One And The Same....

Testimonies and worship are in my thoughts today. Maybe as I sit here for a few minutes I can make them come together a bit more for they really are one in the same.

A testimony is a story that tells the truth of an occurrence. While it can be used to tell any form of fact, it is most commonly referred to in telling of things God has done. In so telling it becomes a form of worship simply by letting others know of God's greatness.

Worship on the other hand is a way of demonstrating God's goodness. Demonstrations encompass singing, dancing and all forms of creative expression. In doing so it becomes something of a testimony.

I love to tell anyone who will listen how amazing God is and what I recognise Him to be doing at any given time. I also love to worship Him in song, in dance and in heart every chance I get. As I have grown in my display of love for Him, my interpretation of what love looks like has changed and grown.

What do I mean by that? Let me compare with the human relationship of man and woman. An attraction starts with a glance and a curiosity. It bubbles into finding opportunities to spend time together and they hang on the other's every word. Their physical relationship begins with their hands "accidentally" brushing against one another and then evolve into hand holding and long embraces. With the amount of time they spend together, they know what the other is thinking just by a simple look and there is complete openness of heart and security with no worries of condemnation or ridicule.

That example can be mirrored by my own relationship with God. In the beginning of knowing Him I would pray and sing in quiet reverence that was careful of not being noticed. As time went on and I grew more comfortable in knowing His love for me I would put a little step to my feet at the fun of music and after more time I dared to raise my hands in song as if I could actually physically touch and hold Him.

The past few months, as I have spread my arms skyward in open embrace, I have been seeing pictures shape behind my eye lids. They aren't pictures to be seen by the naked eye. They are colors; colors that dance through the air as if carried by the wind. I find myself reaching for those colors without being able to explain why. To my heart I felt it was an unspoken new level of freedom.

This past weekend in church it finally occurred to me that in my heart I was seeing the Holy Spirit dancing for joy and overflowing with love and I knew that somehow I had to join in. Though I had never used them before, I asked my friend if I could borrow her blue flag banner. With worship music keeping the time, I stood back to the side of the sanctuary and began twirling that flag as if it had life of its own. I became completely lost in the rhythm of Holy Spirit color and my own blue flag color. Back and forth we went, tumbling through the air as birds in precision areal dance.

How do I even put to words what that felt like?
I know that colors have meanings just like things have meaning. (I think it is pretty universally known that a dove means peace for example) But I don't know what the color blue means to God. I only know that while I was in the midst of this new demonstration of my love for Him I felt and heard these words: Simplicity, Love, Freedom

I must spend more time thinking on this. But I wanted to be sure to journal it here before any part gets fuzzy in my mind.

Below is a video of the song that was playing and it was being played by this very band too. They were in town on tour from New Zealand and blessed us with an amazing concert.







May you have a blessed and wonderful week as you feel Him all around you.

It All Adds Up....

"The joys of paying our taxes..."
Can you imagine anyone saying that? Well we did this year. Check out my story....

As I have mentioned before, we are working hard at becoming debt free. We are doing this by working hand in hand with a non-profit management company. We send them a lump sum of money each month and they divide it up and send it to the places it need to go to. Because of that, most of the time we never open the bills that arrive in our mailbox. They simply end up in a pile on the desk.

So, the other night we were working on our taxes. (Yes, we waited until the last minute.) Hubby was very frustrated at the red number that TurboTax was showing that we owed. I was trying to fix things, because I am a fixer, and we both ended up getting pretty snippy with each other.

Finally my hubby said, "Fine. I will dig through this pile of mail and maybe I can find the information you are needing." About 5 minutes into the digging and envelope opening he said, "Oh my!"

Wanna know what he found?
He found a check for $100 that was issued to us 4 months ago. There was also a statement saying that our account had been paid in full and we over paid so this was our reimbursement.

Wanna know what we owed this year for federal?
The red numbers said $93.
How perfect is that? We had waited till the last minute because we just knew we wouldn't have the money to pay whatever it was that we were going to owe. Little did we know that God had even taken care of that. Knowing us, if we would have seen that check when it first came in the mail 4 months ago, we would have spent it on something else and been in trouble now.

But wait because this is perfect too.
When I figured out our state taxes, it said we were in the green by $46.
We just laughed because I had paid $45 for the TurboTax program.

It all adds up.
I love it when I get to recognize the things that God has laid out in front of us before we even think about it.

