Tag: God

Life is a river

“For he will be like a tree planted by the water, That extends its roots by a stream And will not fear when the heat comes; But its leaves will be green, And it will not be anxious in a year of drought Nor cease to yield fruit.” Jeremiah 17:8

 

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Living in Boise has a it’s perks let me tell you and one of the many in the heat of the summer time is the river!  The Boise river offers it’s cool refreshing waters to the many willing to jump on a tube, float, blow up mattress (yes I’ve seen it), flamingo (seen that one too), or really anything that can manage to stay on top of the water.

My family and I decided last Sunday to do just that very thing and grabbed our tubes, towels and some waters and we were on the river floating by 5pm.  As you enter the water you see in front of you the calmness of the river, the beauty around you and you kind of arrange your body in a relaxed, comfortable manner as you take it all in.  It’s peaceful, mesmerizing, relaxed, blissful and refreshing.  I laid there with my legs kicked up and watched other floaters pass us, kept my eye on my kiddos in their own tubes and appreciated the beauty around me.  I had been down the river before though, this wasn’t my first time and I knew something that my husband, Michael didn’t know.  There are rapids on this river and after the winter we had and how fast the river was going in the calm section, I was anticipating what was coming.

It started with a faint rushing sound in the background and I pulled my legs up and positioned myself differently knowing that the sound was the approaching rapids in front of us and uncertain as to how strong it was going to be, gripped the handles and told the kids to hold on.  There was a moment of fear as you are trusting the boat and the river to send you down the rapids the right way, facing forward and not compromise us to where we flipped over entirely and all went in different directions.  Michael had the oars and worked effortlessly in front of the boat to navigate us just in the right section of the fall so we would travel over it comfortably and easily without water coming into the boat, side skirting the rocks and boulders and not losing anyone overboard.   Despite his valiant efforts, we still managed to get drenched and a bunch of water dumped into our small little raft, but we didn’t flip over or lose anyone and I was grateful for that.  We all laughed and loosened our grip as we looked back at our milestone and watched it fade behind us and the calmness once again settled upon us and the once raging, rushing river became an oasis of stillness and relaxation.

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But not for long….the sound crept up again and we all knew what it meant and straightened our bodies, braced our hands, steadied ourselves and expectantly waited for the rapids that were swiftly approaching.  The thing about it is you aren’t exactly sure where the rapids or the falls are in the river because you are level for the most part and so you almost aren’t sure how to navigate until you are nearly on top of it and even at that point you can really just hold on to the boat and hope the boat takes you to where it needs to.

Eventually we made our way through the second one and the third one, smarter and wiser with each one we passed as we learned something that we needed to prepare ourselves for the next time we hit one.

The total time it took us was about 1 1/2 hours and then we reached the end of our destination, soaked, happy and a little proud of the small accomplishment of managing and taming the Boise river!

That night as I was drifting to sleep I distinctly heard the holy spirit whisper to me, “life is a river my love”.   I hadn’t even been thinking of the river that day, I was actually thinking about if I had locked the back door or not and was about to jump out of bed to check.  “How do you mean?”  I asked, knowing what I heard but not sure where he was going.

“You see, a river has many twists, turns and uncertainties within it.  There are many amazingly beautiful things that flank the sides of rivers and you can always see something new, different and exciting.   The calm parts of the river are the peaceful quiet parts of life.  These are the seasons of life that are more simple and you can sit back and look around, enjoy the beauty on the journey down the river and pay attention to all the things happening around you.  You lesson your grip on the boat and find yourself trusting the river more and yourself within it.  The rapids of the river represent the tribulations, trials and struggles of life.  Life will sometimes have a way of surprising you with these trials and you can find yourself on top of them uncertain of how to navigate and which way to go.  You become more aware of the boat and what direction it’s heading, how it’s navigating the rapids and you tighten your grip on the security of the raft clinching it in fear as you realize you don’t have a lot of control.  The scenery around you becomes faded and your attention is completely focused on the adversary of the rapids.

With each set of rapids in life you may assess the damage and possibly might even endured some small rips and water logged parts but you’ve learned and grown wiser through it.  With the next approaching trial you reminiscence what you learned from the previous one and you position yourself differently, maybe you sit in a different part of the boat, you rely more heavily on the boat and appreciate the need of it and you are prepared.

