The Love of My Life

My prince charming is here!

He's been here all along; I just only started to see Him in that way a year-or-so ago.  Don't you just hate it when that happens?  So much wasted time.  So many unnecessary heartbreaks.  

He's been in my life for as long as I can remember, loving me, caring for my best interest, protecting me.  He's absolutely perfect!  He loves me just as I am.  He always thinks of me before Himself.  He's not afraid to be honest with me, but always does so in a loving way.

He's everything that I could ever want, and more than I could ever imagine that I might want.  No one else can ever take His place in my heart.

He is the love of my life.

Someday, I may meet a man that I can fall in love with.  And I may get married.  And that will be a great love.  But, that man will have to recognize that he is not the love of my life.  In fact, if that man does not have the same Love in his life, then our relationship will never work out.  It's funny how it works that way, but it is how it works.

Jesus is the Love of my life.  He is perfect.  And He loves me more than life, itself.  He's already proven that.  And no one can, or should, ever take His place in my heart.

Drama-Rama!

Drama happens.  Let's be honest.  Sometimes we're the source.  Sometimes it's others around us.  Even if we try not to be drama queens (or kings) ourselves, drama still finds us at times.

How do you deal with drama?

How do you help others to deal with drama?

God's Love

My Godkids call it the pig book.  It’s one of several children’s books that I (Aimee) own and keep handy to read to them if they’re at my house at nap time or bed time.  And it’s easily my favorite of all that they have to choose from.

Sidney and Norman: A Tale of Two Pigs, is a beautiful story about God’s love told by the enormously talented Phil Vischer (creator of VeggieTales).  If you’ve never read it, I highly recommend it.  It’s not some silly kid’s book (although, as evidenced by my Godkids, children enjoy it very much).  It’s a great story for anyone of any age, but perhaps adults most simply because we get it faster than kids do.  The point of the story is not lost on us.  And the point is love.

I don’t want to give it all away.  So let me just say that Sidney and Norman are two very different pigs, but God loves both of them anyway.  When they receive that news, it affects each of them in a very different and specific way.  When you read the story, you’ll most likely find yourself identifying with Sidney or Norman, and so, the change that takes place in them touches your heart as well.  (Personally, I’m a Norman.  When you read the book, you’ll understand.)

God loves you just as you are.

You can’t earn His love.

He doesn’t love you more or less than He loves anyone else. 

God doesn’t play favorites.

You don’t deserve His love.

And so, you can never cause Him to stop loving you.

God loves you just as you are.

What difference does that knowledge make in your life?

What’s your story?

Slavery

In the 6^th chapter of Romans, Paul talks about the idea that we used to be slaves to sin, but now we are slaves to God.  Romans 6:16 says:

Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?

Slavery means total and complete submission.  It means always seeking the will of your master over your own.  It means that you don’t get to choose for yourself.  Your master chooses for you.

Once, we were slaves to sin.  Sin controlled our lives.  It made the decisions for us.  It sought its own best interest rather than ours.  And we let it.  We submitted.  We had no choice.  We weren’t strong enough to fight it.  Sin had the upper hand because it was inside of us.  All of us.  All the time.

And then God sent his Son to destroy the power of sin in our lives.  We no longer have to be a slave to sin, which does not care for our well-being.  The power of sin has been broken.  And, in loving gratefulness for everything that He has done for us (done out of His own love for us), we turn in obedience to God.  When we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior and we ask Him into our hearts, we willingly become His slaves:

But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.  For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:22-23)

I’ve (Aimee) found myself thinking a lot about Romans 6 lately.  Most of you know that I had been very concerned with getting a new job.  I have bills to pay and my job working with children ended for the summer.  I knew that God would provide for my needs, but that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t worried.  I’m human.  I still worry.

Well, I haven’t written a blog in so long because I got a temp job and it was eating up all of my time.  I got the job quite suddenly and started just a couple of days after the interview.  It wasn’t what I expected, in good and bad ways.  It was a very interesting job, but the hours weren’t very great.  Some days were so long that I found myself getting home, eating dinner, and going to bed, just to get up and go straight back to work.  Not ideal, to put it simply.  I had almost no time for my own time with God (although, of course, He is with us everywhere and always, so I could talk to Him anytime that I wanted, but I didn’t have time for special quiet time with Him), or for my responsibilities at church.

I found that I was allowing myself to be a slave to my paycheck.  I was putting up with it all for the sake of the paycheck.  And do you know what that says about me?  It says that I have a price.  And it says that I value money over my relationship with the Creator of Heaven and Earth.  I didn’t like that.  So I quit.

Don’t hear what I’m not saying!  Working long hours does not always mean that you are a slave to your paycheck.  It all depends on the person and the job.

What I am saying is that, for me, this wasn’t working.  Also, what I am saying is that we need to give consideration to the work that we do, knowing that all Christians are called to have a relationship with God and all Christians are called to ministry (not all are called to go into ministry as a profession, but all are called to minister to others).  If the work that you are doing is not allowing for one or both of those things, then you need to re-evaluate how you go about work.  Whether that just means changing your approach, or if it means changing your work, only you and God can tell.  So give your work to Him.  Put it in His hands.  And seek the will of your Master.  He loves you and wants what’s best for you.

