I just had a “grateful flashback”…I was on my way home from the market and the day is damp and dreary…it is raining intermittently…and it is windy…I push my cart to my car and load my groceries…I begin thinking how wet and chilly I’m becoming…I am caught in that thought when I catch a glimpse of a mom waiting at the bus stop with a baby in a stroller…I have an immediate flashback to my days as a single mom..and how I too had to wait for the bus in the rain with my little girl…all of a sudden I had a rush of gratefulness to God…as I pulled off the parking lot and looked over to see the young woman board the bus..I whispered a prayer for her and her baby…and I began thanking God for the car that was now shielding me from the elements…and for not only increasing my natural assets…but abundantly blessing me in every aspect of my life…I paused for a second tears filling my eyes…God is good…Sometimes you need a flashback to remind you of all that His hand has done in your life…today…my soul remembers…and I praise the God who saw me waiting in the rain with my little girl..and He rescued me…He increased my life…He kept me through those years and He is keeping me now…I was that young mother…and now I pray for her…I believe someone did that for me…perhaps one day she will whisper the same type of prayer for another young woman just as I have done for her today…God’s reminder to me today is simply this…He is good…and kind and faithful…and He will change your life…if you let Him😊

Have you ever been focused on something that was infinitesimal…that is…it was a very small thing in comparison to all the things that really demanded your attention? I mean it consumed your consciousness..and obscured the really significant issues? I am convinced that one of the best weapons of our enemy is distraction…that thing becomes magnified…and everything else seems minimized…we refuse to release whatever the thing is…like a pitbull with a bone…we allow this thing to push out whatever was primary in our thought life and now IT becomes everything…it happens subtly like a virus that is lying dormant and slowly gains traction to become a true dis-ease internally…it throws us off our purpose…and we walk away from our assignments….we experience delays and what was fluid is now stagnant…so what are these distractions and who sends them? Many times they are minor things such as small offenses…or unresolved feelings…misunderstandings..miscommunications…but ultimately they point us to a disconnect from our Power Source…the One who keeps us from being derailed…who sends these purpose drainers?…the very enemy of our souls…his

desire is for us to major in the minors and lose sight of the real goal…to defeat him in all that he attempts to do..so the solution is simple…remain vigilant..and catch those distractions through prayer…refuse to ruminate on the distraction and quickly reprogram your frequency back to the One who is constantly course correcting…when the distractions come (and they will come)..make sure you are alert and prepared to get back to your assignment…after all..your sisters need you completely focused😊

The world is groaning like a woman in labor…it is crying out in pain…there is a cruel undertone in the earth…and the people of God are seduced into the belief that it is political…we must go deeper and tap into the reality that we fight a very real enemy…who is ancient..and has been honing his skills for many years…I am amazed at how quickly we have embraced divisiveness and leaned into division…I rarely express my thoughts about these types of issues…but my heart this morning mourns for the love of God to grip His people…to remove the blinders from our eyes…to cause us to see that spewing hate to strengthen our platform is offensive to the God that we say we love…my prayer today is Lord…arrest our opinions…cleanse us from self righteous rhetoric that incites those who are unbalanced to act in violent ways…make us ambassadors of peace…remind us that your platform is reconciliation…and that the language you use is love…and keep our dialogue dignified and full of the diety that lives within us…forgive us for speaking from a place of hate and destruction…invade our thought life…and make us lights that draw and not drive…sensitize us to those who may not look…think or believe like we do…but imprint on our hearts that with all the things that make us different…your love for all of us is what makes us the same…if division is what we are sowing…hatred is what we will reap…my mother’s heart is full and sad…I can only imagine what the heart of God feels today😢