Unfortunately love, without the rapids of life you would never grow, you would stay stagnant and non-reliant  on the boat and may even leave the safety of the boat to try and navigate through life without it’s protection.”  ‘Papa – what does the boat represent? thoroughly engaged in this amazing gift and river analogy he was blessing me with.  “The boat represents me….I AM your protection and safety, I will navigate you through the rivers of life if you trust me, cling to me and stay focused on my protection.  You see, every time you come to a calm season in life – you loosen your grip on me a bit and become a little more trusting of the river and not of me.  You can get distracted and caught off guard if you aren’t careful to pay attention.  Remember that life is about navigating through all seasons with ME, not alone and not without your life raft.   I desire for you to enjoy the ride and I call you to live an abundant life with various seasons that will challenge you and comfort you, but the end goal is to reach the end of the river looking back with a smile on your face and maybe a little water logged but a strong sense of confidence and a feeling of, “what a ride!”

I felt like I needed to share this with anyone who needed to hear it today, what a fun and beautiful example of God, His heart and His protection for us.  How we navigate through the river of life is entirely up to us – it can be painful and hard and we can resist those rapids with all of our might, or we can embrace them, cling to the father’s protection and grab those nuggets of wisdom and growth we need for the next season of life.

Blessings to all of you and Papa loves each of you more than you can ever imagine!!

Life Interrupted

“I don’t think the way you think.  The way you work isn’t the way I work.  God’s decree.  For as the sky soars high above the earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think.  Just as rain and snow descend from the skies and don’t go back until they’ve watered the earth, Doing their work of making things grow and blossom, producing seed for farmers and food for the hungry, so will the words that come out of my mouth not come back empty-handed.  They’ll do the work I set them to do, they’ll complete the assignment I gave them”  Isaiah 55:8-11 (MSG)

Since I started school back up in March, I’ve had to become incredibly strict with my schedule and routine.  Trying to fit everything I need and want to do with school in the mix was going to be challenging, but my type A personality and major organizational skills would make sure it would definitely happen.  Here is what my week looks like and has looked like for several months now

Monday – cleaning day!  Yes – I’m a crazy person and clean my entire, almost 3,000 square foot home in one day!  How long you say???  Oh just about 6ish hours and the family does help out, but I’d much rather have the rest of the week to take care of other stuff then spread out my cleaning through out.  I make sure though that I make time for a workout and cooking dinner in this day…oh yes – it fits!

Tuesday – Bible study day!  I decided about when I started school that I didn’t have enough chaos going on in my life so I thought I’d open up my house to a bunch of awesome women with amazing little peanuts who would destroy my newly cleaned home in 2.5 hours!  (Did I mention that re-cleaning happens Tuesday afternoon?)

Wednesday – Only day off!  But not really, because day off for me means I can do all those little things that I didn’t get to in the rest of the week.

Thursday-Saturday – SCHOOL from 9am-8pm (I’m a crazy person)

Sunday – Church in the morning and menu planning/ grocery shopping in the afternoon and yes I am that completely nutso woman in Costco you see on Sunday afternoons when you’re casually there with your family after Church to have a Polish dog and I look like a half crazed zombie that has a coffee in one hand and 5 samples in the other!

So you see every minute of my life right now is scheduled and timed perfectly to fit in every task and job I need to take care of.  I don’t really have time for interruptions and yet isn’t it so God to purposely orchestrate an interruption in our life to remind us of what’s really important!

Today is my Monday…my crazy cleaning day and out of my better judgment I made the decision to see a client this morning at 10:30 and I figured I would get to cleaning after my appointment with her.  I spent the good portion of the morning getting ready for her arrival, (I’m an Aesthetician and will work on people out of my home).  10 minutes prior to her arrival she cancelled…to say I was irate would be an understatement and I can’t say I’m proud of how I handled myself but there went 2 hours of my precious time that I would’ve been and should-be cleaning!  Michael encourages me to move on and just get going on my house responsibilities so I sit down to re-group and I very clearly hear the Lord say to me, “Offer a free facial to your neighbor, Barbara” (I changed the name for anonymity) Now – I was not feeling very excited about this suggestion because I was a little peeved at my neighbor for something and had honestly been harboring some not so great feelings.  “NO” I plainly told God…number 1. I am not happy with her right now, number 2. I am not doing anything for free and number 3. I should be cleaning!  “Invite her to come over for a free facial” God stated again.  Now listen, I have gone around the “I’m not listening to what you say” mountain with God several times and I know where it leads and so I obeyed.  I texted her thinking she’d say no and I could get off the hook and get on with my day but she instantly texted back that she could use it and has had some tragedy in her family and is feeling worn down.  I told her to head over!

