Tragedies

I'm thinking about tragedy today. Not just the event itself but all the feelings and implications of tragedy in our lives after they have occurred.  Tragedy is not just a major event, I believe some tragedies can be on a smaller scale but can certainly rock someones life nonetheless.

I recently had a small scale tragedy. I owned a pet for five months and he got free. Someone picked him up off the main road and reported it to a shelter. She reported him but decided to give him to a friend. When I called the shelter and got in touch with this lady, her "friend" had said the dog ran away from him as well.  Now I don't want to accuse anyone of lying, the dog was not neutered and was looking for a mate.  He wandered away from us so he may have truly wondered away from this other person as well.

So, he is gone. If I get him back at this point I will know God has heard my prayers. But the point is, my heart is grieving. God in fact provided this little guy for me when I was going through a lot of change in my life. This little dog would comfort my heart because he loved me. He would chase his tail when I cried and would sit up like a prairie dog, beg for bacon, and have me in stitches.  He used to run in my room or wherever I was during opportune times to uplift my spirit. He was another picture of God's grace to me.

I was careless with him. I never bought him a collar. If I did, I'm sure that lady would have called me instead of given him to someone.  I also let him outside on a couple mornings I was too lazy to walk out to the dog pen. I thought he was used to running free anyway. I knew better than that though. Now he is gone because of my laziness. Sometimes our tragedies can be caused because of our carelessness.

Other times our tragedies are caused by another persons hard heart.  I have certainly had one of those. And I know someone who is walking through one of those tragedies right now. Mine was a BIG tragedy...a painful, crushing, ongoing, bitter tragedy. How dare that other person cause a tragedy in my life!

And finally, we have those tragedies that just happen. Either by accident, or genetics, or time, or chance.
I spoke with a mom today who's teenage son is blind.  This young man is bitter, depressed, and angry. My sufferings have been different than her sufferings. My heart can never know her bitterness and her heart can never know mine.

Lord, what should I do when these things happen to me? Should I blame YOU for some of my tragedies? My flesh wants to react. My flesh wants someone to pay for them.  Sometimes I want you to pay for them.  

Will I be angry with you Lord, if you never give me the answers I seek. If you never tell me "why" in my timing? Will I be disagreeable with you, will I not trust you if my tragedy is an ongoing one and spans over the years?

I'm going to choose to trust you God. I'm going to trust you with the duration of my tragedy.  However long, however much it costs me, by your grace, help me to trust you. Take my need for justice, take my bitterness, and my anger. It's too much of a load for me to carry. Help me forgive, just as you forgave when it was undeserved.

I love you. Let me never forget that you rescued my darkened mind and enlightened me. You set me free as I was practicing many sins. Why should I let go of your hand now?  Why the lack of trust now? I will not blame you...I love you!

A Testimony of Friendship

The Lord ordained a friendship for me that began eight years ago.  I know it was given to me from the hand of God because it was not someone I would think to choose for myself.  I met her through a mutual friend when she was 18 and I was 25.  I was a single mom of a 2 year old boy and she was a headstrong and opinionated teenager.  Because there was a need we begin living as roommates right after we met. As we began to discover one another I started learning lessons right away. God's typical MO.

She was incredibly messy.  She would spill jelly on the kitchen floor in the morning and it would be there when we returned home from work.  She would eat Little Debbie's oatmeal cream pies for breakfast.  I on the other had was a perfectionist. I liked things clean and put in their place.  Everything had to be done right and I had a hard time trusting the ability of others.  Can you say 'control freak!'  As she had her feet up on the coffee table reading a book, I would be cleaning or decorating, unable to enjoy the moments of life.

I recall a time when I became physically ill for 3 days. The Lord said "Be patient in affliction."  As I was bedridden God began to work through the sickness and the essence of my friend.  She worked (a little!) to live, but had no desire as a woman to allow work to define who she was.  I had to work. I had to strive...but God was saying through the circumstances..."No my daughter, you need to rest and trust me".   I was learning to let go of myself slowly, piece by piece.

My friend was also going to teach me a huge lesson about God's dealings in grace with us. I thought I knew grace. But what I discovered was what God had started within me in the spirit, I tried to perfect in the flesh.

Years passed and we changed. My friend, whom I had prayed with, cried with, and sought the Lord with started to desire the things of the past. I found myself mentally going to places that I never belonged in as a redeemed child of God. I started to become prideful, almost against her, even though a piece of me always loved her. I started to put her sin on a scale and tipped my sin in a more favorable light than hers. This is against the word of God. Proverbs 28:21 says "To show partiality (favoritism) is not good, because for a piece of bread, a man will transgress (sin)."

