25 Random Things About Me

I posted this as a Note on Facebook back in 2009, but as I reread it, I realized that this really does still describe who I am--probably more so now. 

1.  I really love Jesus and I really love people. I love to meet new people and make new friends.
2.  I always feel inferior so I push myself to be better and take on more than I should.
3.  I found out in June, 2008, that I am allergic to milk and eggs. This limits what I can put in a mouth, but I eat plenty of the food I can.
4.  I love chocolate! It can be eaten in a form that does not include milk or eggs.
5.  I used to walk in downtown Hot Springs and on the Promenade after 11:00 p.m. with some other girlfriends, and I now think that was really stupid.
6.  I’m nosy. I think everything needs my assistance. I was checking other babies diapers when I was in the nursery myself.
7.  I’m a really bad piano player, but a pretty good typist. The trouble is--there isn’t a need for bad piano players.
8.  I didn’t own a television until I was 21, and I don’t watch much TV now because I think it is a big contributor to the moral decline of our nation.
9.  I hate being told you have to vote a certain way in order to be a Christian. I think both parties have christian/unchristian issues. I’m a liberal in government and a conservative in morals.
10.  I hate racism of any kind. It is ungodly, it is wrong, and if you are racist you need to get to know Jesus better. He was not racist.
11.  I've become a “green freak”. I want to help save the world. If you don't like people who are "green", then get to know Jesus better. He created the world, and wants us to take care of it.
12.  I’ve learned that God is the God of people and not denominations.
13.  I thought being a “step”-parent was hard, and then found out it was just the parent part that was hard.
14.  I have a step-father, step-mother, 2 step-brothers, 2 step-sons, I’m a step-mom, and I’m my own Grandpa. . . . .
15.  I wrote a research paper on laughter in college and it was published on the web. http://home.hiwaay.net/~garson/laughter.htm
16.  My fondest memory of my youth is laughing with my mom. We would laugh so hard that we would forget what we were laughing about and then laugh because we didn’t know what we were laughing about.
17.  I’ve never been out of the USA.
18.  I’ve never flown before.
19.  I still want to go to Law School.
20.  My husband is 17 years older than me, but I am more mature.
21.  I love to sing in church, despite the fact that I get so nervous I can barely breathe while doing it.
22.  I am ashamed of how much myself, and others in this blessed country waste everyday.
23.  I work with my husband everyday (for 20 years, but only for 18 as husband and wife) and we are still married.
24.  I’m incredibly disturbed by the amount of Christian couples who are divorcing these days, and wish they could discover that the answer is not in finding another man or woman. The problems will not go away with divorce–they just generally increase.
25.  I'm a social media addict.

Are You Riddled With Fear?

Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest. Joshua 1:9

We have all heard and maybe memorized the Ten Commandments and probably feel like the Bible is full of rules of things for us to do and not to do. You might be surprised to know that the most frequent command in the Bible is “Fear Not” and “Be Not Afraid”. Together they appear approximately 88 times in the Bible. God tells Abraham, Hagar, Jacob, Joshua, Daniel, Joseph and Mary and many others to “Fear Not!” He speaks through Joseph and Moses, and many prophets of Israel, saying the same words. He also speaks to you, saying “fear not” and “be not afraid.”

We are a society riddled with fear and controlled by anxiety and worry. Think about your life and how fear rules you. We are afraid we will have any number of calamities to befall us. Some of those fears will come true, but most never will. We are afraid we will fail if we try, and we are afraid we will succeed. We are afraid of growing old, yet we are afraid of dying. We are afraid of loving and committing and then being hurt, and at the same time we are afraid we are not loved and never will be. When we have children, we open a whole new area to fear and worry about. The fears never stop no matter how old you are. Some people are so controlled by fear they fail to experience life and fail to live a productive life. God knows that when we are crippled by fear, we are unable to be useful to ourselves or anyone else. We fear and dread the death of our mortal bodies more than anything else. We try to care for them and keep them alive as long as possible. Matthew 10:28 says, “fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul. . . .” Jesus has already conquered death; therefore, we are victorious. When we cease to exist on this earth, we will continue to exist with Jesus. We have already died, and now we live in Christ. “Fear not, for I am with thee . . .”, saith the Lord (Isaiah 43:5).