One of our typical greetings is…”how are you doing?” I believe that this is a misnomer…it speaks of works…and movement…and acts…and striving…I was sitting alone one afternoon and immediately the thought was…”wouldn’t it be more meaningful to ask…”how are you “being?”…we are such a performance driven society that doing is all we know…it frames our lives from birth until death…from the time we cry into this world until the moment we exhale our last breath…we are measured by “doing“…we are classified by our “doing“…we are embraced or rejected for our “doing“…love is measured by “doing“…success is determined by doing…friendships are born or lost out of doing…what would happen if we focused on being…being who we are created to be…living the being part of us rather than the doing part…gravitating to what makes us unique…without concern for the applause that doing brings…by living the being you…that is at peace with the One who created you to Be…when the true being you emerges…the doing you will be made to rest…because doing will be content knowing that being is more important….how are you being? I hope the doing you gets quiet enough for you to find out😌

Have you ever quietly slipped from peace to unrest? I mean slowly….frustration eased it’s way into your peace…the calm that was there has subsided and been replaced with discord…It happened to me yesterday…a series of consecutive events reframed my day…I felt my attitude shift from joy to anger…these things were neither life changing nor critical in the whole scheme of my life…but they created inconveniences for me…and derailed my “creature comforts”…my typical jovial personality took a dark turn…and I felt myself becoming more and more frustrated…my attitude had shifted…and my face portrayed just what my heart was thinking…and then God sent a refreshing…He sent His word delivered in song…and slowly the thing that had taken up space in my heart and head had been evicted and replaced with what was really important…that God had given me the ability to see that my attitude had shifted and that He with His loving kindness was wooing me back into His place of peace…and boom…just like that…attitude adjusted…His reminder was…”why do you spend your time frustrated about things that are meaningless? Let’s make an exchange…give me your frustration and I will give you my peace…but you must first release it to me…and trust that I can adjust whatever has become misaligned”…and that ladies is not just a good thing…it is a God thing! 😌

I’m retreating….no…not giving up…giving in…to His Presence….Tomorrow I will be going on a retreat with a group of women…I need this…a time to unplug…a time to course correct…a time to be immersed in the presence and power of God…a time to review…a time to renew…a time to fellowship…a time to strengthen sisterhood…a time to sit undistracted with my God…I have been excited about this retreat for several months…my expectancy is totally in Him…there is a longing in my soul to have these precious moments alone with Him…I am not sure what He has planned for His daughters…but my spirit is ignited and thirsty at the same time…God loves His girls…and He wants to show us everything that He desires for us…my heart is open and poised to receive…my soul needs a refreshing…it needs a flushing from the cares of life…ladies…I pray you get opportunities like this..and when they become available to you…I hope you…like me…seize them…we do so much…for so many…sometimes…we need to do something just for us…we need to be cleansed…and refilled so that we can continue to be His resilient daughters! I can’t wait to share with you everything that He says and does!😌

Have you ever been rejected? I have…I have felt the sting of rejection…it feels like an arrow piercing the heart…I can remember the first time I felt it… tears began to fill my eyes and a lump formed in my throat…I thought…”Why wasn’t I chosen?”…I began listing all of the things about me that I consider “wonderful”…As I thought of those things the pain became more intense…I could feel my heart rate increase…my breathing was more rapid..and I knew the tears would soon spill down my face…my emotions were everywhere…sadness…and anger…bitterness and longing…I have been rejected more than once…and I’m sure you have too…being rejected…begs the question…”what’s wrong with me?”…”why wasn’t I good enough?” It begins in the schoolyard when you are not chosen for the team…and then it appears in high school when the guy that you thought was really cute…didn’t even notice you…and then as we reach adulthood…it is present in employment and relationships…rejection is a beast…but I found the prescription for this insidious disease…the acceptance of a loving God…who constantly whispers…”You are always on my team…I always see you…I have great purpose for your life…and our relationship will always remain pure“…so the sting of rejection subsides…and the love of God soothes…and then I remember…I am never rejected by the One who matters most…and then…peace returns and joy is restored as I whisper…”I am enough”…

