Spiritual
Keep on loving
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What did you do for Valentine’s Day? Did you get something special? Did you give anything to other people? Do you spend a little extra time on Valentine’s day thinking about love? Valentines day is so fun to celebrate, and it is so fun to share love with other people.
Why just one day of the year? Our whole lives should be centered on love. So we should make effort and take time all year long to spend a little extra time focusing on love. It is incredible how loving other people and doing special things actually fills you up yourself. We live in such a give to receive and consumer world that we think we will only feel fulfilled and good when we get stuff. But have you experienced the blessing of sharing love? That feeling is the true goodness of experiencing real love. Real love doesn’t focus on just one day of the year, it doesn’t focus on what it is receiving, it doesn’t focus on an exchange, it doesn’t keep score, it doesn’t live centered on never enough. Real love is fulfilling, it is good, it is real, and it lasts forever. Don’t settle on just one day of the year. Think about ways you can incorporate more love into your life all year long. Whether its writing notes, buying someone a Starbucks, calling a friend, telling someone you are thankful for them… it doesn’t have to be extravagant, just do something.
Don’t focus on what you think you deserve. Focus on what you can do for others. Focus on the love of God. Focus on the gift God gave through his son Jesus to come and take away what we truly deserve. Through his mercy and grace we experience life and love in …
Read MoreCommunity-Build it and Grow
Community is essential for my growth and development. Community is my life-line. Community keeps me balanced, focused, on track and able to conquer my fears and achieve my dreams. Establishing a community can take time or it can happen fast-out of desperation. The people that I draw into my inner circle have earned the right to breathe life into me. Developing community takes time, intentionality and effort. Trustworthiness, honesty, authenticity, faithfulness and enthusiasm are character traits that are important to me as I build my community.
When I was first married, my husband and I were both in school so our community developed fairly easily with classmates and church friends, but then we began to move around a lot because my hubby was in the Navy. Developing a community was imperative because we had small children by then and I needed the support since my husbands hours were ridiculously long. I desperately needed my love cup filled to overflowing so that I could be a good mom and a blessing to him when he returned from work especially after his 36 hour shifts. I quickly started searching for like-minded gals from church and wives of my husband’s colleagues that needed friends like I did. I reached out and invited them into my life. We started play groups and babysitting co-ops. We organized tennis dates and park days. We bought season passes to the zoo and Sea World and went once a week on a field trip with the kids. As we spent time together sharing life, our struggles, our joys and our frustrations, our community grew into a sisterhood of bonded friends. None of us would have survived those years without that community of friends.
During the years that I had school aged daughters, there was always so much going …
Read MoreWhat do you really love?
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We love alot of things. We love sports. We love stuff. We love food. We love the things we do. We love people. We love pictures. The word love is tossed around every day, for little meaningless things. But we can’t let that take away from the significance and the depth and the power of the word love. And love isn’t just a word. It is a feeling. It can be a choice. But most importantly, it is an action. Love lived out has the most power and the most potential to make an impact. What have you done lately that has shown love? What has someone done for you?
What do you love? What do you really really love? Who do you love? How do you show them that? Do you do extra things? Do you tell them you love them? Do you tell them why? There is power in words and actions. Be intentional in how you love. Be descriptive in why you love. Don’t just love someone to say it or check it off the list, love someone to make them feel loved and purposeful and on top of the world. This is what love really is….
Do you love this way? Or do you love only so you get something in return? This Valentine’s season, be filled with love, not to get something back, but to be overwhelmed in the feeling and the action of true true love! Live out love in action. Love not just with feeling, but with everything you are. Love big and love loud and love to make a difference!
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Be Salty for Valentine’s Day
Love is in the air. Valentine’s Day is around the corner and everywhere you turn something or someone is telling you how to express your love. A few weeks ago I heard a message about the Kingdom of God and how the teachings of Jesus are the map to know about the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is the #1 subject that Jesus taught His disciples about-He was passionate about modeling Kingdom values here on earth. So during this season of Valentine’s, chocolates, flowers and Love, I am going to focus on reflecting Kingdom values. I am going to ask myself if my attitudes and actions represent someone who models Kingdom values. I am going to pay attention to the needs of others and actually do something that shows love.