When she walked in the door I immediately swept her off into my room, told her to get comfortable and I would be in to give the treatment.  I honestly thought that she needed some relaxation and so my plan was to simply give her a calming, quiet, no talking facial/massage and then whisk her away so I could finally clean my dang house!  I really didn’t feel it was my place to pry into what was going on in her personal life.  I walk back into the room and she looks at me and says, “I think we just lost power”.  And in fact, our entire neighborhood lost power which meant I couldn’t do the treatment…ok God, I’m at a loss now – what in the world are you doing???

She tells me it’s ok and she slips out of the bed and heads to the front door in which I proceed to tell her let’s do it later when power comes back on and I’m so sorry.  I hesitated but I looked at her and just said that I was sorry things weren’t well and is everything ok?  She looked up at me, her eyes completely filled up with tears and she said, no, no they’re not.  She then started sobbing and sharing that they had just gone through not 1 but 2 deaths in their family within the last month and yesterday was one of them and they came home last night from watching him pass.  At this point I’m crying and hugging her and apologizing and in that very moment I realize it….I realize why my appointment was cancelled and why Barbara was laid on my heart and why I was asked to give her a free facial and why we couldn’t do the facial…it was for this moment!  It was so I could cry with her, hug her, love on her and listen to her.  We cried together for about 5 minutes, she shared details and though I didn’t need to hear them, I think she needed to process….I listened.  We grabbed tissues and I asked her if I could pray for her.  She jumped on the opportunity, dropped her phone and grabbed my hands and then pulled me in, wrapped her arms around my body, buried her head into my chest and started sobbing.  This…this is life interrupted!  This is what it looks like when God has another agenda that is far greater, far better and far more beautiful than my mundane checklist of my day.  I prayed, I prayed hard and God used me, me of all people to pray over this beautiful person that needed God and me in that moment of her life.  I learned an important lesson today,  I need to always be available for interruptions in my day and always be ready for God to ask me to do something even if it doesn’t fit into my plans and my agenda.  Thank God I listened and I obeyed, I was richly blessed and rewarded and honored to be a part of something so much greater than myself.

Heavenly Father, thank you for today, thank you for the opportunity to be available to the hurt, the grieving and that you used a humble servant like myself to join you in your plan and agenda today.  I ask that you would always make me available and open to whatever is your will and your plans are that impact the eternal and serve a much greater purpose than my own.  In your precious sons name, Jesus..Amen!

Love to all of you,

April

To move or not to move, (realities of moving)

To move or not to move, (realities of moving)

You know how Facebook pops up those “memories” that you can decide to share or not share publicly every once in a while.  I’m always shocked when it says, “Where were you 3 years ago, 8 years ago, 2 years ago..etc.  How is it that your experience and reality can seem thousands of miles a part in how they “feel” to you???  3 years ago today I was living in Kirkland, Washington and we were packing our bags for Austin, Texas.  Today, I sit in my Boise, Idaho home and 3 years ago seems like 20 years ago to me!!  Seriously, I lived a lifetime in 3 years and there are lessons I’m continuing to learn throughout this adventure we’ve been on.

I’ve had to come to grips with a very real lesson that I wished I would’ve learned so many years ago and that is, “home” is NOT  a place…it’s just not!  Oh we sit on our sides of the fences and stare at our neighbors with longing eyes and wishful thinking just knowing that “if we only” had that or “that place looks way better” or “if I lived in a sunnier climate, cheaper economy, lower cost of living, better school district”… blah, blah, blah!!  I mean I did this and I did it again in Texas.  Here’s how mine looked, tell me if you relate to this at all.

For 14 years I lived in one of the wettest, dreariest places in our country, Seattle Wa.  It has the highest rate of suicide in our country and MS which they are now linking to lack of Vitamin D, they see an average of 68 days of sun a year..a YEAR y’all!!!  Now listen, I have a deficiency!  I was raised in southern California so my perspective to weather was jaded upon the sheer fact alone that, well, I was ALWAYS in perfect weather.  I’ll never forget my first trip to Seattle from San Diego and I thought I was walking onto a movie of the “Walking Dead” (pre-series), but seriously, everyone was wearing black or grey and they all looked pale, ghostly and like death was just hanging over them.  Here comes overly cheery, bouncy, slightly tanned with a chipper disposition and probably totally obnoxious to those Seattleites self and was slapped in the face with sadness.  Despite seeing this and knowing this, I still made the decision to move, away from family, away from sunshine…..for a guy!  Girls, take note, please don’t ever make life decisions for a guy.  I love my husband and I love my family – we are committed to one another, but our lives have been hard..very hard and I think part of the reason was my initial decision to move and leave my family.

