Tag: love

It begins with us!

One of my favorite quotes is by Mother Theresa;

“If you want to change the world, go home and love your family”

It’s comforted me in times when I felt like I wasn’t contributing enough to the world, my community and even in my neighborhood because my husband and I chose to have me home full time with our 4 kids.  It was never my calling, it was never my intention!  I was going to be a missionary in some exotic foreign country serving the needs of orphans and villages all across the globe.  I had a purpose and a plan and it was big, it was wide, vast and incredibly adventurous.  So when I got married and we had an instafamily within months and daycare costs just didn’t make sense next to my income, decisions were made and sacrifices were made that ultimately ruled out my personal plans and kept me home, full time and still am 16 years later.

For years I fought resentment and anger towards the unfulfilled dreams and plans I had to serve the less fortunate across the world.  I felt like my contribution was so small and completely unnoticed.  I knew it made sense for us and I knew that my sacrifices were not in vain, but I just simply could not lay these two positions down side by side on a table, analyze their value and consider them to be equal.  It was a daily struggle and I fought it hard.  Then it happened!   I woke up for my normal quiet time with God, sat down with my cup of coffee in hand and once again poured my soul bare before him screaming to understand what my purpose was and why this felt so empty and unfulfilling.  I often journal my time with God and occasionally I will receive such a strong impression on my spirit that it is truly Him that is speaking to me, pen to paper.  Sometimes the words are flying so fast that my hand can’t keep up with what I’m hearing.  God spoke to me loud and clear that morning and told me that I was on a missions trip and I was serving the lesser than and I was 100% in ministry teaching and equipping people….my people, the 4 little humans he so richly blessed me with.  My heart sank as the realization hit me like a ton of bricks and I was immediately filled with incredible joy and excitement but also the weight of what was being asked of me and the job that I had in front of me.

From that moment on, I never looked at my role or parenting in the same light.  I knew that I was on assignment and I knew that my husband and I both had some serious work on our hands to raise these people to be well rounded, honest, contributing members to society who showed respect, humility, kindness and love to any other person they came in contact with.  This has required exhausting moments of intense conversations, painful punishments, meaningful interactions, purposeful engaged time with our children.   We have made it a priority to have sit down family dinners through our week, family movie or game night once a week, both my husband and I take each of our kids on individual dates and spend one on one time with them.  We invest into our kids, we invest into their hearts, minds, souls and spirits.  We’ve said no to cable TV, and limited video games.  We have resisted the begging and pleadings for smart phones and more technology.  We pour as much healthy, pure, holy, light, lovely, joyful, fun, meaningful and inspirational information into their minds, ears and eyes.  We believe that the programming of the mind begins and ends with what we are watching and listening to and monitor that with vigor so as to keep our children sensitive, caring and compassionate humans.  I believe that is the job of every parent on this planet and I know there are a lot of you out there doing it with every fiber of your being and I’m so grateful for the sacrifices you make too!

But then I pause and take a breath and look up and notice that something is shifting in our society, something is changing and I’m finding that there are less and less of my fellow comrades in arms, fighting the same fight for our next generation and there is more and more distraction, division, disillusionment, deception and despair.  More and more parents are both working full time, grueling hours and they are exhausted…I can’t blame them, I honestly don’t know how you do it!  To manage to juggle both and do it well is quite the challenge and hardship and foundations start to crack, things start to slip, priorities start to shift and all the sudden you find that it’s easier to turn an eye, agree to their requests and shew them away for a moment of rest.  Don’t get me wrong, I have had those moments and many of them where I just wanted to cave and just give in to whatever their demands were in hopes of 10 minutes of solitude…I truly can’t imagine if this wasn’t my full-time job and I had to juggle other things as well, please don’t hear judgment!

