Amazed

Amazed "to affect with great wonder, astonish."

God never ceases to amaze me. He gives me awesome things to look at because He knows how much I love beauty!  This amazing sunset last night before a good rainstorm was amazingly gorgeous.  Fall leaves and the process of all that....amazing.  Birth and the process involved in all that...amazing.  The way we bend to His will when we make ourselves available...amazing. The way He gives us exactly what we need exactly when we need it, even though we don't understand it...amazing.

He saves up a lot of amazing things for me every year when I attend Women of Faith in Minneapolis.  I have come to expect God's presence there and have gone with my heart on my sleeve and ready to accept whatever God wants me to learn that weekend.  He likes to amaze me not only with the Women of Faith venue, but in the good laughs with friends & in the quality time I get to spend with them.  This will be my last Women of Faith with my good friend, Laura.  Last year was my last one with my good friend, Tabitha.  But how amazing will the real deal be, ladies, when we have something like a Women of Faith weekend in Heaven!  WOO HOO!  Wow.  Talk about amazing.  God's saving up some amazing stuff for that one.  ;)

I've been listening to the Women of Faith music from last year and the song "Amazed" gets louder and louder on my dial every time I play it.  "You dance over me while I am unaware.  You sing all around, but I never hear the sound.  Lord, I'm amazed by you. How you love me."  I sometimes feel like God is trying to impress me with his creation.  Showing me...."look, Becky, I made this just for you!"  I've learned to see amazement in EVERYTHING!  I think it makes me look a bit calloused to friends at times, though.  I have a friend going through a really rough spot, but all I can see is the hand of God directing every step she's on.  I can see through the smoke and see that everything is going to be okay!!  I love her and feel for her pain, but I can also see the amazing love God has for her and how He's transforming her life and making all things new!

Open your eyes and see the amazement all around you.  See the dance that goes over you because God is delighted in YOU!  Picture a crazy parent running through the streets singing some loud song because they are so proud of YOU!  Embarrassing?  Maybe, but doesn't that make you feel special through the bright red blushing cheeks?  It's wide, deep, and so, so great.

What's in a name?

What does your name mean?  I had to look mine up because I'm not really sure.  Answers.com says that Becky means "beautiful, energetic, pretty, tom-boyish, and rich".  I'll take that.  I'm still waiting around on the rich part, but whatever.  Michael's name means "who is like the Lord".  I'll have to keep him humble with that as his name.

Names are important.  You kind of resemble your name to some degree.  Our daughter, Alexandria's name means "protector of men".  We named her that because we liked the name, but really she is what brought Michael around to the realization that he had a little life to protect and she made him the man he is today.  Evan's name means "God is good" and ain't that the truth?!  That little boy shows me God's goodness every single day!

Names are powerful.  But all other names pale in comparison to a certain Great Name!!  Many hymns and songs have been written about the name of Jesus.  About the amazing power in the name of Jesus.  Even typing it out here in this blog, I know the name will be offensive to some friends who read it.  Some of my friends have a hard time with religion, are atheists or agnostics.  The name of Jesus really is offensive to them.  But that name to me is LIFE!  That name to me is FREEDOM!  Everything is better when just simply the name "Jesus" is spoken!  Jesus means "salvation".  Salvation from anything and everything that is wrong.

This has been my most favorite song lately.  "Your Great Name" by Natalie Grant.  And I have the privilege of seeing Natalie Grant at Women of Faith in a few weeks.  Oh, I can hardly contain myself!  I will be transported to heaven and back.  Can you imagine 10,000 women singing along to this song?  WOW!  10,000 voices saying the name of Jesus.  Just a little teeny taste of heaven.  Homesick, I am.  Ready to be with the object of my desire!  Ready to physically crawl into my Savior's lap.  At the sound of His great name...

Oh, how He loves us!

Focusing my entire day on God's deep, deep love for me.  I don't know if it's the wonderful smell of apple bread in my oven, the cool, crisp sunny day, or the wonderful silence in my house today.  But God keeps popping into my head the fact that He loves me!  Life has not always been perfect, but even in those times I have felt His overwhelming love for me.

I'm currently listening to a podcast for my bible study tomorrow night about God's love for us.  I told my bible study gals a few weeks ago that I hadn't been feeling God's presence the way I had felt it when I was in the valleys of despair last year.  I told them I honestly couldn't wait until something else bad happened to me so that I could feel close to God again.  All that following week, God kept reiterating to me, "I am with you." I kept wondering why God kept telling me He was with me.   It's a basic Christian principle, so why did He need to keep telling me that?  Well, life is good right now and you know what?  God is with me.  He's been with me through the good and the bad.  Nothing bad has to happen to me to feel His presence.  He's with me.  He's with me enjoying the smell of apple bread baking in my oven right now.  He's with me as I prepare for my bible study tomorrow night.  He's with me as I prepare my children's church lesson for Sunday.  He's with me when I go pick up the kids from school later today.  He was with me in the past through some pretty sticky situations.  He's ALWAYS been there.  And He's always been madly in love with me.


May you feel God's presence and love today, too.  If you are having trouble with that, just simply ask Him to reveal His love to you and then sit back and watch.  It'll come.  Live life expecting something miraculous from God.

Fall Apart

I hear songs on the radio and assume God had them written just for me.  So many songs seem to apply to my life.  It's like someone is right inside the deepest part of me seeing what's going on and writes a very public song about it!  I'm pretty sure God has something to do with that.  This is the newest one I keep hearing and know it was written for me.

My favorite line is "How can I come to the end of me and somehow still have all I need?!"

