Keep Your Eye on the Ball ...

March Madness means something different in my life than for the majority of the rest of the world ... at least those individuals in the rest of the world who are sports-minded. I work in an accounting office, and we are slap dab in the middle of tax season. It gets rough. We are all tired and frazzled.

Last week was particularly tough for me. I only took my eye off the ball for a minute, but that was all it took, and I was out in left field. (Oops, I think I am mixing my metaphors, but you get the general idea here.......)

What happened to all that freedom I embraced this past December? I had to go and re-read my own post. Where did all my spiritual health (and mental health, for that matter) get off to? 

I lost sight of God's love, God's provision, God's purpose for me, and I focused squarely on my circumstances.

All too quickly, I found my mind wrapped in all the old self-defeating thoughts and attitudes of the past. Victimhood. It's always there ... ready, waiting, willing to cuddle and comfort the unsuspecting heart and mind. 

I was overworked. Stressed beyond my ability to cope well. My flesh had been super-sized. And my spirit was cowering in the corner, undernourished and weak. 

My super-sized flesh grabbed a megaphone and began to holler in my head: Did you see that? How can I get all this done alone? Did you see how this person looked at you? You messed that up. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah .......

Soon vain imagination jumped into the mix. It was a regular party up in my head. It made for a bad day that stretched into a bad week. 

Add to the mix some other unexpected personal circumstances, and by the end of the week I felt like all the life had been squashed right out of me. And for all practical purposes, it truly had been. I had allowed a mountain of circumstances to snuff out the light of hope in my heart. I forgot that I was part of a team, that I didn't have to handle life all alone. 

I spoke with a dear friend this past weekend, and after I'd shared all my woes and asked her to pray for me, I quipped lightly, "Well, if all this is coming against me, I'm either doing something very wrong or very right."

She chuckled softly and said she was sure the Holy Spirit would let me know. 

She was certainly right. 

The very next day, another friend shared this devotional with me: 

 From Sapphires, the teachings of Jonathan Cahn

How is your day going? You probably think that if things are going bad you are having a bad day and if things are going good, it’s a good day. But the Bible says something completely different. And it can change the way you live your life. Proverbs 15:15 says, "All the days of the downcast are bad, but a cheerful heart has an everlasting banquet."    Or, 'All the days of the downcast are bad, but a good heart has a never-ending banquet.'

In other words, it is not bad days that make the downcast heart. It is the downcast heart that makes all of the bad days. And it is not the continual banquet that makes the good heart. It is the good heart that makes the continual banquet. Get it?

If your heart is complaining, your days will be rotten. And if your heart is full of praise and thanksgiving, your days will be full and beautiful.  So... do you want a good day, a good week, a good year … a good life?  Stop seeking after a good day, and seek instead to have a good heart. Give thanks in all things, and praise to God, and your life will become an everlasting banquet.

TODAYS MISSION - No matter what is around you today, give God thanks and praise Him as often as you can, and you will have a never-ending banquet.

Psalm 42:11

The problem wasn't with the people around me. The problem wasn't having too much work to do. The problem was my very own heart. My heart was complaining. And the problem was with my very own eyes. My eyes were focused on circumstances, instead of on the Lord of my life, who walks right beside me through every possible circumstance I encounter. He is my Way Maker. He is my Victory.  He is my Peace ... my Redeemer ... my Rock ... my Shield ... my Strength ... my Safe Place. He is my all in all. 

At the risk of sounding irreverent, He is the Ball in my court. If I will keep my eyes on Him, we will make the winning basket every time!

My Prodigal Years...

I'm in the process of applying to be an on-line counselor/spiritual coach for Goundwire, and the application asks us to share our testimony. I've been a Christian for twenty-nine years, and that question always stumps me. Why, I wonder?

When I was first saved, I'd hear people give their testimonies ... dramatic kinds of things.

"When I got saved, God delivered me from a heroin addiction. I've been clean and sober ever since." 

"When I got saved, I was on the verge of a divorce, and God healed my marriage." 

"When I got saved, I was instantly healed of my cancer and transformed into the picture of health." 

Of course there were more sedate kinds of stories, but I seemed to zero in on the amazing, miraculous ones, and I immediately felt my own story could never measure up.

I've learned over the years that God doesn't use a yardstick. There's no measuring tool for testimonies. Every single one of them is an amazing miracle, given mankind's wayward nature and natural affinity to do things our own way; we all have a natural inclination to run from God, to resist anything that is actually good for us! Some of us just tend to get into bigger messes. 