I also put certain people I knew on a spiritual pedestal and I was becoming blinded. Among the Christians I knew I was pretty obedient. But it was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. When you get involved in performance based religion, whether conscience or unconscionably, a mixture of self righteousness and condemnation always manifest as rotten fruit.  God in his love for me allowed this to all come crashing down for my own good.

I saw how God had sought after my friend. Even in her sin, even after she had tasted the things of God. One day I had had it with her and threw myself on my bed in complaint to the Lord.  He spoke to me right then, "Yes she is in sin, and I will deal with it."  Did he condemn her, forget about her, or think he was above extending his arm toward her in her rebelliousness as I had done in my mind at times? No, he sought after her.  She was drowning, by her own doing, but desperately longing to purge the shame and be one with Christ again. God saw into the places of her heart that are not, and will never be visible to me.  How dare I ever think I was above falling.  Apart from the grace of God I would be back wallowing in my sin of years past.

The Lord had orchestrated events in my life to deliver me from legalism, performance, religion, self righteousness, and condemnation.  He set up circumstances so I would need to either listen to the voice of people that I determined were righteous or the voice of God.  I chose to listen to God and the floodgate of Grace opened.  I lost some precious friendships but brand new ones of Grace were born, and one special relationship was reborn.

My reborn relationship was with my friend that God placed in my life several years ago.  I am not afraid of her sin anymore. I'm not afraid of my own sin....and I can admit that MY sin is no less putrid in the nostrils of a Holy God.  My relationship with God has changed. I no longer think I am on his naughtly list when I fail and on his nice list when I am doing everything right.  I no longer think certain Christians are closer to God than other Christians, I no longer look at my friend like I am more favored by God, or more obedient than her...because I really STINK.  It's Christ that makes any one of us righteous.

Where the SPIRIT of the Lord is, there is Freedom! 

Jessi I love you dearly.  I see you as a powerful force against the kingdom of darkness. God is filling you with his spirit right now and I see you accepting it and living it and pouring it out to others. May God bless you with every good thing! May you get the same wages as those people who started working for our master early in the morning...and who is anyone to complain? God may reward his servants as he pleases!  You bless me and in this tribute to you I tried to tell you how special you are to me, but honestly I only scratched the surface of all the ways God used your life to bless me.  Your pain was not wasted. Neither was mine. Oh God, Jehovah our redeemer....no earthly joy he has promised to us compares to the promise that is coming, our salvation that he is faithful to bring us into.  I love you!

HIS Righteousness

I am finding that delicate balance of being in the world but not of it.  I am learning, however and always will be.  When Jesus determined the time was right to shine his brightness into my life he did it by displaying complete love, kindness, and acceptance.  HE accepted ME.  Sure there were many things that needed to change (and I was aware of it)  but his acceptance of me right then and there trumped my current sinfulness.  It had to... because if it didn't, at that moment, I don't think I could have approached him.

So I began on the path with Jesus.  Now looking back over the past 11 years.....

I used to get so worked up about people. People professing belief yet not obeying. And that's understandable.  But the anger of my flesh did not produce the righteousness of God.  You could say I was busy "pleasing" God and not "trusting" God...with people.

Sometimes Christians can be afraid of certain sins and not others. I used to be this way. I used to have a homosexual boss. Eeeek! Homosexuality! Really? Aside from being amused by his mannorisms and making the occasional joke about him behind his back, I thought oh man, he is FAR from God. One day God spoke to me at work and showed me that my bosses sin of homosexuality was no different than my other co-workers sin of heterosexual fornication, or yet another co-workers sin of unbelief.  How about Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses? What about idolatry?  What about the idol of spending too much money on your own comfort, finding comfort in food, or comfort in smoking instead of contentment in being still and knowing HE is God? Not sharing your money with those in need? Making out with your boyfriend/girlfriend? Being prideful because of your prolonged obedience to God's commands?  Thinking your better or more spiritual than another person?  And the list goes on and on. 

It's all missing God's mark of perfection. 

We are all just people created in the image of God and happen to be deceived by different doctrines, lifestyles, sins.

