One YEAR!

I have officially been journaling for ONE YEAR!! I feel like this is some progress in my life since I usually give up my journals within a few short weeks after starting them.  Maybe if my other journals gave me such great interaction and feedback as this one has things would have been different ;oP

Anyway, what an amazing, awesome thing to be able to look back over this year and see in writing everything God has taught me, everything he is still working out in my life, and the hope of things he will continue to unfold along this journey.  It is incredible to see how much my perspective has changed in such a short time. As I remember back to some of the hardest things I have journaled about - struggling to hold on to hope while waiting for our child, struggling to hold on while it felt like our finances were crumbling, learning how to regroup after intense conviction in my heart - those times felt like I'd never move on from them, as if my whole would stop in the midst.  However, in hindsight, they really do feel like "light momentary afflictions" just as the Bible calls them.  Don't get me wrong, the lessons haven't been forgotten, the pain needed be recovered from (some that is still slightly there) but God was faithful in being by my side and healing the pain.

How encouraging that is! Each and every hard time, frustration, confusion, was used to bring me closer to God (Philippians 2:13 ESV). I am confident that I will continue to have hard times, frustrations, confusions as well as happy times and exciting insights that will stir my heart to God - I have a lot of learning to do and God won't give up until it's done. I'm looking forward to what my God has to teach me during this next year and I'm really looking forward to journaling about it!

"For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison..." 2 Corinthians 4:17 ESV

"for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure." Philippians 2:13 ESV

"And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." Philippians 1:6 ESV

Thoughts from earlier this summer.

I don't know about you (my fellow blogging friends), but after I started blogging or even reading blogs, the way I processed life's happenings changed a little. I started coming up with ways to describe what was happening to other people even in the midst of thing I was planning to describe later. Sick, I know.

About a month before our annual vacation (which occurred last week), we started to loose some footing with our finances. During one of the discussions surrounding this issue I was feeling really overwhelmed and a little frightened. As I was trying to process everything all of a sudden this exact thought went through my head, "Financially we are not doing so great. Actually to be more precise, we are drowning." Who does that? Who comes up with these "one-liners" in order to make sense of everything going on? Well, apparently, I do. 

Here's the awesome thing about my thought process, as soon as I thought the word "drowning", the imagry of an article I had read a couple weeks before came washing over me. This article is about what it really looks like when one is drowning. The author is Mario Vittone and he points out that actual drowning looks nothing like what we are so used to seeing on TV. The TV version shows someone splashing and screaming and able to turn attention to themselves. The real version is much scarier, silence and apparent calm. If you were to observe someone in the process of drowning from behind, you might never know that they are actually in grave danger.

The connection I made in my mind and my heart that evening was this, people wouldn't know to look at us that we are struggling everyday to keep our head above water, but we are. My instinct in trouble is to be tight lipped, to smile and act like I don't feel that my world is crumbling around me. When the illustration of drowning was applied to this instinct, I was convicted once again that, as a Christian this is not how I am supposed to behave. I'm supposed to be open about my short-comings and failures so that the glory and honor of any of "my" success is directed to God. When others see me experience hard times*, they will also get to see God work when he provides over and above what we could have asked for.  How will they know the greatness of what God has done if they don't see the depth of where I was? I was reminded of Paul and his openness about who he was before Christ entered his life. He was so open about not earning any of the grace he received. I was encouraged by his letter to Timothy, in it he says:

The only credentials I brought to it were invective and witch hunts and arrogance. But I was treated mercifully because I didn’t know what I was doing—didn’t know Who I was doing it against! Grace mixed with faith and love poured over me and into me. And all because of Jesus. Here’s a word you can take to heart and depend on: Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. I’m proof—Public Sinner Number One—of someone who could never have made it apart from sheer mercy. And now he shows me off—evidence of his endless patience—to those who are right on the edge of trusting him forever. (1 Tim 1:13-16)

Once again I'm striving to be more open about all that God has done for me. It's sort of easier to do in writing, since I don't have to see anyone's face. But I've been trying to push myself to not just smile and say "everything's fine" when people ask. I'm making an effort to be more accurate, to not play out a charade and let others see that God is able to be trusted even in the hard times.