Headed to Forty

“Oh, Lordy, Look Who’s 40!” is a stale idiom that is only funny to people who aren’t having a birthday. I have encouraged friends who were turning 40 and looked toward my own impending day and thought–“this is no big deal.” Frankly, I am grateful to have reached this age. I have seen many examples in my life of people who were not even allowed 40 years. Yet as the day keeps swiftly approaching, I feel a sense of impending doom. I always said this wouldn’t happen to me, that I would just have a big party and enjoy the day. I really do like my life, most of the time. As always there are things I would change if I could, but some things are as they are.

Why does this happen to seemingly everyone at this monumental birthday? Probably because at 40 you tend to be stuck right in the middle of your life. You feel bored, tired and ready to move on, but you know that the day after you turn 40 will be just like the day before. We tend to feel stuck in a job that is not profitable for us to leave. We may have children that we are toting around to ball games or other school activities. Maybe time alone is so infrequent that when you get it, you don’t know what to do with it. When we feel stuck, we sometimes start thinking of what we can do to move ourselves out of the rut. Sometimes people end up making stupid mistakes and ruining the life they had and end up no happier than they were before. So, as I travel down the road to 40, with my eyes wide open, I am looking to my God. He made me and He knows why I want to cry and run away and hide. He knows how many years I have left, and how they will unfold. He knows the situations that make me feel suffocated and stuck and I am waiting for Him to move me.

Some ways that I feel God moving me at the moment are to get healthy. It’s not news to me that I needed this, but I have begun to feel the urgency of it. I keep hearing of people in their 40's having strokes and heart attacks, and I’ve just realized that I am there. Another way God is moving me is to listen more to Him. I can’t know what He is wanting me to do if I don’t listen. I tend to fill up every moment with noise. It may not sound noisy, but I engage my brain constantly. I am reading or interacting on social media and sometimes the silence can be just as noisy as sound. We must pull ourselves away in order to hear God’s voice. I can’t complain that I don’t know what God wants if I didn’t wait for His answer. It’s been over an hour since I checked in on Twitter, yet the world still revolves.

Psalm 34:8 says “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” I dedicated my life to God many years ago, but in the hullabaloo of my life I have taken control of parts of it again. I really like my social media–in large quantities. I sometimes feel so bored with the same old, same old that I can’t motivate myself to even do those things that are required. So as I sit in the quiet and listen to God, I also ask that He strengthen my resolve to break bad habits and do better. I pray that he will refresh my zest for the life I have and help me to give it all I have once again. I hope to spend the next 40 years seeking God and taking refuge in Him.

Be Bold, Take a Stand

In Daniel Chapter 1 we see a group of Israelites, God’s chosen people, are taken into captivity by the King of Babylon, and then Ashpenaz, the chief Enuch, is ordered to take the best of the best–the nobles of the Israelites–and begin to groom them for service to the Babylonian King. We can only assume–that for the most part–if you had spoken to any one of these Israelites, they would have admitted to believing in the one true God, Yahweh. They may have also, and probably did, believe in other gods. The Israelites had been flirting with the world and the false gods around them for so long that they were beginning to look less and less like Israelites.

The Israelites in their covenant with God were strictly forbidden from eating certain types of meat–meats which the King of Babylon served freely and abundantly at his table. Daniel did not want to defile himself by doing something that he knew His God had forbidden him from doing. But of this whole group of Israelites in captivity, we only see one boy step up and take a stand for his God, and then of that entire group, only three others follow suit and take a stand with him.

Is it possible that you are in a group of Jesus believers who are starting to look a lot like the world around you? Can you tell the difference between yourself and the Babylon you live in? Sometimes we get so comfortable and used to the way we live, and the believers around us are living in the same lackadaisical, way that we don’t feel we are wrong. If you will listen closely, God is calling you out of your comfort zone into a life that is far more exciting and asking you to take a stand for your generation and those thereafter. Stand up and be different from the Babylon around you–Be like Jesus.