Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Maternity Leave

I'll be on maternity leave for the next four weeks or so... please check back on or about June 30. My baby came five weeks early and weighed in at 4 pounds and 9 ounces. We're doing well... keep us in your prayers.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Just one of those days

I’m having one of those days. You know the kind: fearful, worrisome, not necessarily great and not bad… a need to organize, clean my area in order to move forward in life. You know what I mean. Oh, well if you don’t can you just hang in there with me for a minute while I share (read: vent!)?

There’s no way I’m going to bore you with all the gruesome details of everything that seems to be going wrong. (Hey, please don’t remind me that I recently wrote about incorporating The Secret principles to my life or that I ordered the Complaint Free World bracelet). What I am going to tell you though is that as a human being life can really throw some curve balls. As a Christian, it’s all about how you deal with it.

I know. I pulled a fast one on you. I was going to complain and ask you how you deal with your curve balls. But I’ve realized that few people are reading and/or commenting on my blog. So, it would be a moot point to ask even one more question or pose a scenario for you to respond to. What I’ve decided to do… well, let’s see, I’m still trying to decide if I want to do two things: 1) Shut down this blog or at least cease the updating and posting, and 2) Developing a new, more exciting one.

It’s not as if anyone will notice. So, if you don’t see any posts after this one then you know that I may not be back, but I think there’s great information here so I’ll leave it for those wandering around in cyber space to read. And, eventually, there’ll be a link to a new, highly-read blog that you’re sure to love and appreciate.

In the meantime, I hope your day is going a lot better than mine. Keep up the good work: you know pray, keep God first and maintain the single and celibate life that God has called for you. If you’re not married, but read this blog because you enjoy it: God bless you in all that you do.

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Sin and un-forgiveness

We all may be aware that God does not view any sin as greater than another sin. For instance, he doesn’t look at a murderer and say, “You’re worse than an adulterer or a thief.” But, for a lot of us, committing murder is a greater sin.

So what do you do when you get in a situation where someone has committed a sin against you that’s considered greater than other sins? You may easily forgive your son for stealing money from your purse, but will you be just as forgiving when your husband has sex with another woman?

I know that I can’t answer that question so easily. What I do know is that God expects us to forgive and that’s the bottom line. The gray area is how long it takes, what’s the process and what you do while you’re trying to forgive. In instances where it’s an unsafe situation: say your spouse or significant other is beating on you and abusing you. Of course you have to remove yourself from the situation, but you’re still stuck with having to forgive.

“Stuck…” Even I find that that’s an interesting word for me to choose. I’m just being honest, but when someone has committed an almost unforgivable sin against me or someone close to me I feel almost stuck – forced to forgive. Once the hurt and pain of betrayal has passed then I can move onto forgiveness. Not only because that’s what God says we should do, but for my own wellbeing and soul.

Some people find it easy to forgive others despite what was done to them. Others find it difficult to move on. It doesn’t make one person better than the other. We just have to realize that everyone does things in their own timing. As long as both people reach the same result then I believe God is just as pleased with the slow-to-forgive person as he is with the person who forgave quickly.

“So my heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses.” Matthew 18:35

Friday, May 04, 2007

Excerpts from "The Secret"

This is one of those books that you should probably read for yourself to get the entire gist; however, I thought I would give you a few teasers to get you started on incorporating some secret principals in your life.

“The Secret is the law of attraction! Everything that’s coming into your life you are attracting into your life. And it’s attracted to you by virtue of the images you’re holding in your mind. It’s what you’re thinking. Whatever is going on in your mind you are attracting to you.”

Okay, let me put that one into a simple perspective for you. If you think about debt a lot then you’ll have a lot of debt. So try thinking about money. What struck me was something really small that I think about a lot. I’ve always been a really organized, neat and clean person. I hate disorganization and disorder. When I got married I realized my husband didn’t quite have the gift of putting things away and being organized and neat. Then add two more children to the mix and things really became haywire. So, I’ve been thinking: “I don’t want a messy, disorganized and dirty house.” I think that all the time. What was happening, as is pointed out in The Secret, is that what I focused on is exactly what I received: a messy, disorganized and dirty house. Now I focus on having a neat, organized and clean home. Although that hasn’t completely manifested itself I will continue to have those thoughts to bring it into existence.

“If you can think about what you want in your mind, and make that your dominant thought, you will bring it into your life.”

“Your life is in your hands. No matter where you are now, no matter what has happened in your life, you can begin to consciously choose your thoughts, and you can change your life.”

“Nothing can come into your experience unless you summon it through persistent thoughts.”

There are so many positive principles and tangible “to dos” in the book that I don’t know where to go from here. But here are a few concepts that make so much sense to me: If you’re always telling yourself or saying, “I never win anything.” Then you never will. I’ve changed my thoughts to “I always win something wonderful.” In fact, I’ve taken note cards and written down phrases that I want to remind myself of. For most of my life I’ve said, “I never will anything” and I haven’t, but what makes it so real to me is that I often say “I always get something great for free” or something like that. I always get free stuff in the mail, great stuff as hand-me-downs, awesome stuff from FreeCycle.com, etc. So, why can’t I incorporate that with winning NEW and WONDERFUL stuff? Well, I think I can… thanks to The Secret.

Don’t miss out on incorporating The Secret to your life… it’s the key to having the life you want. (That’s assuming you’ve already got God as your savior!)