Thel's week

This is in the cute little garden outside our manufacturing facility!

All of this was under our sink. Can you believe it!!

Our leaves haven't been as colorful this year since we haven't had much rain, but we've been able to find a few beautiful colors.

I drive by this twice a day. This is the iron horse that the owner tried to give UGA, but they didn't want it, so he planted it in the middle of a field in Oconee county.

I really enjoy my drive to work every day. I drive through forest and farms.

Beautiful road

I'm reading the most wonderful book right now.  It's called One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully right Where You Are, by Ann Vos Kamp.  I first heard of it from Sara Frankl's blogsite, and I downloaded it a while ago, but didn't really start reading until a couple of weeks ago.  It is incredible!

You.must.get.this.book!!

In the first chapter, she talks about ingratitude.  This is what she says, "Satan's sin becomes the first sin of all humanity: the sin of gratitude. Adam and Eve are, simply, painfully, ungrateful for what God gave. Isn't that the catalyst of all my sins?  Our fall was, has always been, and always will be, that we aren't satisfied in God and what He gives.  We hunger for something more, something other."  When I first read that, I thought it was an interesting concept, but didn't really apply to me.  I mean, I'm grateful for everything I have.  I've been to Mexico and Africa on mission trips. I've seen what having NOTHING really looks like.

But she continues to talk about this, and a little bit later she talks about accepting our life as it is...what God has given us.

That really struck me.  Almost physically, but most assuredly in my heart.

I saw the millions of times that I've said...if only...Thank you, God for all you've provided, but if only this was different, THEN I'll be happy.

If only I hadn't hadn't run so far from God in my twenties and early thirties, if only I was thinner, if only I had a better job, if only my husband was this, or did this, if only my house was bigger, or I had children or...the list is endless.

Those 'if only's' are sins of ingratitude also.  I have lived a life of constant discontent...waiting for something else to make me happy.

Could I really just accept my life as it is?  Actually, God had already been working on me a little bit.  I turned 50 this year, and I kind of realized that I am who I am, and it's pretty good. (It's about time, right??)  I read a blog from my friend Jenny Rain about owning your age, and i decided that 50 is a good age to own.  This year I've also got down to the weight I wanted to be (after a lifetime of obesity), had some surgery to get rid of extra skin, and finished my ministry degree.  So maybe it's time to let go of this life of discontent, and if only's.

It's a matter of being able to live in the moment. When we start thinking about the past and regretting actions...if only this had happened...or if I had done this; or when we think about the future...if I get a new job...or meet someone special...then I'll be happy. Those are the thoughts that I have to stop!!

What about you?  Are you waiting for an if only for you to be happy??  Stop right now!!  You are in the place that God wants you to be. You are wasting your time if you're wishing that things were different.  Everything that happens to you is being filtered by God.  Thank him for it!! Live a life of gratitude and see if he doesn't open up a life of joy for you to live!!

Thel's week

Trying to take pictures of the sun.

T

This is the sweet punkin who washed my car while I was napping...Love this guy!!

My brand new counters and sinks...so happy!!

Technology much...??

Watching Sara's funeral, still miss her!!

This was me helping out at Extreme Makeover Home Edition!! Had a great time!!

Compassion...Hurts

Galatians 6:2 says,"Bear one another's burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ."   When I've read this verse before, I've always took it to mean that we are to help each other out in times of trouble.  And I still believe that's true.  We can't live this life alone!! It is too difficult!!

But if you look at the verse right before it, it says, "Brothers, even if anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself, so that you too will not be tempted."

So when you look at those two verses together, it basically means that when someone sins, you are supposed to help to restore that person and to bear their burden while you're doing it...and then, we are fulfilling the law of Christ, which is love.

Well, that doesn't sound very fair does it?  I mean, most of the time, it's hard enough just keeping myself on this narrow path, not running off and doing my own thing.  I'm also supposed to be helping my brothers and sisters...when they sin???

This is compassion. Not to condemn them, but to restore them.

My experience has been that when I sin, it's not been from a desire to do evil, but from a desire to make the pain in my heart go away. And I have sinned a lot...not so much in recent years (at least in actions), but in my twenties and thirties, I was pretty wild.  And this was after getting saved at the age of 18.  I spent those years doing anything just to make the pain go away...but it never did. Until I got my life right with God again and let him begin to heal me.

But my point is, that I think that a lot of us are the same.  We look to a fallen world to ease our pain rather than the God who created us...and we screw up.  We hurt each other with the things we do and say.  And then we're supposed to restore each other.  It doesn't seem possible, does it, when you really look at it.  If someone sins against you, you're going to have to forgive them first before you can restore them.

This is hard...I would rather hold my pain close to me.  To say, 'see what you did!!'  But I can't. I have to.let.it.go.  I have to think of my brother or sister first.

Oh wait, isn't that part of the two greatest commandments?  Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself.  When I love my brother or sister as I love myself, then I'm going to consider what might have driven those actions.  I would always have an excuse for myself! Why wouldn't I look for an excuse in them?

I love how the Word of God all ties together.

When you can see the pain in each other that sometimes drives actions that are wrong, maybe you can feel compassion rather than anger.

That's the example that Jesus gives us. In Luke 13:34, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, just as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not have it!"  Even though he knew that the Jews, and the city of Jerusalem, rejected him and were going to kill him, he still felt compassion for them.

This is a hard lesson, and not one that I'm very good at.  But my compassion runs deeper and further when God shows me the pain in that other person...and in me.

Thel's Week

I've cheated just a little bit.  I had some great pictures from the end of the week while I was traveling, so I used those instead of anything from Monday or Tuesday.