Raising 4 kids without family around on one income in a wet, dreary climate really took its toll on this bubbly girl and I very quickly started hating it…I mean debilitating depression and anger over where I lived and desperately wanting to be back near family and sunshine.  I just had to get outta there and I knew if we could that life would be better, I would be happier, my marriage would be better and our quality of life would greatly improve!  This mentality stayed with me all the way until the moment in our lives when we actually had the opportunity to move out-of-state back in 2013.  My dream finally became my reality and though California wasn’t an option for us, I didn’t care!  I had to get out of Seattle and our next best option was Austin, Texas.  Finally, I thought…finally I’ll be happy, settled, content, joyful again and everything will be so much better.  Oh man…even writing that sentence has me laughing to myself and I just want to go slap that girl silly!

About 3 months living in Texas, I was very quickly reminded of everything I left behind.  In those 14 years living in Seattle I created a family, a community and I had my “people who knew me intimately in a way that even my blood family didn’t and it hurt…it hurt bad!  Not only that but all the sudden you realize the beautiful things that you took for granted on a daily basis, mountains, seasons, lakes, beaches, variety of trees…BEAUTY!!!  Seattle has been likened to a beautiful model whom is always sick and I couldn’t agree more, but my gosh when she’s not sick….when she’s not sick she’s the most majestic creation on this side of eternity and it took me moving to Texas to realize it.  I mourned, cried and became depressed and discontent in Texas.  Life was hard, we were starting over with everything, work, community, home, money – everything from ground up and it was very emotionally and  mentally challenging.  I just wanted to get back to Seattle – I mean I figured it out and I turned from my blind “grass is always greener” ways and just had to get back home to where I belonged.  I’d finally be happy again if I could jut get back to Seattle, (insert eye roll).

My hubby refused to move us back to Seattle due to economic changes, traffic and of course, WEATHER, which he so kindly reminded me of on a daily basis while we were in Texas, “don’t you remember how depressed you were??, you wanted out of there so badly”!  Yea, yea – that was then this was now, things have changed, I know more now – I’ve grown I see more clearly now!  We compromised on Boise, Idaho, great economy, not too big of a town, 4 seasons, low-cost of living, great schools, mountains, lakes, rivers, etc. And here we are…almost a year here and life is perfect, nothing traumatic has happened, we became instant millionaires, my children have excelled in their perfect schools, we’ve settled into a rich community with at least 20 friends that are now like family and I’m finally happy and content in life!  NOT……

Texas may have been hard but quickly after moving to Boise I realized how blessed we were by the community and friendship we had made in just a short 2 year period.  God provided such a rich community to us that the pain of leaving those people almost felt equally as hard as the family we left in Seattle.  All the sudden the realities of Texas became clear and I then mourned and continue to mourn the loss of that place and those friendships.

Starting over is NEVER easy no matter what and almost a year here and we are still struggling in all areas of life.  Hubby still is trying to get business going and we’ve been financially struggling since we moved, still trying to settle into the right community and friendships for our whole family and don’t feel truly connected yet.  Kids have had their struggles in school and we experienced probably the worst winter on record here in Boise, Idaho.  To say that life got “better” since we moved from Texas or even originally from Seattle, would be a statement that wouldn’t work and though I can’t speak for other families that move, I do feel that I’ve learned some hard and important lessons;

1.) Moving is ALWAYS hard, no matter what, where or how.  You are starting over in every area of your life and that is hard, adjusting and painful.  It will take a toll on your family, marriage and finances

2.) If you are constantly looking through lenses that life will be easier, better, more enjoyable in another “place” then the problem is with you not where you live.  My discontented feelings in life has been 10% due to location and 90% due to my attitude and how I looked, (look) at life.  I took for granted all the beautiful things I had in my life in each of the locations I lived in, I looked back at what I had and then longed for that instead of being present in the journey and blessings that were right in front of me

3.) There is no perfect place!  Oh sure you can google, “Best places to live” and there are all sorts of articles on your ideal location but in my opinion every place has it’s good and bad and you have to settle to some degree on something.