 

But we have to have this conversation because Parkland, Florida happened and 17 people died…17 lives taken from this earth too early and far too carelessly and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about why and how and what is happening to us.  Of course I thought of my own kids who are in public school and their safety and wanting to protect them from anything like that happening to them, us and our community.  I thought of the Mother Theresa quote and then thought of my own personal sacrifices to raise up this next generation and then I thought of the slips and cracks and the foundation falling apart in our society and wondered..is this where we start?  Do we just raise up as a society of parents and say, “enough excuses!”  Do we stop blaming every dang other thing on this type of behavior and start analyzing where we fit in to the puzzle and how our lives play a key role in all of this?  Our kids are desensitized, they’ve lost their moral code, decency and value system and it’s because WE as their parents have failed them, it’s not their fault that we’ve been too busy to show them what it looks like to revere and respect life, humanity and the basic core values that have been encoded in our DNA for generations but have somehow been shoved to the recesses of our minds because it’s just easier to not uphold them then to take the time to implement them.   ALL LIFE MATTERS!!  Every human on this planet is valuable, important, purposed and planned and until we can look into the face of each other (and this includes the faces that are hiding behind screens) and recognize each others humanity and have care for one another instead of hate – evil will always win and our world will continue to crumble and fall apart.

So, I end with this thought and it takes Mother Theresa’s quote to another level for us as a society.  She says, “if you want to change the world then go home and love your family” and I say, “if you want to change the world then go home and love your family, AND the barista at Starbucks who accidentally got your drink wrong, or the guy who cut you off on your way to work, and the woman in the checkout line who gave you a glare because you have more then 15 items in the express lane, the frustrated neighbor who yelled at you for not bringing in your trash cans or the random stranger who just blew up at you on the street for no apparent reason.  It begins with us and it looks a lot like average, normal, day to day interactions that have an incredible trickle affect on the rest of humanity.  Once we raise our white flag, lay down our pride and quick to be defensive egos and make intentional decisions in our interactions with our loved ones and those we come in contact with daily is when change, REAL change will happen in society…it begins with us!  It begins with me!

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

The Sting of Slavery

Religion has sure come in and messed a lot of us up!  And, worse off, they’ve done it in the name of God, creating an opinion of Him that is formed from man and our screwed up thoughts and not who He really is and what He really stands for.

I was born and raised into the Jehovah’s Witness organization.  A lot of you many know them as the “door knockers” or the “watchtower and awake” group, I simply knew it as my life and my family.  I knew I was different at a very young age and I knew that I couldn’t do a lot of the things that almost all of the other kids were doing, but it was what I knew so I learned how to deal with the teasing, name calling and bullying throughout my school years.  I couldn’t celebrate any birthdays at school, couldn’t stand up for the pledge of allegiance, couldn’t participate in holiday functions and had very limited association with anyone that wasn’t a JW like myself.  Don’t feel too sorry for me though, I felt at the time that I was surrounded by people who for the most part loved me, I had a doting mom and all of the other people that were JW’s, (which wasn’t a big number so I had a lot of friends).

Once I got baptized into the religion is when things got way more serious for me.  It was just my mom and I at the time, my father had left us when I was young and then my sister went and moved in with him when I was around 11, so the pressure to perform and perform well was incredibly intense. JW’s function like a well oiled machine and seem to do a really great job at organizing, controlling and manipulating its members.  

Once you are baptized, you are under the rigid rules and religious scrutiny  of the elders within the particular church you attend.  They keep a very, VERY strict eye on you and this unspoken “watchman” mentality is felt within the entire organization – it’s like everyone is under some sort of spell that controls even basic common sense.  Nothing is missed, nothing can be hidden and if anything goes wrong, you will be disciplined…ahhh, but there’s the key IF you’re caught, IF you’re discovered and only IF you confess.  It’s a flawed system and here’s why;  I was not doing anything different than any of my friends were doing, but I carried a lot of weight of conviction and guilt on my shoulders.  I wanted to always impress my mom and never let down this Church that had established such a crazy standard over me that I felt like I could never live up to it.  My mentality was, if I confess everything then there won’t be any hidden sins or mistakes.  All of my peers were doing similar things, just not getting caught and therefore, not getting in trouble.   I quickly realized that the more they know about you, the more trouble you are in and by the time I was 19 I had gotten excommunicated from the Church.

