My mornings are perhaps the sweetest part of my day. After rolling out of bed and hoping my feet find the floor, I somewhat stagger at 4:45 or so to my office by the kitchen so that I can spend time alone with God. The setting is quiet, serene, with 2 walls of windows that allow me to watch a cardinal or hummingbird dance at my window, or watch our fluffs and the lab puppy playing in the yard….flowers blooming, garden growing….when the weather permits I am barefoot walking outside and then settle on our deck to enjoy the time with our Father. My brain works in such a way that I have to move to be still in my mind…so God walks with me….Today that happens to be in black with ivory polka dot pajamas Les found…so you know the girl started the day off happy….barefoot in our back yard walking and listening to God.
I seem to keep wanting God to open a planner and simply copy me His planner pages. I do not think myself order bound (my home proves that is a reality) yet I find that the longer this new normal goes on, I’d really prefer not to know most days. If I did know what God was sending next or had in mind I’d probably completely be a mess. (now there’s a point to ponder…how much of a mess do you have to be to COMPLETELY be a mess, I may have a new standard for society on that one)
How in the world does a step mom from Alabama come out of no where to suddenly have a business helping others solve problems and expand their business. A portfolio of clients, ongoing strategies with successful authors, businesses, and publishing…and do it in 18 months, most of it in 7…and have the situations God has currently put us in….I assure you it is God, for this silly girl couldn’t orchestrate a kazoo band much less this beautiful symphony of women, events, and publishing, not to mention filming that God is indeed directing. Yet God has allowed me to have precisely the skills that I needed for the last two decades to make specific differences in the lives He puts me in front of, none of them duplicating what the last one needed, yet always exactly something that I happened to have lived through, learned, or possess the ability to help with.
I simply had a God given dream…..to restore families….one heart at a time….and to give families, churches, and communities the tools to begin the restoration….and God has so given that dream wings…amazing women, ministeries, and businesses are coming together to produce this dream that God gave me to levels that I could not have even imagined.
But let me be clear…..the cost and the continual rising price is that God expects submission to His ways and obedience to His word. Submission to let go of my own plans, to let go of “in charge”, to let go of directional concepts that are not truly tested to be “of him”. There have been decoys, people have been sifted. I have been stretched beyond recognition of who I thought I was…..yet there is an exuberance of joy in doing the Father’s work and seeing the magnificience of His ways and how hearts and lives are indeed changed…
No one gets a free pass from laundry and cooking either….our families need order, God first, Husband second, Self third, the children next and then down past that must be anything else God has us to do. God is indeed a God of order and He will not honor anything less than His methods. The blessings? Oh yes, He is knocking my socks off……making things happen just as I need them to, helping me understand things I could have never figured out on my own, had me in a 25 year training program to prepare me for experiences I now see so clearly why they had to be as they were….most of them didn’t make sense at all at the time….
Meanwhile….the tithes continue….the bills are paid just.in.time. The necessary next person or team member arrives JUST as we need that position or skill to do so….God is the Master weaver and each thread of ours matters…..let Him weave you….if He can do what he’s doing with my one pitiful mess of a thread….I know what he can do with you! So much of what I do is simply helping others, and I can think of no greater joy than seeing them succeed with their goals of helping others!
God is God….and He is enough! Surrender to His path for you!