- Take time to make that phone call to a friend.
- Drop by and visit with someone who is housebound, sick or recovering from an illness or from surgery.
- Write a note of encouragement.
- Bake some cookies and take them to a neighbor.
- Send Valentine’s cards to your children or grandchildren.
- Make a meal for a friend just for fun.
When we take the time to stop our busy lives and think about what truly matters, we will bless others and have a deeper sense of emotional satisfaction and joy.
In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus teaches that we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Salt is an amazing chemical. Salt is used in cooking to enhance flavor, as a preservative and as a flavor suppressant. Salt enhances the flavor of what it is seasoning-you add salt to a stew or soup to enhance the flavor of the meat and vegetables that are slowly cooking together. The result is not a salty taste …
Read MoreLove in Action
Falling in love through service is an incredible experience. When your heart is moved by an unmet need and you know that you are being called to participate in fulfilling that need, an instantaneous thing happens in your heart-you fall in love with the people you are serving. TRUE greatness in this world comes through serving others. True love also comes when you give 100% to another person and that happens through serving one another.
This weekend, I attended a Gogo Grandmothers Board meeting where I spent a glorious day with friends renewing our hearts and reaffirming our commitment for the continued work being accomplished in Malawi. I feel so privileged to be a board member for the SAFE /Gogo Grandmothers ministry and have loved every minute of my time serving with the other members of the board. (SAFE stands for Sub-Saharan Family Enrichment) We serve a mighty God who moves in mighty ways! My current project involves organizing a manual for preparing groups who want to go have a hands on experience in Malawi with the SAFE/Gogo Grandmothers ministry. I am excited for the day when I get to go meet the Gogos and the staff in Malawi. It will be a blessing to someday meet the people that my heart already loves.
Here is a chart from the 2015 End of Year report that shows how our ministry has grown because of people like you who have joined in to serve and put their Love in Action!
Gogo Grandmothers provides for the orphans of AIDS in Malawi, Africa by assisting the grandmothers who care for them. In America, and across the world, individuals and Gogo Grandmothers groups (often uniting women who are grandmothers themselves) gather monthly to pray and carry out fund-raising projects that provide what poor …
Read MoreHave More Happy
“A joyful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones.”
Proverbs 17:22
I’ve been learning a lot about how important it is to take care of yourself and pour into yourself so that you can better serve and love on others! One of the best ways to do that is to be filled with joy and do things that make you happy!
One thing that fills my heart with joy is going to Disneyland with my girls. We just love it. Yes, it takes a lot of work to pack up our food and gear and make a day of it. Yes, it makes me tired. BUT sharing the experience together and seeing their happy faces makes it worth it to me.
It is the same way with exercise. It’s never easy to make that time, but the rewards outweigh any excuse I might make. And fitness makes me so happy. It is one of my passions.
Here are a few of my favorite ways to Have More Happy:
- Be Grateful. Start your day with gratitude so you are focused on all the blessings in your life.
- LAUGH! Do things that make you laugh, hang out with people that make you laugh. Watch a funny movie. Watch funny clips on YouTube. I recommend Jimmy Fallon Hashtag skits. They are hilarious.
- Add value to others. Give, serve, tell someone you love them, connect and listen.
- Take care of yourself. Drink water, get sleep, nourish your body. When you feel good on the inside it shows on the outside!
- Surround yourself with joyful people. Who we spend the most time with has a HUGE influence on our attitude and behavior so choose wisely.