Look at what a loving God we serve.  He patiently corrects and rebukes us with the precision of a surgeons scalpel.  God's commandments and word can never be compromised but don't throw a person away when they are stumbling around, even when they "should" know better...because God doesn't.   Trust God that you are not condoning anothers sin just because you are lovingly trying to restore them.  Some people flounder and go through deep valleys. I go through them too.  And we can never think we are more righteousness than another because really, it is JESUS who is the righteousness one that put's his spirit within us....apart from that we are still just that filthy rag that that floundered in sin until God lovingly looked upon us.  HE keeps us from sin.  I don't ever want to stop living that truth.  I want to stay tightly knit to the vine of Christ, being gentle with other people, because my own goodness gets me into a place where I end up needing repentance.






Ephesians 2 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast. ¹⁰ For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Victor, The Homeless Chihuahua

I want to tell Victor's story, but I first have to make something clear. I hate chihuahua's. There, I said it. My closest friends have them but I have always secretly hated them and kept it to myself. I like big dogs. Plain and simple.  Ok, now that that's out I don't feel like a liar anymore.

Victor is a homeless chihuahua that lives on my street.  The homes on my street pretty much have no fences so Victor is free to roam as he pleases.  When I first moved in, I saw this strange animal take notice of me and then run for his life down the dirt path next to the neighboring garden. Seriously, I did not know what the heck it was. I thought it was a rabbit because it ran too awkwardly to be a cat.  

Then one day we were BBQing on the back patio and this animal comes out to beg.  He had no collar and some matted fur. I figured it was the funny animal I saw running weeks prior.

So we fed it, but it would not let us pet him.  My husband kept saying he was just using us.  As the days went by we named him Victor because it is the name of a street on his turf.  We also noticed him frequenting our back door when it was dinner time.  But now we are noticing some new behavior in our peculiar little buddy.

He is coming around a lot more.  He is also venturing into our home, when he feels safe, and when we leave the back door open. For a few days now he will come in, without letting us pet him, and then run back outside when we get too close. Even though I hate chihuahua's I think he is sort of cute.  When I open the door he sits there and wont come in...then I will shut the door he scratches on the door to enter....repeat.

I even think his ears are so cute. They are huge like Dumbo compared to his little face.  They swing all around his head almost to communicate emotion.  And the coolest part is the peace he gave me a few nights ago. I was sitting on the patio and he comes running up, happy to see me.  But of course he sat five feet away to protect himself.  It's almost like he wants a home but is afraid. I wondered what his little story was and what he had been through.  Was he just a fashion that went out of style to some trendy twenty something?  Has he been fighting the mean streets of Utah for months now, while his sensitive heart has become bitter and cold?  (I need to get a life, I know)

So I thought about little Victor.  Then this whole scenario came to me.  I know in the past God found it pleasing to himself to speak to me through situations and this little dog brought one of those spiritual applications.

Victor is so accustomed to the big bad world that he is finding it hard to trust whats best for him.  He wants to draw near to me but will retreat back outside due to fear and comfortability. And truth be told, I think he likes some of the shennagans he is used to out in the darkness!  One night I saw two huge cats tear through the yard and after them comes Victor in a snarl.

I can't help but see a correlation to us and how we are with God in our first encounters with him...or when we have ventured back into "the world" and know we need him.  We have made a mess in the world.  Our fur is matted, our hearts have grown cold....and we know that spiritual things fill us, and they warm us.  We know that they nourish and satisfy, while the sin and temporary fun always leaves us empty.

We come near to God, at his door, yet keep looking back into the world because it's comfortable and it's enticing.  God opens it but we stand in the doorway...and linger.

I'm not sure what Victor will ultimately choose.  He is learning to trust.  He is lonely.  He is getting closer everyday.  I just want to bathe him and clean him up but I cannot force him to stay.  And just like our heavenly father- he will only clean us up if we let him.

Hopefully Victor will grow tired of chasing tail in the garden and start living life more abundantly!

I heart cookies.

So, the DOUBLE CHOCOLATE MINT COOKIES were amazing.  

If you needed them for a get together (especially with church people!) these would be a hit.
Here are the ingredients you will need to make 5 dozen:


1 cup Butter
2 cups white sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp peppermint extract
2 cups flour
3/4 cup unsweetened coco powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips


Cream softened butter, sugar, eggs and extracts. Then add dry ingredients with electric mixer.  Fold in chocolate chips last.
I would chill the dough for over an hour before baking. I've noticed my cookies don't rise well if I skip that step.  
350 degrees (you know the rest)

...and yes, you can eat them with this...

I already tested this new product for you.  It's good and convenient!

Limbs and Things.