I used to be all about keeping it all together.  Well, I still am to some degree.  My calendar is my lifeline and it's how I keep all our family activities organized.  I take my calendar everywhere, so it usually starts falling apart at this point in the year.  My friend laughed at me the other day stating that my "lifeline was falling apart." I decided I needed to get some organizational help for my calendar/lifeline.  I got a cute binder to keep my calendar pages in, but that was not enough.  So, off I went to Office Max to find some organizers for my binder, and I got a little giddy.  I hope no one noticed, but I was like a kid in a candy store.  I admitted that to my highly organized husband later that evening and a look of pride just swept across his face.  Maybe I'm finally arriving.  ;)  Now, don't be coming to me for organizing advice. I'm not that far into it.  I'm just starting off with binder organizers.  And I recently bought a few baskets to hold some things. (maybe I'm more organized that I originally thought...)

But the point is, I can try and organize my life all I want, but God usually has different ideas for me.  God lets me have my binder organizers and baskets, but when I try to make it look like my life is all together so that I can look good to other people, that's when God steps in to save me.  I'm learning that it's okay to fall apart.  It's okay to be a little disheveled at times.  (I've recently been spotted out and about without much makeup on lately, too!)  It's okay to be human.  When I'm wearing my mask of perfection, I don't seem to feel God's presence very much.  But when I let it all go and it starts to crumble a bit, that's when I feel God reaching in to save me.  I'm a princess...I like to be swept off my feet and saved.  I was created that way.  And God is all into the saving.

So, I'm going to do my job.  And I'm going to let God do His job.  I may fall apart every once in a while, but don't feel sorry for me.  It's all good.   My lifeline, on the other hand, won't be falling apart any time soon!

It's just a pencil

This is what my dad sends me every year around Back to School time.  He's done it for years and years.  I get a letter in the mail and it's a #2 pencil to take to school.  

I got my pencil in the mail today.  I opened it up and laughed and got a little tear in my eye.  My kids ran over to see what I was giggling about.  They looked up at me confused as to why I was tearing up over a pencil.  I told them my dad sends me a pencil every year to take back to school.  They roll their eyes and walk away thinking I've lost my mind.  

I love the little ways my dad shows me he loves me.  I love that he thinks about me frequently.  I love that even though I'm 38 years old, he still views me as his baby girl.  I love that he probably also got a tear in his eye when he was mailing my #2 pencil.  

My dad has always been my vision of my Heavenly Father.  God shows me every day how much He loves me in the littlest things.  He views me as a princess even though I'm viewed by others as too old to hold that title.  He gave me His one and only Son to show His love for me & I'm pretty sure He also had a tear in His eye when He sent me that gift. 

Fathers hold a special place in their daughter's lives.  Father's have a very strong power.  My husband watches how my dad treats me and wants to treat our daughter exactly the same!  I'm blessed.  

It's just a pencil....

The Truth About Me

I'm perfect.  Really, I am.  Not in a haughty manner, but that's just how God created me to be.  He sees me as absolutely perfect.  I'm learning to see myself in the exact same way.  God introduced a book to me within the past few months called Your Secret Name.  He then re-iterated my need to read this book by giving me a song by Mandisa (He knows how much I love her!) called "The Truth About Me".

God has never seen me as a screw up.  He's never seen me as a basket case or some horrid mistake that He created.  He created me to be something that could be used by Him.  Bumps, warts, bruises, and all. Even when I make mistakes and mess up, He STILL uses that!  He truly amazes me.

I started a bible study tonight using Your Secret Name (great book, by the way).  And God assembled the most amazing group of ladies to join me.  Just some friends I pulled together, but we had the best time this evening...and that was just the introduction night!  I'm super excited to what God will be showing us within the next few months.

When you leave things up to God, He makes things absolutely perfect.  My life has been left totally up to Him, and He has redeemed me, cleansed me, and is revealing the truth about me.  My friend stated tonight, "You can't afford to not view yourself the same way God views you!"  How true!  I'm a worth no one could estimate!  And so are you!  Believe it.

Amazing Grace

I haven't blogged in FOREVER!  I also feel like I haven't heard from God in forever, too.  Now that life is a little more 'manageable' for us, I guess I've wandered away from God's presence.  When our trials were raging full force I was reading my Bible every day.  I remember reading about the Israelites and God's big huge blessings on them, His obvious hand in their lives, the way He constantly saved them from their enemies.  Then just a short time later they would be turning their backs on Him and "abandoning the Lord."  At the time I was thinking, "How in the world could they do that?!"  Now, I look at myself and am amazed that I am no better than the Israelites.  I feel I need God when life is falling down around me, but when He helps put my feet back on steady ground, I wander off...assuming I've got everything under control.

Luckily, I've began to catch that trend in my life and have recently put a stop to it.  I'm not going to wander so far off that we fall off the path again.  I'm making my way back to God who is still standing in the same place He was standing when I wandered off.  God continues to put the story of Jonah in my life.  It keeps popping up everywhere. So, I'm going to have to examine that further and see what He is trying to tell me from that story.  Expect a blog sometime when I figure that out in some "Aha!" moment.

The other day I was reading in Judges about Samson.  What a mighty strong man he was, but what a jerk as well.  He had wandered SO terribly far off the beaten path.  But God still used him in a mighty way.  The footnotes in my Bible state, "In spite of Samson's evident failures, the Spirit's presence was powerfully at work in him."  Despite myself, my sinfulness, my lack of motivation, my irritability, etc, God can still use me to accomplish what He needs to accomplish.  I want to strive to be more filled with God.  I'm a human and I'm going to mess up, but luckily God gives me grace for those times in my life.  He knew ahead of time that Becky was going to need tons of grace.  The Israelites were going to need tons of grace.  You were going to need tons of grace.

Amazing grace.  How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.