But back then, I just felt like my testimony wasn't exciting, and that no one would care to hear it. I mean, after all, hubby and I read a Four Spiritual Laws tract, published by Campus Crusade for Christ. 

B-O-R-I-N-G!  Right?

As the years passed, I realized that the fact that hubby and I read the same tract, a week apart, and both got saved, was in and of itself something of a miraculous occurrence. I'd read the tract, prayed the prayer, and left the tract on the counter in the kitchen, not realizing exactly what I'd done in the spiritual sense (but it was enough for our great God!). A week later, hubby ~ he actually does have a name, Wayne ~ came to me with tract in hand ...

"Did you leave this in the kitchen?"

"Yes. Why?"

"I just read it and prayed the prayer."

"Oh, I did too."

A few days passed, and I couldn't get the tract out of my head. I read it again; it was then that I spied the phone number on the back. 

I dialed the number, and the woman who answered (she'd given us the tract at a Bible study we'd attended. Long story, but let's just say that we were at the study, not due to a hunger for God, but to please Wayne's boss) chatted with me for a few minutes, giving me a chance to let her know that I got her number off the tract. Then she said something that blew my mind.

"We've been waiting for you to call. We've been praying for you and your husband since we left the tract with you." 

WHAT?!

So, okay. I know what you are thinking. That is pretty awesome. (Like I said earlier, we serve a great big God!) But you have to remember where I was coming from back then.  

That was then; this is now. My spiritual journey over the past year, which I talk about in my first post to this blog: Bare Naked Lady, really opened my eyes to God's providential hand in my life since the day I was born. I decided that's what I want to share with the folks at Groundwire. It goes like this:

I lived my teen and young adult years making one poor decision after another; choices rooted in a poor self-image that led to promiscuity, alcohol and drug use, self-sufficiency, and rebellious pride. There's no glory intended in the admission of the truth here; it's just who I was then. There was alcoholism in my family, and a molestation that occurred in my very early years, which I had never shared with my parents; these factors had convinced me that I could trust no one but myself. Sadly, my track record gave evidence to the truth that I was not trustworthy, either. 

When I experienced my first true love, at the tender age of seventeen, I was sure he was the answer to all my woes in life, that he would take care of me. I gave him everything; you can fill in the blanks, but I do mean everything. When I later found myself tossed to the curb, I spiraled into a string of empty one-night stands, stubbornly holding out hope that I would eventually stumble upon the magic Mr. Right, who would really care, who would unwittingly save me from myself and give my life real purpose because he wanted me. (Please understand, I do not harbor bitterness against my first love; we were two young kids who thought we were so grown-up and in-the-know, but in reality both very mixed up and confused; our end was inevitable.)

And I was blind to the love my parents had for me, at the time standing in judgment of them, because of their own struggles and confusion in life.

I did believe in God, even way back then, but there was no personal relationship. And I couldn't understand why, if He was so wonderful, He would let me hurt so much. 

After a few years of this crazy kind of living, I was battling depression and flirting with the idea of suicide, because I felt worthless and unwanted. But I was a coward, too, so all I did was flirt with the idea; it was easier to see myself as a victim and feel sorry for poor little old me. That's where God found me when He mercifully chose to intervene in my life, at the bottom of a spiritual pigpen. Luke 15:11-32

Even before I knew Him personally, I believe it was Providence that He separated me from my first love. He was not a bad person; he went on to become an upstanding citizen and a fine individual. But God had already hand-picked the one I was supposed to be with, the one who would be able to truly love me. My pigpen was the stage God set; it was there that He tapped me on the shoulder, got my attention, and began to woo me to Himself. A few years later, when a friend hounded me to go on a blind date, it was then that I met my real true love. A year later, on our first anniversary, Wayne and I celebrated not only our marriage, but our new birth together in Christ. And we've been walking with Him ever since.

In my Lord, I've finally found the answer to all of life's woes. The One who really cares. The One who saved me from myself. The One who gives my life true purpose. My True Love. 

God never ceases to amaze me. Wayne and I have walked with Him for twenty-nine years, and I am still just beginning to truly understand how much God loves me and who I am in Him. His gift to me, in the form of my dear husband, has been a picture of the love of God ~ unconditional, sacrificial, ever-growing, ever-changing for the better, for the good. 

That's the kind of love I want other women to embrace, for it is with that kind of love that God loves them too. That's the purpose of this Dare to Share blog, to unite us as women with our Creator, our Savior, our Father, our Friend; that we would all come to understand the incredible depth of His love for us! Ephesians 3:14-21