4.) People are more important than a place and I learned this one too late after leaving Texas.  I really don’t like Texas and I really didn’t like the town I lived in, but I could have made it work and probably would’ve been happy and content there because of the relationships I had and the community that surrounded me.  At the end of the day you can have a beautiful, fun, adventurous city/town or whatever but if you have no one to share it with and enjoy it with then what’s the point.

5.) My longing goes deeper and I will never be fully happy and content until I am finally in my eternal home with my papa!  It’s hard not to accept that earth is our home and some of you may disagree with me, some of you are fighting for that perfect home here and maybe have even found something really close to it….but there is a longing in all of us, a groaning that we cannot make go away no matter how hard we try, no matter how many times I move it sits with me always.  Accepting this reality has made it possible for me to finally be content in any circumstance.

Boise is ok, it has it’s faults and there’s some things that are a little shocking to me to be honest but I am choosing to stay, choosing to make this place my temporary home and look for the best in it.  I’m trying really hard to not look back and miss what I left behind but strain to look forward and be hopeful for the future as I press on.  I am so grateful for the lessons I’ve learned and how I’ve grown in character from my moving adventures, I’ve sure made some incredible relationships and met some amazing people and for that I am eternally grateful!  Remember, it’s 10% circumstances and 90% attitude so make a decision today to be happy, grateful and live life to the fullest in this moment!

The “Why”

Hey friends!  I’m so honored and excited that you are here and are wanting to walk this journey with me as I stumble through this God driven desire to write for Him and encourage others through my writing.

Years ago God placed it on my heart to journal our time together, to slow down and be still enough to actually hear his voice and then write down his words in my journal.  As the years have passed, it has been so incredible to look back on those journal entries and see how faithful and true to His word He has been in my life.  They have served as a well source of living water for me in dry and parched seasons.  As a follower of Christ I have had a strong burden on my heart about the lack of intimacy we experience as believers with God and questioned how I can possibly share the visual of what that looks like for me.  Back in the fall God really started pressing on me to go beyond my journal writing and start really writing….like writing stories, events, experiences and daily struggles.  I’ve ignored Him for a while and recently he’s been actually waking me up at night giving me scriptures, thoughts and words that I believe He wants me to share and encourage with.  I can’t ignore Him anymore, I’ve got to be faithful just as He’s been faithful.

So, what’s this blog all about?  What’s the whole thing with “Unfiltered & Free”???  Well, let me ask you first, what does that mean to you?  When you think of “Unfiltered” what does that stir up in your heart?  For me, it’s packed full of so many things and I hope to touch on all of them as I really believe it’s a problem we face today in our culture.  I believe God is calling us to live as the person He created us to be…..fully exposed, fully vulnerable and completely reliant on Christ as our true identity, it is in Him that we discover who we are and yet, I can be the biggest poser and totally portray myself as something I’m not! Sometimes I find myself putting so many different masks, or “filters”, on myself through the day that by nightfall I feel like I’m questioning my authenticity in so many areas of life.  Besides the emotional and mental faker I can be through the day, I also feel that in our beauty crazed culture there is a whole level of “fake” and “filtered” that needs to be addressed here.  Now let me just get really honest with all of you….this IS one of my biggest struggles!  I work in this industry and my attention and focus is all about skin care, health, physical beauty and I’ve really had to weed through the garbage and lies out there about who I am and who I am not!  I don’t have it down, it’s a daily struggle and it’s something I have to multiple times a day pray about.  Being “Unfiltered” means to me, let’s get real, let’s get raw, let’s get vulnerable and exposed and for me…that is so refreshing to think about, (ok and slightly scary).

The “Free” aspect is just as simple as it sounds and yet why do I struggle to live it out every day???  We are FREE in Christ, we are no longer slaves to (fill in the blank).  That blank can be anything and I believe we’ve allowed ourselves to be enslaved and in bondage to many things.  For me, just to name a few; guilt, vanity, legalism and control are just a touch of the things I deal with.  But…here’s the great news, not only has God told us that we are no longer slaves but free in Christ,(Gal. 5:1), He has also told us that we have the mind of Christ,(1 Cor. 2:16), power of Christ (Phill 4:13) and the ability to take captive ANY stronghold and thought that is set up against us (2 Cor.10:3-6).  I don’t know about you guys but that gets me excited!

Heavenly Father, thank you for the person behind this screen, thank you for their desire to know you more, to create more intimacy with you and to live a free and unfiltered life.  I ask that you would use the words on my blog to encourage, support and bless everyone that reads them…It’s in your name I do all things ~ Amen

Much love to you my friends!

April