*I recently found two sections of scripture that help in the midst of a hard time as a result of my bad decisions and sinful nature. These are Romans 6 and Lamentations 3. Both are excellent and well worth a read if you have time.

Dear Journal,

It's been such a long time since I've written anything.  There's so much going on inside my head and my heart, I feel like I can't get a grasp on any one thing to make a good journal entry about it. My "friendship" study is not going anywhere and I feel like my Bible reading is pretty aimless right now.  I want my heart to be full of praising God for all the good he has done, for all of his provisions and protection, for the beauty of his creation and so on. Instead, while I do praise him and thank him, my heart is full of questions, weary from waiting, wondering at his plan. I guess I need to start practicing what is taught in the Psalms to get my soul out of the dumps. I need to start "rehearsing everything I know of [him]." (Psalm 42:6) So, here we go, my list of what I personally know of God (and can put into words).

• God created this earth and I am continually enthralled by the beauty of his artistry.
• God is in control over everything and nothing goes unnoticed by him.
• God loves me and in his love, he disciplines me 
• God never pushes me past the limit in any test or temptation I face.
• God chooses better for me than I choose for myself. Even if it doesn't always feel like it at the time.
• God gives good gifts - just what we need, just when we need it
• God listens to my heart, knows what I am feeling, and provides answers and encouragement through conversations with fellow believers, through songs on the radio, through sermons at church and through my quiet time with Him.
• God has spared my very life on multiple occasions. He knows how long I will live.
• God provides people to love me the way I am and gives me love for people, just the way they are.

There is so much more but this is a good list for me to repeat to myself for the day.

Psalm 42:5-9 MSG

Why are you down in the dumps, dear soul?
Why are you crying the blues?
Fix my eyes on God—
soon I’ll be praising again.
He puts a smile on my face.
He’s my God.

When my soul is in the dumps, I rehearse
everything I know of you,
From Jordan depths to Hermon heights,
including Mount Mizar.

Chaos calls to chaos,
to the tune of whitewater rapids.
Your breaking surf, your thundering breakers
crash and crush me.

Then God promises to love me all day,
sing songs all through the night!
My life is God’s prayer.

Sometimes I ask God, my rock-solid God,
“Why did you let me down?
Why am I walking around in tears,
harassed by enemies?”

Being Thrown For A Loop.

About once a month (ahem) I struggle with keeping my emotions in check. I'm fairly certain that this is a very common struggle among women. This month seemed like even more of a struggle for me since there were a couple more compounding circumstances than usual.  On Monday, our less than three year old refrigerator died and needs a costly repair. After a long day of not knowing if we could afford the repair, God totally provided and the repair will happen.  However, the earliest appointment we could get was a week and a half from then, this coming Wednesday.   The next day, I spotted a leak in our ceiling right under where our laundry closet is on the third floor. Lovely. It is not a leak from our washer, it's actually from our dryer vent. So now THAT needs to be fixed too.  Yay - owning a home is fun! Any other day these things would definitely seem minor and I know that I would be able to roll with the seemingly never ending punches. This week, not so much. So, I've been grumpy, downcast, annoyed at little things, and generally feeling defeated. 

This morning is when everything started to catch up to me: circumstances, hormones, etc. etc. and I started to feel like I was coming apart at the seams.  Then I realized that I had let my quiet times with God lapse. I had still been praying, but not as often and not as in depth as I had been before. So, as hard as it was, I opened my Bible and prayed for comfort. Two verses came to mind and so I concentrated on reading those and praying through them.

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28 ESV

I certainly was feeling heavy laden and was in desperate need of rest from the frustrations of this world.  So, I went to Him, I continued to read and pray through verses that had given me comfort before, such as Romans 8:24-28. I was starting to feel better, more controlled. I was just about to finish up with my quiet time and another verse floated through my head with a melody that I had learned a long time ago. The funny thing is I could only remember the first part of the verse and it got me thinking...