Uganda Updates....

I haven't been around much and I am sorry. I have wanted to write and visit but have been feeling a bit under the weather lately. For a while now, I have had chronic severe headaches and have recently been seeing a physical therapist to try and get things to calm down. My last appointment seemed to aggravate things though and now I am slow. But that is okay. Everything has a season and I will get over this.

I want to share some great and amazing news about Pippin's preparations for her Uganda trip. First and foremost.....she has all of her money that will be needed for the trip expenses! It has been such an amazing thing of faith to walk out. Here were have been believing that she is supposed to go on this trip with a cost factor that we can't even begin to bite into and God kept whispering that everything would be taken care of. On the other side of that has been the other voice that laughs and says, "You are believing in what? Aren't you a fool!" But we have dared to believe anyway.

Last weekend, she was given 3 large donations that made her balance complete. All the donations have been so generous no matter what the size. These are hard economic times that we are living in right now and for anyone to give anything is such an act of generosity. We were most shocked though by my hubby's boss who sent 2 donations. One was a check from the company and one was a personal check.....both being 20 times more than we could have imagined.

I think that speaks on so many levels. It speaks to answered faith and encouragement coming from unexpected places. It also speaks of how the company feels about the work my hubby has done for them over the years. We have been in awe ever since.

As if that was not enough, here is a story that I think will make you smile as much as it did us...

Recently I gave Pippin an old skirt that I had bought some 15 years ago when we were stationed in Okinawa. It is a light cotton gauze material that is flowing and reaches her ankles. She decided it would be perfect to wear in Uganda. The light weight material would really help the 90 degree summer temperatures while the modest covering would give her the freedom to do many different activities during her stay. The only problem is that it is not a current style. So I figured we would go to the big local fabric store and I would create what was needed.

After surfing through a myriad of patterns and materials I realized that now matter what I bought, I would have to make serious adjustments and it would all be pretty spendy. I figured each skirt would run about $30 if I was super careful. Then I would still need to figure out how to make the cute little waist line tassels that she loved so much on the original skirt.

Sigh.......I walked around the store thinking and praying, "Lord I want so much for her to have at least 4 skirts for the trip. I can sew and create my own pattern if necessary but I am not as good as I used to be and this is really going to take time. And the tassels, yikes! You are really going to have to help me with that......"

Then I stopped in my tracks. Right in front of me was a table marked "Manager's Special". It had 6 skirts on it that were beautifully patterned ankle length with light cotton gauze material. They even had the inner skirt lining already in place AND the waist line tassels. Why they were there in a fabric store I have no idea. It is not like they were classroom demonstration products or something because they had manufacture tags on them. Now get this........they were selling for $5 each. I couldn't have even bought a yard of material for that!

As we loaded up with our 4 choices, a sales person walked by and said, "Oh good. I was hoping to get rid of those. I don't even know where they came from."

Would you agree that is pretty amazing?

David at Authorblog award this post with a mention on his Post of the Day. It is an honor.

Be Still the Storm....

We all make choices and decisions in every day living and raising a family. Along the way, we can sometimes look back and say, 'boy I wish we did that one differently'. One of those times for us has been the idea of credit and bills piling up on the counter. Braces, cars, credit lines....where is the line between 'must haves' and 'like to haves'? They were our choices to make, some good and some bad and we take full responsibility for them. So, for the past 3 1/2 years we have been working hard, very hard, at clearing it all up. For the most part, things have gone well and we are looking forward to the time when we aren't so restricted.

Occasionally there is a hiccup; a wake in the water that rocks our boat as we move along these waters. Hubby will pull a couple of extra shifts at work and then the waters smooth out again. The past couple of months though, several unexpected hiccups have splashed in front of us. As water does when it splashes, it got heavy and began to really pull us down.

It had been weighing on me and changing my thinking. I knew that if we could just surface once more then we could keep on sailing to the finish line. But how would we ever get back above water? I began to scold myself for being at home. Not regretting the time I spend with the girls and everything else I do, but regretting not doing anything for a paycheck. I had scolding thoughts that Hubby works had every day while I bring nothing home but a smile. How selfish it is of me to be looking forward to some quite time in the fall.

Yesterday I started looking online for part time jobs. I figured if I took a night job then I could work while they slept for a few months and then everything would be okay. I just needed to get us back on track. I also knew that I wouldn't tell anyone about my plans because I would be scolded.