Father's Day

What did you do to honor your father this weekend?

How did you show him how much you love and appreciate him?
Do you have a bar-b-que?
Did you buy him a new tie or some gadget that he's been wanting?



What about your heavenly Father?

Not all of us have an earthly father that inspires love and admiration.
But we all have a heavenly Father that loves us dearly ...
A heavenly Father who knows us better than we know ourselves and loves us anyway...
A heavenly Father who will never abandon us no matter what happens or how we behave ...
A heavenly Father who has watched every mistake we've ever made with sadness and pain ...
A heavenly Father that still loves us so much, and desires our betterment to such a degree, that He became a human and died for us.

What have you done to show Him your love and appreciation?
What will you do?

Forgiveness

  I (Aimee) don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned my father before.  When I was in high school, my father was arrested and went to prison for several years.  I haven’t actually seen him since then.  It’s been about 15 years.

I have many happy memories with my father.  But around the time that I was in junior high school my father changed.  He became verbally abusive.  He isolated himself from us more and more.  I avoided him more and more, because anytime I was around him he just yelled at me and put me down anyway.  But I never hated him.  I hated the person that he had become.  That person was not the father that I had loved.  So, when I came home from school one day to hear my grandmother say that he was gone, I didn’t cry.  For several weeks, in fact, I didn’t cry.  Then, one morning at school, I broke down in hysteric sobs and they didn’t stop for several hours.

Initially, I was so busy with the life of an upcoming graduate (trying to finish well, figuring out where to go to college, getting all the paperwork correct for financial aid, school activities, church activities, etc. etc.) that I didn’t take much time to think about it at first.  My father was gone.  There was good and bad to that.  I mourned, but then I pushed it aside.  Kind of like Scarlett O’Hara, I said to myself, “If I think about it now I’ll just go crazy.  I’ll think about it tomorrow.”

I’ve worked a lot on what to do with all of this since then.  I still don’t have all of the answers.  For the longest time, I struggled with forgiveness.  Not my willingness to give it, but did I need to give it.  You see, my father’s civil crimes were not against me.  So, for many years, I didn’t think that it was my forgiveness that was needed.  It was a long time before I could admit to myself how much his neglect and his insults and his choosing this other life over a life with me had really affected me.  That's when, I realized that I needed to forgive him.  And that was when I was able to start forgiving him.

I definitely don’t know everything about forgiveness.  But I’ve picked up a few things from my own experiences, from talking with others, from books, and from classes:

1.   Forgiveness is a process.  Faster or slower depending on the circumstances.

2.   Forgiveness does not have to be requested to be given.

3.   Forgiveness can be more of a gift to you than to the person you are forgiving.

4.   When someone has wronged you, they have the right to ask for forgiveness.  You have the right to say that you will work on it.

5.   (This goes along with #4) God expects you to forgive others.  Always.  Every time.  As many times as it takes.

6.   Forgiving does not mean (nor should it mean) forgetting.  But not forgetting does not give you permission to throw someone’s mistakes in their face.

And perhaps most importantly…

7.   No one deserves forgiveness.  Not even you.  But God forgave you anyway.

I’m still working on it.  And I may be working on it for the rest of my life.  I hope not.  But I don’t know God’s plans.  I need His wisdom and His mercy, but I’m so flawed I can only take it in doses.  He’s working on me (thank God!) and I have to be open to Him.  I can't do it without Him.

Presence of God

This weekend my (Aimee’s) mother and grandmother left to go visit my brother and his family.  So, I was all alone here at the house with the dogs from late Thursday evening until Sunday evening.

Normally, I hate being home alone that long.  It’s fine for a day.  I can find plenty to do, or there are friends to pass the time with.  It’s the nights that are hard.  So, usually if they are going to be gone (which isn’t often), I call some friend to come and stay with me so that I don’t have to be alone.

The problem is that Sherann lives 4 hours away and my closest friends that live locally were all either out of town also or occupied with business.  There was no one to come and stay with me.  As I realized this Thursday night—walking around in my backyard with my hands free device calling people as I watered the vegetable garden—I remembered what I had said to my mother when she was getting ready to leave.  I had told her that I was looking forward to having alone time with God, praying and reading my Bible.  I had completely forgotten and I had been trying desperately to figure out who could come and stay with me so I wouldn’t be alone.  But God hadn’t forgotten.

I’m not going to say that I spent the whole weekend praying and reading my Bible.  That’s not what happened, although I did do those things.  But what was so great was the fact that I never felt alone.  I wasn’t lonely.  For the first time, probably ever, being home “alone,” I knew I wasn’t alone.  God was with me.

His presence brought me joy and peace.  He helped me to see the many blessings in my life right here in my own home.  He reminded me that I am never alone and that I am loved.

I still can’t quite put the feeling into words … and that’s saying something, cause I like words and I’m generally good with them (Another gift from God.  Thank you, Lord.).  All I know is that I wasn’t alone this weekend.  God was more than enough to meet all of my needs this weekend.  It was an experience that I had been praying for.  And it’s one that has planted a renewed desire to draw closer to Him as I strive to be able to recognize every day that He is always more than enough to meet my needs.