Let not your hearts be troubled. 

Believe in God; believe also in me. John 14:1 ESV

Over and over again in my head, I was hearing "Let not your hearts be troubled, let not your hearts be troubled..." And then it dawned on me. This is an ACTIVE command, "LET NOT your hearts be troubled. BELIEVE in God, BELIEVE also in me." I have a responsibility to not let my heart become troubled with everything that is going on! I have always considered this a passive, encouragement from Jesus. But I now think that it is a command to turn off the voices of worry and woes and choose to believe in God, choose to believe in Jesus. Instead of letting my emotions run crazy and my hopes and dreams plummet to the floor to be trampled, I need to pick myself up and not "let these things throw [me]." as the Message version puts it. So, I wiped my tears from my eyes and determined to move on, believe in God and trust His plan for my life.

Thoughts about "Women, Food and God" part 1

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. This post has been rattling around in my head for a good week or so.  Every time the thoughts are at their clearest and flowing freely, I am either in the middle of something or have yet to begin a chore that I desperately need to do.  Then, when the time comes to get it out, the thoughts aren't there or aren't as clear. Frustrating. So, I apologize for any rambling-ness to this entry.


I recently listened to an audiobook that was lent to me by a friend. It's a popular title, "Women, Food and God" by Geneen Roth. I am glad to have listened to this book, because I may not have made it all the way through if I was reading it. I'm also glad for some of the thoughts that were expressed in the book. It was written for anyone who eats or thinks about food obsessively or nearly obsessively. I valued a lot of what Ms. Roth had to say and I think it shed some light on an area in my life that I had not been thinking about correctly. However there are quite a few ideas and views with which I certainly did not agree. First and foremost, I did not agree with how she identified and defined "God." All I will say about that for now is that this book does not refer to the One True God rather a god that was created by the author for her own benefit and the supposed benefit of the reader.


The disagreement I'd like to unfold more is her idea that in order to set things right in our mind we need to find and go back to the part that is inside each of us that is not broken, still pure, and that we are to learn to trust ourselves again by focusing on and identifying this part in our being. There was so much riding on this idea in the book that I'm actually surprised that I still found some helpful ideas, but I did. 


I agree with her that the way I have viewed food and eating is broken and I really appreciated some ideas and guidelines that she suggested to help relearn how to view food correctly.  However, I firmly disagree with the idea that suggests that there is any part of myself that is unbroken or completely pure. You see, I'm human and therefore when I was born I was already imperfect. In this world there is no one that is perfect, no one that is unbroken, not even one. So, I have been irked by this idea since she first brought it up. 


If I am to make any headway in solving this broken area in my life I need to rely on *THE* Unbroken One, The God and Father who created us and loves us even in our brokenness.  I need to continually acknowledge that I do not have the power to fix myself and humbly admit that there is nothing good in me save the work of my Father in my heart.  HE provided the solution to this sinful state that we live in.  I think that buying into this idea that there is some part of me that has been unaffected by the world is going to lead to nothing but frustration and discouragement and will just feed into the cycle.


Since listening to this book I have been praying that God would give me the wisdom I need to make better choices regarding food and my relationship to it. He is faithful just as he says he will be:

If you don't know what you're doing, pray to the Father.

He loves to help. You'll get his help, and won't be

condescended to when you ask for it.

James 1:5 MSG

Praying to God (the real one) and really thinking about the reasons I want to eat at any particular time has been a huge help. It takes practice and there are a few helpful suggestions that Geneen Roth has provided. I plan on writing about this book again (hence the part 1 in the title), but for now I just had to get these thoughts out before I completely lost them.

Book Suggestions Needed.

I have just officially finished reading completely through the Bible at the beginning of this week. It was such a wonderfully growing experience. In the last couple of days I have begun to do some reading on the first topic I mentioned in my previous entry - friendship.  I'm reading the concordance verses (along with the contextual verses) that are listed for "friendship" and I can tell that I'm going to need to look into some more resources and do some more digging if I want this to be a meaningful learning experience. So, does anyone have any suggestions? Any study books that have helped you in this area of your life? 