I had a voice that kept quietly reassuring me saying, "Do not worry. God sees and it will be okay."

"I know He takes care of us", I said. "But I must make an effort too."

I kept flashing to scenes of people/friends in my past jumping up and down saying, "God put the money in our mailbox. It came when we were least expecting it and when we needed it the most!"

While I have always been genuinely happy for those people, I didn't believe I could be one of those people. Even after all of the wonderful things that have happened to us, I didn't believe.

Last night, I received a package in the mail from my father. Enclosed were a few things that he had been meaning to send me and a small note.

I was and am so overwhelmed. Thinking back to December when I flew out to be with him, God had provided for my plane ticket and now here was the amount almost 6 times over again. It is enough to get us back on track so that we can focus on that finish line.

There I sat, and still sit, with revelation upon revelation of emotions. I know God sees what I do, but He really SEES and understands that I am tired. It was confirmation that what I do at home IS important, more important than a paycheck. I know God provides, but He REALLY provides. I know my father loves me and wants our relationship to grow and move forward, but he genuinely REACHED out and desired to bless me without even knowing our current situation.

So, here is me full of confession, humility, and gratefulness.

What I Shared....

Standing up and sharing with the youth about some of my high school experiences ended up being an impacting time for me....and I think for them as well. I won't go into the whole evening here for the sake of......well I spoke for 45 minutes so I guess respecting your blog reading time would be the factor. Instead I will share with you a smaller section now and maybe another tomorrow.

~~~
This is the way I remember it........
When I was 13, my parents separated and then later divorced. I remember getting up to get ready for school one morning and my parents had my little brother and I sit down on the couch for a family talk. They said that Dad was moving out but that we didn't need to worry. He would still be around and we would be able to spend lots of time with him. Above all we were told to keep in mind that what was happening was not our fault and we were greatly loved.
Then they asked if we had any questions or had anything we wanted to say.
We didn't. My parents had always done a great job of protecting us from their frustrations and heart breaks, but we knew anyway. We just wanted them to be happy. And frankly, between Dad having to devote much of his time to work and the fact that he wasn't an emotionally expressive man....living at home with just mom didn't appear to look much different.

When school got out for the summer, my mom, brother, and I moved across the country to Oregon to live with and to care for my Nana. I started high school that year. (Ah, that time when all tweens and teens really struggle with their identity. Does anyone NOT look back and shudder at that time of their lives?)

Up until that point I had been an awkward freckle-faced red-head with glasses. Wearing thick glasses and dealing with a bit of childhood asthma left me with a huge sense of 'no coordination'. There was not a single sport that I could even pretend to do. Those kinds of circumstances just beg for name calling in the elementary school world. Most frequently, I was named Pippi Longstocking by my peers. Of course, the name was solely because of my red hair and not because of the strength and individuality that Pippi was known for.
Today I laugh and think it is so not a big deal, but as a budding adolesent, it was awful! So, I looked at the move as a new lease on life. No longer was I going to be around anyone that knew me as being backwards or dorky or un-cool.

I decided to do what society told me to do…..look like everyone else. I got my hair styled, I took full advantage of my Nana wanting to shower me with love by buying all new clothes, I learned how to wear makeup. and then I casually “lost” my glasses. I was so blind that I couldn’t see what I looked like without them, but I just knew that not having glasses was an important factor to really being liked and popular in high school.

I tried everything, and I really do mean everything, that I thought would make me popular and give me a new life. I soon learned though that a strategy like that will backfire in your face. I earned a reputation and that reputation grew bigger than me. Not only was I labeled for things that I had done but I was labeled for things that I had not done. You know, that is how things go. One person says something about someone else and pretty soon the talk of the town is larger than truth.

Halfway thru my 9th grade year, I figured I just didn’t even need to bother anymore. I had no goals, things weren’t working out the way I had wanted them to, I was always grounded, and I had a 1.57 accumulative GPA. I decided it would be easier to just stop living. I had thoughts like, “if I die then all the people who didn’t bother to care might care. Maybe if I could look down in the sky and see all the people at my funeral, that would bring me satisfaction."

I know, you are shocked at my thought process. There is no logic in it and revolves totally around my selfish moments...but that is where I was at. I was bored with myself and couldn't see past the end of my own nose.

So, one night before bed, I decided to swallow a whole bottle of Tylenol. Maybe you laugh at that, but I thought I was doing a brave thing. I awoke during the night to my mom and step-dad wanting to talk with me. She had found a letter that I had written to a friend and left on the bathroom counter. I had written it to be a suicide note, but I had worded it so vague that it sounded like I was just going away. Of course, my mom wanted to know where in the world I was going and talked to me thru half the night about getting my life straight. Didn't I know how much I was loved?

I sat there on the floor, respectfully listening….because that is what I was taught to do. But inside I thought, why am I not dead? I had no stomach pains, no dizziness, nothing that I thought I should be doing after taking a bottle of pills. I thought, good grief! I am so pathetic! I can’t even do that right!

Little did I know how greatly God was watching over me, before I even paid Him any attention. Let’s jump forward for a minute to 13 years later and I'll explain why I say that........

I was sitting at home and talking on the phone trying to encourage a friend whose grand daughter was in ICU for taking too much Tylenol. I thought it was really an odd thing to be in ICU for. I mean, I should know right? So I asked her respectfully what the problem was. My friend said that though Tylenol can be a great thing for helping headaches and pains, if taken in too big of a dose, it makes the internal organs weep of blood. There are no holes for a doctors to plug. The person simply bleeds internally and the doctors can do nothing about it. They stand by helplessly watching and monitoring, hoping that the body can filter out the abundance of poison before it gives up.

So here I am trying to console my friend and pray with her because her grand daughter matters, while on the inside I am freaking out thinking, “I shouldn't be here right now! I could have never had my family, never been a mommy, never moved on and experienced all of the wonderful things that I have experienced! God I know you have always cared for me but I had no idea how you protected me when I didn’t even give you the time of day!”