- DREAM. Make plans and goals that you can get excited
Honesty is the Best Policy
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We always think of lying in terms of saying something that is not true… But sometimes, avoiding being honest, manipulating the truth, not saying enough, or just not saying anything is a form of a lie. Yes there is a time and a place to keep your mouth shut… but other times, its time to speak up. If you are in the middle of processing through something and it’s better to keep working through it before you say anything… you can say “I need more time”. If you are going to speak out of a reaction rather than a response, maybe think about counting to 10… But the worst thing you could do is bottle it all up, let it ruminate, let it turn into bitterness, and let it EXPLODE a few days later. Be honest with yourself, be honest with others, be honest with the Lord. Don’t keep it all in. We weren’t created to figure this life out by ourselves. Even in the context of prayer, ask for help. Yes the Lord already knows what we are going to talk about. But still ask, still pray, still be open. The Lord still wants the honesty, the worship, and our awareness. We can’t hide anything from him. But we still try. So why not be real with ourselves and be honest with God. He knows exactly what we are thinking, exactly what we are going through, and exactly how it ends. In terms of relationships, sometimes being honest hurts a little bit at first, but it always ends up better in the end. When something is brought up weeks later it comes as a shock to the person on the receiving end. Sometimes even a shock to yourself to realize you have been holding it all in …
Read MoreComplacency
As the new year rolls into “full steam ahead”, I have tried to take time each day to be grateful for all of my blessings and focus on having my “walk” match my “talk”. I want to be a person who at the end of the day, lives out the things that I believe in my words and actions and behavior. I really want to be a genuine person, vulnerable and open to growth, correction and change. I strive to have my attitudes and motives support a life of authenticity and service. I am hoping to be an example for my daughters to follow. I believe that each one of us has a circle of influence. Those people who we interact with on a regular basis or people that we see once in a while but when we are together we have an instant deep connection with them. I am not a person who likes to be in a clique and I love interacting with people from all walks of life. But that does not mean I am not regularly tempted to get caught in the lie that tells me my significance is determined by who likes me, who emails me, who stops by…….I think we all get caught in this insecurity cycle. I want to be free to live and love and learn. I want to be ready for whatever circumstances come my way. I want to stand with conviction and face the challenges in my life with confidence and willingness to trust God in every situation.
COMPLACENCY is a word that keeps coming up for me as I have been preparing to teach a lesson at our women’s bible study. Complacency is a feeling of security, a sense of quiet pleasure often while unaware of the potential danger …
Read MoreDon’t not try!
January is often focused on goals, resolutions, new things to try, old things to bring back, revamped disciplines, create new habits, break old ones… and so on. We focus so much on what we want to change, which can be a really good thing. People either get invigorated by this dreaming and goal setting, or they get paralyzed because they don’t think they will succeed. Sometimes people get even discouraged before they ever start… But that is the habit we have to break. So you may not be able to stick to it forever… don’t let that stop you from trying. So you may do something for a few days, then lose track, don’t completely get off the saddle. Get back on a few days later and keep trying. I know for me, I so easily get discouraged. And my idealism of wanting to be perfect and setting goals and actually accomplishing them keeps me from even setting goals to begin with. I need to stop that negative and destructive thinking. I have to believe that it’s okay to just try things. It is okay if things are just for a season. It is okay if I am not perfect.
And the amazing thing that I have that I don’t even realize is the people around me to support, encourage, stand by me, and spur me on to accomplish these things. We were created for relationships, to work together with other people, and to be there for one another. And more important than that, I was created for a purpose even bigger than goals or dreams or efforts I make. I am in a race, on a journey, that is far bigger and far greater than anything I can even imagine. So may I not be my own worst enemy, …
Read MoreLegacy of Love
Happy New Year!
2016 is here and this year our theme is going to be focusing on FAMILY and developing a LEGACY of LOVE! Staying connected, serving one another, encouraging one another to show LOVE in ACTION! Joy and contentment are in our reach. Peace and fulfillment are ours to strive for.
As we begin our new year sharing our hearts and lives with you we want to pull back the curtain and dig in to the “real life challenges” and offer you a glimpse into the strategies we are using to grow through our experiences we have as a family.
Last week we gathered together to celebrate the holidays-(missing one significant part of our family). We played together and ate together and shared life and fun and laughter. We planned and talked about goals for the new year and prayed for each other. Here are a few of the pictures from our time….with more to come……
The start of a new year can be a great time to think about the changes you want to make but it can also sometimes be overwhelming – getting back into “real life” after the holidays, feeling the temptation to compare the resolutions that friends and family are making, and so on. Something that I always think about in a new year is getting into a better routine of daily devotions but… Which devotion should I pick? What time is best? Do I want a theme for my daily devotions?
For the last year or so, I have subscribed to FamilyLife daily “Moments with You: Daily Connection for Couples” devotion. It comes in my email inbox every morning and really helps me to pause from the busyness of the day to ready about character qualities I want or need to work on in …
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