You use steel to sharpen steel,

and one friend sharpens another.

Proverbs 27:17

Haha, I couldn't resist putting these songs on here.

Faith in What We Don't See

To be honest there was one particular chapter I was excited to read in my personal "journey through the Bible" this year. I know that the whole of scripture is God-breathed and useful, but I was looking forward to Hebrews 11, The Faith Chapter.  I say was because last week I finally got to it and I must say that it was a lot more convicting that I remembered (hahaha).

I've always found this chapter to be so uplifting and encouraging - sort of like the "after" part of a "before & after" show on TV. Having read all the background stories of each of the people mentioned fairly recently, it was pretty great to see that even though they were flawed and they messed up along the way, their faith in God is what is remembered. As I read through the first twelve verses it was like pure encouragement to my wavering resolve to completely trust in God regarding his plan for our family. I even went so far as to pray that God would allow people to look back on my actions and say, "By an act of faith, Olivia waited and waited and waited for God to deliver a child into her family." (That's kind of embarrassing now as I read this, it sounds a pretty obnoxious...).  

I then continued reading  and got to vs 13, "Each one of these people of faith died not yet having in hand what was promised, but still believing." Pow! Smack! Wham! What a wake-up call!  You see, I realized that what they were looking forward to was not worldly happiness nor life dreams fulfilled, but life eternal, life forever with God. I love how this next part is said in The Message: "How did they do it? They saw it way off in the distance, waved their greeting and accepted the fact that they were transients in this world. People who live this way make it plain that they are looking for their true home." Hebrews 11:13b-14. 

Once again I was convicted that my focus has been drawn to what is happening (or not happening) to me in this world rather than looking toward things eternal. I needed some time to confess this before God and really make an effort, with God's help, to accept the fact that I am only a transient in this world. I desire that God will bless us with a child in this life, but I am not to place my hope in that desire.  My hope is in God and in eternal life with him made possible through Jesus' death and resurrection. My eyes should not be downcast and disappointed, but looking up, peering toward my true home. 

I feel like this is something that will be a constant struggle for me.  Looking back over the short life of this journal I confirm that it has been on my heart often. I continue in my prayer that God will capture my full attention and that it will be his forever.

Why didn't I think of this before?

I really wanted to title this entry "All Paths Lead to God - With a Twist." But I was scared to actually put it in big letters at the top. I don't really believe that all paths lead to God. Actually, I firmly believe that there is only one way to God and that is through Jesus Christ.  

For the past week or so I've been thinking about a conversation I had with a friend (after reading this she'll know who she is, and will probably be sick of me saying the same thing again, but it really affected me...in a good way). My friend and I have had completely different circumstances and life stories. I'm not going to share any of her life story details, but I will share some about mine.  As I've mentioned along the way here, I am a waiting adoptive mother. What that means is my husband and I have been approved as an adoptive family and we are waiting to be selected by a birth-family to parent their child.  Last week we passed our one year anniversary of being approved. In the beginning we told a lot of people about each new "situation" that came up for us to be considered. Each time we then had to tell a lot of people that we were not chosen.  I think we did this about 4 or 5 times before we came to realize that it was just too painful to continue telling everyone every time. So, we've been keeping each new situation quiet and will tell everyone when we are selected.

So, here's the thing, this journey has been hard. We've sort of made it seem like we're just waiting around and that there's "no news," as we like to say. But that's not the case.  There have been multiple children that have found their forever home and it was not ours.  Being "not chosen" feels like being rejected - even though in reality that's not what is happening. When this occurred time after time after time I started to question God's goodness, I questioned whether he really knows what he's doing, I questioned whether he had my best at heart.  I would read the Psalms and when it talked about "enemies taunting" I understood it to be the thoughts in my head saying, "Where is this God of yours?" I would wonder what purpose God had for this experience in my life. 

