Sunday, May 16, 2010

Sorry for the wait,,,

It has been a while since posting and for that I apologize. Since this is so new I am not even sure if anyone reads this but now that much of the chaos of the past few weeks is over I will try harder to be more diligent.

There are many things on my mind as of late...emotions of helping to move my beloved friend and mentor into an extended health care facility took its toll, add that to the regular emotions of life and I would have to admit my mood has not been very upbeat. That said I now have a couple of nights sleep in and am feeling much more like myself.

Everyday living can be draining, when we add to that the emotions of impending separation, parenting, finances, conflict or sleep deprivation and we open the door for the enemy to play head games with us....he enjoys being able to throw us curve balls and relishes in our failure to keep God first and foremost. This is something we all know and yet can be so easily overlooked during our times of stress. I have attempted to write a post a couple of times but with my thoughts disjointed and no time to study and straighten them out I opted to not write anything....the problem with this is then there is no authenticity....life is as much about the disjointed and difficult as it is about our triumphs. None of us have it together all the time, we struggle with feelings of inadequacy, hoping and praying for life situations to change or be fixed..sometimes it is simply not in the plan...and we feel discontent because of it. The reality however is that we always have a way out, it just isn`t always as easy as it sounds.

God is our way out of times of discontent...it requires some work, we need to trust Him..know that He is who He says he is...His character and His love do overcome all...it is at times like this that we need to take a deep breath, pray and then let God do what God does....

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Joy or the loss thereof...

This past few weeks has been a whirlwind of activity...a quick trip to Ontario, book tables, speaking for a church group, a Beth Moore conference and then the massive task of the Gallery 7 fund raising Gala. It seems that I have hardly been home...actually I have hardly been home and it has taken a toll on my kitchen, laundry and sleep patterns. After months of planning, the time came and went and it was over, the question that followed was..."How did it go?", "Are you happy with the outcome?" and other such queries....

The problem with this is that as the planner (with help of course), all I could see were the little details that could have gone smoother, the things that were overlooked or forgotten....as I debriefed I had to wonder where the excitement was? I should feel pretty good about pulling off a corporate event with very few problems however the side of me that can not fail, the (semi) perfectionist in me, allowed those doubts to temporarily steal the joy from this otherwise successful event. Thankfully it was temporary, I was able to (after some sleep) look at it objectively and enjoy all that was good about this event and not focus solely on the areas that could use some improvement. I was able to recapture some of the joy!!

That made me wonder how often do we let our emotions or others steal the joy that God intends us to have in our day to day living? How often do we overlook the successes and the victories in favour of the possibility of having done better...silly isn't it that we often allow our joy to be removed so willingly... it is worth thinking about....I pray that this week nothing is able to come between you and the joy God intends to bestow on you.