What do you have? What are you working with? What are you dismissing as nothing…that God wants to use? How many times have we discouraged ourselves…by saying what we do not have ..or what we are incapable of doing? How many assignments have we rejected because we perceived what we had as too little…we can quickly name the flaws and faults that lie resident in us…but when asked what our strengths are…I find many of us struggle to name them…I believe our problem is…we see ourselves through the lens of “little“…we have declared that we are “not enough“…we totally forget Whose we are…I can remember vividly being terrified to speak..not to a crowd…but simply to someone I did not know…I can hear myself saying…”you’re too shy…you’re too nervous…and then God asked me to speak to a crowd…yes ME😕…I remember walking across the stage…my legs shook so much that my skirt was swaying as though in a windstorm…I stood at the podium and shakily held the microphone…when I opened my mouth..it was so dry…my tongue literally clung to the roof of my mouth…I thought “God…how can you allow me to be humiliated?…Why would you ask me to do something that terrifies me? He gently responded…”because this is where my strength lies…in your weakness…If you will trust me with your little…I will make it much”..so that day…standing at that podium…I surrendered my little…and guess what?…the thing that terrified me…thrilled me..I loved it…I was in a zone…speaking made me happy…I never imagined that this could be my life…but He did…because He created me to do the thing that I thought I couldn’t…it was all about trusting Him with my little…He made it much..and continues to increase the little of my life..and make it exactly what He envisioned it to be…MUCH…I’m not sure what your little is…but His desire is for you to trust Him enough to surrender it to Him so that He can make it MUCH!

This morning as I was preparing to take my 7 year old grandson to school…I noticed his jacket was getting too small…wow…he’s growing….the jacket that last fall seemed a little too big…is now too small…I realized he needed something bigger and began thinking where I would go to get him a new jacket…almost immediately God spoke to me…saying…”Mary…I watch you..and just like you noticing the growth of your grandson…I notice your growth as well…I am keenly aware of every milestone you make…my eyes are constantly searching for new growth…and just as a loving grandmother quickly decides…something bigger is needed…when you have outgrown the blessing that I have given to you…I give you something bigger“…I whispered..”thank you God for teaching me your principles in the natural flow of my life”….so if you’re growing…if you have been observed by our Father as having outgrown the blessing that He gave…He is poised to give you something bigger…so be on the look out for bigger grace…bigger love…bigger peace…bigger contentment…bigger joy…bigger assignments…..bigger understanding…bigger faith….bigger hope…God is watching as we grow and He is prepared to replace what has become too small for what is bigger…I hope we are all growing…I want bigger…hope you do too😌

Sometimes when I look at my life it seems surreal…like it belongs to someone else…I begin to journey through each chapter of my book…and I see pages that I had forgotten…there were moments of absolute despair and despondency…yes..there were also times of joy…but my focus seems to be more on the difficult times…seasons of confusion and discouragement…those moments when I had given up and decided that this was the way it always was going to be…I remember brokeness…in relationships…in my body…in my emotions…in my finances…pieces…shards of life…I reminisce of times when crying wasn’t what I did..but groaning and sobbing suited the circumstances….I marvel at how those seasons in my life prepared me for being the woman who now can counsel…who can console…who can encourage…who can shine light on someone’s darkness…I smile and realize that my broken pieces have been used by God to become an amazing mosaic that is uniquely mine…I can look at each shattered piece and see the position it takes in my mosaic to make it an exquisite masterpiece…I remember that the flower must be crushed to emit fragrance…the crushing defines the flower’s unique scent…now…if I had my way…none of those difficult things would have happened to me…but…as I look back…they have made me a woman…a warrior…I’m fierce…and determined…I learned to fight because I had to..I became a woman of depth and character….you know what I discovered? that God uses all the broken pieces of our lives…that He wastes nothing..and that He will take the stench of brokeness and make it a priceless perfume..ladies…embrace your brokeness…and allow the world to experience the fragrance that is uniquely you.