It is at this point that our two stories converge. You see my friend was asking the same questions and she had not experienced the same journey that I had, not at all.  And yet, here we were with an almost word-for-word identical struggle.  My heart ached for her when she was talking because I knew the pain that comes with those questions. And all of a sudden I realized a shocking (to me) truth: what I've learned on my completely different journey would be helpful to her. NOT because I'm so clever, but because what I learned, what I have clung to and leaned on and depend on is God's truth in his Word, the Bible. God has spoken to my heart through various passages that I was able to share with my friend.  

In kind of a mash of thoughts it became clear to me that this is how we are supposed to minister to each other. I'm not supposed to just sit and wait until someone with my exact life experience happens to appear in my life and ask me for help. Rather, I'm called to speak and minister to those in my life because God's truth applies to every situation, every journey, every struggle and God can use any path to bring us to himself. 

Let’s see how inventive we can be in encouraging love and helping out, not avoiding worshiping together as some do but spurring each other on, especially as we see the big Day approaching. 

Hebrews 10:24-25

Connection Failed. Try Again?

These past seven days felt really long. In the beginning things were good and normal. By the end of the week I began feeling parched and a little zombie-ish.  I've been thinking about what/when my next entry would be...thinking about it and only vaguely praying about it.  See, it started one day when there was something more pressing than reading my Bible and praying. Then the next day, something else came up that was also "more important." By day three, the thought was more like, "oh yeah, and I should read my Bible if I have time." That's when my connection started to fail. My prayers became more shallow and less of a conversation. The focus shifted from what God is doing to what I thought he should be doing.

I haven't had a teachable heart these past few days. This morning I made the choice to once again sit and read and pray and open up my heart to my Savior. At this point it was a choice, an action that had come so easily just a week before was now shoved to the back burner, and my heart felt the displacement.  My mind struggled again with sinful thought patterns that have already been conquered.  I guess that's when I realized that I had disconnected myself from The Vine.  This morning's act of humility and obedience felt like cool water to my parched soul.

It is important to remind myself that God did not disconnect from me.  I know this because He has promised it, "I'll never let you down, never walk off and leave you." (Hebrews 13:5). In fact, it was His urging that I was not heeding when I decided to not spend time with him. I'm so thankful that I have a God that pursues a relationship with me. He is jealous for my attention and will not let me go. 

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. 

Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
(James 4:8 ESV)

The Balancing Act of Waiting

This Monday I was chatting with a dear friend who had been to a women's conference over the weekend. She told me about a great challenge she heard regarding waiting. I've been mulling it over and praying through it ever since then and I think it is definitely worth repeating.  

The speaker said that there is a difference between waiting with expectancy and waiting expectantly.  When you are waiting expectantly, you are full of expectations that you want God to fulfill. In other words, you will be trying to tell God what to do the whole time you are waiting. When you are waiting with expectancy you are in full trust of God's plan, and are waiting to see how his plan will unfold.

In Phillipians 4 vs. 6 and 7 we're told to present our requests to God with the promise that "the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard [our] hearts and [our] minds in Christ Jesus" (ESV). So, here's the balancing part of it.  How do I make sure that I am being honest with God, presenting my requests to him, but not making demands of him? It is a line that I am finding very hard to walk. I have a tendency to pester my requests to God. 

I am sure that I have been waiting expectantly for quite some time. It's tiring. Praise God that he shows me over and over again that I do not know best. It seems like this is a message that I've been hearing many times, each in a different way.  This challenge has been a helpful reminder that I need to constantly check my prayers to make sure I'm presenting my requests to God and not giving him a list of expectations.