~~~

At this point in my sharing, I branched off into some different things that flowed with the moment. But for your sake, I am sure you would like a bit more closure to this part of the story......

~~~

So back to me sitting there on the floor, absorbed in self and failure while listening to my mom. I sat there for so long that my legs had completely fallen asleep. I didn't say a word to my mom about the things going on in my head or what I had just done. Instead, I angelicly convinced her that I had indeed heard her words and needed to go to bed so I could be a good student at school the next day. She then gave up and consented for our talk to be finished.


As I was standing up, my sleeping legs failed me and I started to buckle to the floor. Instantly my mom and step-dad were at my side to catch me. Mom looked into my eyes, with tears falling down her face she said, "See, we are here for you. We always will be. You never have to feel like you are doing things alone."

Something clicked in my head and thought process after that. I couldn't tell you if it was that pivitol moment or a build up of a series of things. But, I slowly started thinking over time that if I couldn't do bad things well then I might as well try to do good things well.

I didn't get it all right emediately. Really, no one ever gets it ALL right ever. But here I am today so grateful that God had other plans for a selfish little girl.

Oh and that pathetic GPA my freshman year.....
I graduated high school with a scholarship for "Most Improved Student" with a 3.57 accumulative GPA.

"How did it go?".....

My blogger friends, you are so wonderful and a blessing to me. Thank you for being my cheerleaders of encouragement. Sharing with the youth last night did go really well. What I had typed up and prepared, I thought would take maybe 10 minutes at most. It turns out, things felt so natural, we all got into the swing of conversation and participation, I ended up having to cut things short after 45 minutes! I am going to have to do a "part 2" next week.

If you are interested in what I shared last night, I can post it later this afternoon. Right now, we are getting ready to go to a job fair at the local college. I think it is time to expose our teens to that kind of a situation and possibly line themselves up for a summer job.

au revoir mon ami!

I Can Do This....

I am preaching tonight at youth group!
I am excited and nervous all at the same time.
By nature, I prefer not to be center of attention. Sure for the past 18 years I have taught kids classes and trained teachers. But that all seems different in my mind somehow.

A handful of years ago, I was the "cruise director" for a local steamboat that took tourists along the downtown waterfront.
(Yes I was daily thrown jokes about The Love Boat and where were Gopher, Doc, Isaac, and Captain Stubing.)
In doing that job, I did become more comfortable with those center of attention things like holding a microphone, making jokes, commanding an audience with visual ease....but it is still not my prefered spot.

But I keep reminding myself that I am not going to be sharing anything tonight that is world changing or debatable, rocket science and realative theory are not the topics of discussion. Instead, the focus will be my testimony of life and some of the things that I have learned as I have stumbled around.
It is my testimony, my life, and my experiences. I share pieces of me every day. That is easy.