Excommunicate – ” to cut off from communion with a church or exclude from sacraments of a church by ecclesiastical sentence”. – dictionary.com 

I lost everything and everyone from my life in a single instant that my name was announced on that pulpit and what felt like a tearing of my very heart from my body, I was left abandoned, rejected, alone and confused.  That’s what religion does!!  Religion stands in the name of God and says, “You couldn’t live up to our demands, you didn’t make the mark, you are flawed, sinful and disappointing to us”. This religion WAS my God, I worshiped everything about it, the rituals, practices, people and guidelines that kept me safe and protected from anything out in the world that could harm me.  What I didn’t realize is,  I was enslaved to a system that I failed and it then turned it’s back on me and I blamed God for it!

I hated God and anything to do with religion after that.  I had spent my entire life trying to live up to a standard and expectation that was set before me constantly.  I figured out how to  “pose” and “fake” my way through almost any situation, how to put on a face or a mask to appease whomever it was that I was with in that moment.  I was a chameleon to my environment and mastered the art of deception but not really knowing exactly what my true identity was.  To be separate from this religion was in a way to begin figuring out who I was behind the mask, to stop living for a checklist of rules I had to abide by and start running the course of my own life!  I had NO idea how to do that and honestly it scared me to death.

  Some experts have estimated the rate of suicides associated with the Jehovah’s Witnesses Society to be five to ten times the rate of the general population. ~ Christian Peper, “Cult Awareness”

I couldn’t describe the loneliness, emptiness and anguish I felt over the course of the next year and it honestly doesn’t surprise me to learn the above statistic about suicides within the religion.  When you are a slave to a system and know nothing or nobody else outside that system and then get removed from it with nowhere to go is incredibly frightening.  You know and understand the expectations within the system, you know how to operate and function within the walls of its doors and how to maintain your “pose”.  Outside the walls is too big, too massive and scary and sadly some people feel so overwhelmed by it that they take their own lives.  I came very close to attempting to take mine but managed to get the help I needed and made some changes in my life that moved me into good places.

I met Jesus for the first time in an apartment bedroom at 3am in the morning after I had been released from the hospital.  I had been out with my friends for the evening, drinking and partying.  I did one too many lines of cocaine, passed out and was rushed to the hospital where they brought my vitals to normal, released me and told me to get help.  The cab ride home was one of the longest I’ve ever experienced, I questioned everything about myself, my life, what I had become…..what mask was I wearing now??  Who was I?  Is this really the person I had become?  I hadn’t prayed to God since the night I got excommunicated and let me just say that any prayers I had prayed while I was a JW were very impersonal and carried a lot of fear in them.

I went into my room, closed the door and started sobbing, I didn’t care and I didn’t even know what or who I was screaming to but I started screaming at God.  I poured my heart out, got real, removed the mask and drew close in to the possibility that maybe God didn’t hate me and was out there listening to me.  I cursed at him, every obscenity you could imagine and questioned my life to Him!  Why was I placed on this planet if it was only to be rejected alone and unloved?  “ I have not rejected you, I love you, I have called you mine and I have plans and a purpose for you!”  It was as if the voice was in the room with me and it sent chills up my spine.  I begged for more, asking Him over and over again to tell me that I was accepted, forgiven and loved and He was so faithful to do that!  He laid there holding me for the rest of the night, comforting me, encouraging me and loving me.  That night was the beginning of my freedom and the journey of having a life of intimacy with my creator and no longer be a slave to a system or a religion.

My dear friends, I cannot wait to share more of my heart with you and all that God has shown me over the years of what a relationship with Him looks like and what it doesn’t look like.  He continues to remind me on a daily basis that I am no longer a slave to a system of rules and regulations and that all He desires from any of us is a relationship with Him that is true and authentic.  He wants your heart sweet friends, not your works!

Much love and always in Him