Day-by-Day Obligations

Yesterday was a busy day. Actually, it's been a busy couple days. Nothing of earth-shattering importance happened but my attention was completely focused on those small things. All day yesterday I was thinking, in the back of my mind, that I needed to post an entry into my journal. I even sat down to do my devotions, but not even halfway through the chapter my attention was grabbed away from the reading. I had my plans of what needed to be done and I was sticking to it. I felt like I redeemed it a little by praying along each step of the way that God would bless my efforts and help me...save lots of money. OK Fine! I admit it, I was busy grocery shopping yesterday. Not just any grocery shopping though, coupon shopping. It's tiring and a little overwhelming at this point. So, you see it was really not earth-shattering. 

At the end of the day I had finally decided what I was going to journal about. It was an awesome lesson that I've been thinking about since Monday. However, that will have to wait until another day.  This morning the Lord finally grabbed my attention and I have to confess again that I was convicted about how I spent my day yesterday. This is what I read this morning:

But make sure that you don't get so absorbed and exhausted in taking care of your day-by-day obligations that you lose track of time and doze off, oblivious to God...God is putting the finishing touches on the salvation work he began when we first believed. We can't afford to waste a minute, must not squander these precious daylight hours in frivolity and indulgence, in sleeping around and dissipation, in bickering and grabbing everything in sight. Get out of bed and get dressed! Don't loiter and linger, waiting until the very last minute.  Dress yourselves in Christ, and be up and about. Romans 13:11-14

That paragraph pretty much described my entire day yesterday. I was absorbed with finding the best deals, using the best coupons to save the most money I possibly could. I don't think I even looked at someone full in the face until one of my coupons was rejected and then I had to try and plead my case (to no avail arg!). My eyes were not open at all to what was going on around me, I was not engaged in God's work AT ALL.  Sure, I prayed, but it was self-centered and very immature.

In the middle of my shopping day, I received the "sermon digest" email from our pastor.  I really enjoy getting these emails because it is a great reminder mid-week of what I was challenged with on Sunday.  Before entering one of the stores I took some time to read it. However, I didn't retain it at that point. The Lord brought it to mind this morning though, especially after reading the last part of those verses above, "Dress yourselves in Christ, and be up and about." My mind went back to a quote we heard on Sunday. Brace yourself, it's challenging. 

Real faith is “a living, busy, active, mighty thing.  It is impossible for it not to be doing good works incessantly. Whoever does not do such works is an unbeliever.  Thus, it is impossible to separate works from faith, quite as impossible as to separate heat and light from fire.” (Martin Luther, preface to Paul's letter to the Romans in his 1522 edition of the German Bible)

Ugh. [Now rest assured, the sermon didn't end there. If you want to listen to the whole thing you can go here.  But this is my journal, so I'm just going to focus on the part that convicted me :o)] My prayer for today is that this challenge will continue to resonate in my heart. My focus will be on God and what he is doing in my life and the lives around me. I still have a lot of little things to do today but I will purpose to not be absorbed in them, to look at those I come in contact with, to search for opportunities to do good works, so that they may point toward my father in heaven (Matthew 5:16).

When Everything Seems Impossible

Things happen in life that we really can't control. Many people assume that these things are signs that "x" is or is not supposed to happen. Sometimes it seems like just when you've climbed to the top of the mountain and are about to claim "King of the Mountain," a rock shifts and you go crashing down again. Timing can be an issue that is just unconquerable by human efforts. How often I have thought, "Ok, I've got my life all together, now would be a perfect time for _______." These days, that blank is usually filled with [a baby]. However, it has been filled with various other nouns in the past - a boyfriend, a husband, a car, an apartment, a house and on and on the list goes.
 
The funny thing is that God doesn't usually listen to me when I tell him I'm ready.  He seems to have timing down to a science - He's got it wrapped around his little finger, if you will. I've tried and tried to figure it out but have only come to one conclusion. I will never understand. That doesn't mean that I'm sitting back just waiting for life to happen in front of me. It also doesn't mean that I am supposed try to make things happen on my own.  There is a fine line between taking steps in life that I believe God is asking me to take and being still, waiting for God to move. Sometimes I don't get the steps right or I wait too long or not long enough, but that doesn't mean that I've ruined everything. God is Sovereign and his will prevails.
 
