The Best Story

It is amazing to me how quickly the days go by, I so thought I would write twice a week and yet I have so far only managed to think about it twice a week....bear with me as I learn this new habit and start to look at each experience to see if it is blog worthy.

I got a surprise visit from family and friends this weekend and it was great, got much accomplished and laughed...a lot!! While the kids were here, my darlin little Austin grabbed his favorite book (well one of them as he loves to read) and informed me it was story time. First we read The Magic School Bus, when that was done he came (backing up so as to get into a good position on my lap) with The Great Elephant by Niki Ranieri, now this happens to be one of my all time favorites as well, it is an amazing allegory! Although Quinn, a little mouse has spent his whole life hearing about the Great Elephant, he has never seen him. As he leaves home he unfortunately runs into trouble and starts to search for the Great Elephant. In his desperation to find him, Quinn follows what others in the forest tell him....that you need to work to see him...that he is at the end of this path..that he is a large golden statue..it is not until the little mouse is in grave danger and he calls out that the Great Elephant appears. It is a wonderful tale of finding God, beautifully illustrated and grandly told it captures your attention and your heart. Ahh how I love to read my little man stories!

Stories enlarge our world, the expand our limited perspective and help us to grow. They open up new worlds and thought processes...they stretch us. This happens whether you are 3 and sitting in your grandmas lap or whether you are an adult looking for answers and change.

I have started to meet with a few women for a book discussion group the last few weeks, watching what God has been showing us through the stories told in the book are amazing. It seems that hurt, forgiveness and healing are happening...through a story...it expands us and helps us gain a new understanding.

A child learns how to cry out to God in order to find Him, a woman understands the need to forgive so she may heal, we can see the hand of God in our everyday living...because of story. Think then that the Bible is the biggest story of all, a vast land of truth, it is filled with narrative, it gives us all the parts necessary...creation, the fall, redemption and restoration....perhaps it is time we focused on Gods word, spent more time reading the story, learning the connections and saw the whole picture so that we may benefit from Gods prose...from His word that comforts us...from the love He us given us in the form of our Bible....just a thought.

Getting what I deserve??

It has been a couple of weeks since I have curled up with my computer and thought about some journaling moments.....much has gone undocumented and it seems as though much more of my week will have the same fate....hopefully to be forgotten forever. That is not to say that it has all been bad.

Life has been full... full of laughter, full of love, full of mistakes that have snippets of regret.

Some of the laughter was caused by a weekend with my darling Austin...there is nothing like a child to fill your days with funny moments and feelings of intense love. I took him to his first concert which he loved, we went to the park and read MANY different stories. Although he tires me out, he is also a source of extreme joy in my life!! Thank you God for my family, for the joy and love they provide me with.

Oh how I wish there was only good this week but unfortunately that is not the way it happened. I made some mistakes this week that will have consequences, I wonder if I have managed to at least glean some lessons from them. ( I hope so anyway) One of the things that I will be more aware of is that there are many times I should shut my mouth. I need to work on that, I need to be much more discerning on who I trust with certain information and who I pass that info on to. Obviously this has been an issue that has had some ramifications, yet even with the chaos that ensued this week I am reminded that God is good....Thank you Lord that you are is in control. Thank you that when we screw up you do not give us what we deserve, for that I am grateful.