I saw Soul Surfer tonight. I felt like the Lord inspired me to take my son today as I was resting at home.  I was so blessed by it.  A young woman who's whole life was about surfing had her arm bit off by a shark.  There were so many reminders of how God will weave beautiful things within the pain this life will bring us.  It reminded me of an incident I will never forget.

Last summer when I was finishing up my degree at UNLV, I was working part time at a tanning salon.  Needless to say much of what I encountered were impatient, selfish women with their identity all wrapped up in their sex appeal.  Women that have extreme standoff-ish outer beauty that is UNinviting at best.

But one afternoon a naturally beautiful woman walked in. I noticed her becuase her demeanor was gentle and she didn't look all done up.  She was there to get a spray tan and had a funny request. "Do you have any trash bags? I need two of them for my legs."  I got them for her and we became engaged in conversation.

Her heart was so loving, so soft. She revealed to me that she lost both of her legs 10 year ago in an accident. I would have never known that she had two fake legs. She was wearing skinny jeans and walked normally.  She told me she was a model and ran a non-profit organization too.  I was so blessed by her that day.  I almosted wondered if she was not involved in her accident if her heart would not be that beautiful....would it be hard like so many young women today?

I grew up in southern California.  I saw my first Cosmopolitan magazine when I was 11.  Sadly, it made me obsessed with beauty.  "Wanting to be beautiful"  held me captive for many years. Endless wishing, striving, and wanting more than God gave me, never being satisfied and content.

One day I was reading the bible and came across the story of God's prophet Samuel.  He was supposed to go to Jesse's house and find the next King of Isreal.  Jesse had several sons and Samuel thought Eliab would be the chosen one.  But here is what GOD said, "Do not look at his appearance or physical stature, because I have refused him! For the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart." 

That really brought peace and rest to my soul.  What we value in our American culture is man made and GOD has refused it!   How many times have I judged a woman or man made in the image of God by how they were dressed, how they looked or even how akward they act?  We have no clue what goes on in a person's heart!  It's pride. It's our ugly pride to ever think we are better than another person....physically, and even spiritually.

I have been set free to enjoy and be content with what God has given me. A healthy body, a sober mind, and a compassion for others.  I pray a new trend would spring up...women who serve others and develop their inner beauty! As I continue to develop mine because I certainly have not arrived.


The last shall be first and the first shall be last.

"Go and sin no more"

Did you ever ponder why Jesus said this to the woman caught red-handed in the act of adultery?

We can safely say that Jesus knew this womans whole life and what led up to her actions that day.  He also knew the condition of her heart and if she was discusted by her own sin even though she willingly participated. 

Men stood around her, holding their stones, ready to take her life.  At that moment, Jesus asked which one of THEM was without sin.     

In Romans chapter 7 the apostle Paul writes about his struggle with sin as a born again believer.  He explains that it is the sin living in him that causes him to do what he does not want to do.  This tells me that the Christian who sins does not desire to practice sin as he might have before conversion, but will still sin due to his real self being encased in a body of flesh that desires the sin.  Paul then explains that we are to let God's spirit direct our heart attitudes and actions more and more.  He also warns that this is not a liscence to sin. 

All the Christians we know are in various stages of spiritual growth.  I am in no way capable of knowing what is going on inside of a persons heart at any given time.  I can see or experience a person's actions, react to those actions, hopefully with gentleness and forgiveness, but I cannot judge their standing with God.  Lord, I release that judgement to you because only you can judge rightly.  You are all knowing - not me!

Without love I am only a noisy gong or clanging symbol. I have felt the judgement of someone and I have felt the love of someone.  Both parties desired to bring me a rebuke.  The judgemental person did love the Lord but brought many assumptions and fear to my heart. But oh how refreshing was the person who brought rebuke to me in love! Their words brought tears to my eyes and refreshing to my soul!  This person's rebuke was a product of God's spirit reaching out to me....not a flawed attempt in the flesh to glorify oneself.

That situation taught me some things. God doesn't need me to rebuke or confront every situation.  I will strive to live my life in such a manor that allows others to see Christs righteousness in me (cause I have NONE on my own!)  I don't need to be the Holy Spirit's mouthpiece unless instructed to do so.  My judgements are wrong because I am not all knowing.  And when the time comes that the Holy Spirit wants to use me to intervene in a person's life, I will wait gently and patiently for those perfectly calaulated words to deliver to that person.  

I am learning so much about God's grace. I want to love people like Jesus did. With compassion, without judging appearances and motives, taking the log out of my own eye, having a "go and sin no more" heart towards others....because I need that for myself!