Right now my life feels like it is anything but "all together." Does that stop me from praying about our adoption and hoping in God's amazing power? Nope, not at all. In fact, I'm encouraged even more to "Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly (1 Corinthians 13:13)."  I believe that God knows what is best for me and that he will move mountains that stand in my way or enable me to climb them with His strength.

"He knows us far better than we know ourselves...and keeps us present before God. That's why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good. God knew what he was doing from the very beginning." 

Romans 8:27-29

"You can be sure that God will take care of everything you need, 

his generosity exceeding even yours in the glory that pours from Jesus." 

 Philippians 4:19

The Best Lesson My Sister Taught Me

Yesterday was a special day for my family. It was my sister Mandy's birthday. I was praying all day about what my entry was going to be today. This morning I decided to honor my sister with a story that she may not know. A little bit of warning - this might turn into a long post, but it is well worth it.

My sister and I have had quite the relationship development. Being two years apart made for some interesting times growing up. For a while I was the younger annoying sister who just wanted to be as smart and cool as her older sister. Then, as we entered high school and began spending extended periods of time with just each other (driving to school 35 minutes each way) we started to bond as friends and not just sisters.  We still fought like sisters sometimes, but not as much as before.  Then came college.  It was weird being friends, but not seeing each other all the time.  I got to hear all about the fun pranks and games that happened in the dorm hallways. I remember being especially intrigued because Mandy had always been the rule follower.  She also talked a lot about the Christian Fellowship group that she was going to and the amazing people she was friends with. Mandy's college time was great for me because I got to go and visit. I'd go to some classes and do the "college thing" with my older sister. I loved it.

It was on one of these visits that I believe my relationship with God changed forever. As I mentioned before, I grew up in a Christian home, went to Christian schools 3rd through 12th grade, went to youth group, etc., etc. When I was 10 years old I prayed to ask Christ to be my Savior and was baptized soon after that.  However, I really didn't understand the relationship part of knowing God. I knew about the learning about God and the don't break these rules aspects. However, it wasn't until I visited Mandy at college and went to one of the Christian Fellowship group meetings that I saw what it meant to have a relationship with God.  Here's what impacted me: 35-40 students, close to my age, getting together to worship God and be challenged to grow in their faith at a State University. They didn't do it because their parents were going or because it was required at school (as was my experience in high school) and it was not because it was the "cool" thing to do. Rather, it was because they (Mandy included) wanted to have a better relationship with God. That's when things started to make sense to me.  That's when what I was learning about God started to impact my heart and change my actions. God stopped being just a rule giver, but I then understood the reason they were necessary. I didn't have a magical, mystical conversion but I will remember the night I received the understanding of what it meant to have a personal relationship with God for the rest of my life.

My big sister taught me by example that God is personal and that He wants a relationship with us.  On Monday I read a passage in Romans that illustrates this beautifully.  [Side Note: I feel like I should mention this again before I put the passage - I've been reading the Message bible for my own personal devotions. I know that it's not really a good idea to base all of your Bible study on this version since it is a paraphrase but it has made a huge impact on my devotional time and so it will most likely be the version quoted in my journal.]  I'm just going to write the whole passage since I think it is so beautiful. Romans 9: 25-28:

"Hosea put it well. 'I'll call nobodies and make them somebodies, I'll call the unloved and make them beloved.  In the place where they yelled out, "You're nobody!" they're calling you "God's living children."

Isaiah maintained this same emphasis:  If each grain of sand on the seashore were numbered and the sum labeled "chosen of God," They'd be numbers still, not names, salvation comes by personal selection. God doesn't count us, he calls us by name. Arithmetic is not his focus."

Even now, it makes my heart swell to know that God loves ME and has called ME by name and wants me to know him for who he is as well.  I praise HIM for bringing this understanding to my heart 11 years ago and for allowing my sister Mandy to have a part in it.  Our relationship is just as strong as ever and I believe that it is because we are both "God's living children" and are growing in Him together. Thank you Lord for my sister Mandy!