needless to say, two people who have accrued debt are not good for each other.  Both of their pits become one bottomless hole.

In the state of Michigan, there is such thing as a no contest divorce.  The mental state that I was in at the time was so distorted that I was willing to get this kind of divorce if only it meant that I never had to see him again.

And, since the bills were in my name, I got stuck with the debt - all of it.  The divorce was final on February 16, 2010.

I rededicated my life to God on April 1st of that same year.  If you would have told me 2 years ago that I would be where I am today - I would've laughed.  But God is the one doing miracles here - not me.

During the past two years, I have discovered my identity in Christ.  I learned to hear God's voice and speak with Him on a day to day basis.  Right now, He is my entire life - that is something that I will never let go of.

So on Friday night, I wrote down some goals about where I truly want to go in my life.  The world thinks that you should go to school, get a diploma, go on to college and graduate and get a job.

I break the mold when it comes to school.  I learn better by hands on experience than I ever did out of a book.  Which is amusing because I love to read.

So when I wrote these goals down honestly, it surprised me a little.  My first goal is to serve God with everything I have.  My second is to get married and have a family.  For those of you who truly know me, this is a desire I have had for the longest time.

For my guy friends who are reading this blog, please don't think that I want anything other than your friendship.  I am not looking to get married - God will bring the right man to me when it's in His timing - not mine.  I do however need help when it comes to my guy friends.  There are times where I have a really hard time conversing with you because of the experiences that I've had.  God is still working with me on this, so please be patient with me.  Most of the time, I recognize what I'm doing and will come and apologize to you if I see it.  If not, please point it out to me gently.  Thank you.

God is working in my life, getting me ready for something big.  The financial aspect of things is actually the second part of my journey so far.  The spiritual aspect took about 2 years.  I'm thinking that this will be about the same.

So today, one of my best friends and I are getting together to go over stuff and to create a plan to knock this out.  She's helping me out with the accountability side of things and I plan on attending Financial Peace University through my church.

I finally have hope.  I can see the end of this mountain.  Though things will get tough along the way, my love, my trust and my dependency is upon the Lord.  He will carry me through when I cannot carry myself.

I also have many people praying for me as well as supporting me as I go through this.  If you have a financial need, would you please let me pray for you?  Either comment below or you can catch me on Facebook.  I hope to hear from you :)

As always, may God bless you and keep you my friends!