At the airport waiting for the plane to come in.

This is when I was driving from Chicago to Decatur.  Beautiful sky!!

Beautiful ceiling art...at O'Hare airport.

More ceiling art...

This was in central Illinois, they were all over...as far as the eye could see. I was fascinated by these.

Okay, I don't mean to be crude by showing a picture of a commode, but this amazed me!! It must have been invented by a woman.  If you're a female, you likely hate going into public bathrooms.  You never who has occupied this spot before you.  In this particular restroom, the plastic tubing covers the seat, and then once you're done, it moves so that new tubing  is covering the seat.  I love this!!

Slow Down

Sorry I haven't posted anything sooner, but I've been traveling this week and it always throws me off my regular schedule. I'm sitting at the airport waiting for my flight. I don't mind waiting, sitting with nothing to do is definitely a pleasure...I'm back after a short break. I realized that I was sitting at the wrong gate. Oops! Then I found the right gate and checked to make sure I was in the right place, and they told me the flight had been moved to the opposite side of the terminal. Oh well, that's why I allow myself a good hour before the flight leaves.

Sitting with nothing to do, I don't allow myself that pleasure very often. I might sit and watch TV for a few minutes after dinner, but it's just because I'm trying to shut my brain down enough to sleep. TV is good for that.

I keep up a frenetic pace most of the time. I go and go and go, until I finally drop in exhaustion. I live my days hitting each duty with a quickness and force that I rarely have time to enjoy whatever it is I'm doing, to savor the task and the sense of accomplishment. I think many of us are like that. We allow our lives to be filled up with so many things we have to do, so many responsibilities.

I think there's a few reasons why we do that, or at least why I've done it...or do it. And for me at least, none of those reasons are good, or healthy.

One of the reasons I pack my life with things to do is to try distract myself from the critical voices in my head. Those ones that say I'm not good enough, that I don't have any value, or that God only loves me because he has to. This has been a difficult one for me and has dogged me my whole life. I don't know why, but probably because of a variety of reasons. I know that over the last several years, God has healed me of many of those thoughts. He's healed me by giving me little glimpses of the truth. The truth of my past, the truth about who I really am, and the truth about how he loves me. 1st John 3:20 says that if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our hearts and knows all things. Romans 8:1 says there is no condemnation in Christ. So if you have those same voices in your head as me, they are a lie. You are highly favored by God. If you don't feel like that, ask God to show you how much he loves you, he will do it. I promise, God is faithful.

A friend of mine called me a life-long learner.  I like that description and it's very true. I love learning new things. It's like discovering and unfolding a new mystery. Peeling back the outside to see what treasure might lie inside. But most of the time, that learning requires a time comitment. I have to be careful that I don't let my enthusiasm for learning something new take precedence over the tasks that I have on hand. Just like I think I can stretch my money to include anything I want to buy, I think I can stretch my time also. Both of those can leave me short...short on time and short on money.

I also have a tendency to belittle my own gifts and envy other people's gifts. I see someone I admire and I want to sing like them, or play an instrument like them...and oops, there's another time commitment (and sometimes money commitment). At the age of fifty, I have pretty much figured out the things I'm good at, and I'm owning those gifts. I'm not going on a gift hunt to see if there's really something else that God wants me to do, and I've just missed it. Maybe I've learned to trust God and rest in what his plans are for me. He might have something else for me to do, but he'll have to show me.

The final reason is somewhat insidious and can be hard to detect. It's wrapped up in the nice words like DOING GOOD and SERVICE. But at the heart of that is the feeling that I'm not good enough (yes, that same feeling rears it's ugly head again)! I need to work a little harder than everyone else. Oh, I know I'm saved and that the sacrifice of Jesus is enough, but that critical voice in the back of my head drones on and on. Putting me down, undermining my confidence. So maybe if I volunteer for one more thing, say yes, once again, when someone asks me to do something...maybe, just maybe, that voice will be quiet, at least for a little while.

All of these things can cause me to take on more then I can handle...well.  But I'm learning to slow down - a little.  Those critical voices have subsided, for the most part.  Or when they do start talking to me again, at least I can recognize them and tell them to shut up.  I'm starting to yearn for peace and quiet, rather than dreading it.  Even when we recognize all this, it's still difficult to cut out some of those responsibilities, some of those expectations that others have of us.  But that's going to be my goal for the next few months. To stop volunteering for so many things, to ask God what does he want me to do, and then really listen to him when he tells me. To.Slow.Down!!

What about you?  Do you rush from task to task?  Do you do one thing while you're thinking of the next three things you  have to do?  Now I know that sometimes, life situations just can't be avoided and we're going to be too busy.  And, those of you with kids, you will probably just throw up your hands in disgust when reading this... But if you're overfilling your life because of some of the reasons I mentioned above, then examine your life, your heart, your mind.  Ask God to reveal and heal some of those weaknesses that might be lurking inside you.  Ask him to tell you what he wants you to do.

Thel's Week

New roses in October, how cool is that!!?? I love living in Georgia!!

This is my stash of chocolate...yes, it's a weakness...

This is how I eat my M&M's every day.  I eat ten of them after lunch.  I line them up two by two.  I pull them out randomly from the bag and match up the colors as best as I can.  I eat the mis-matched ones first, then I eat my least favorite colors next, and my favorite colors last.  OCD much...??

Another example, just to make sure you didn't think I was kidding.  Notice they are different from the day before.

These are deer in our back yard.

Living in the moment

When I was in third grade, I remember getting my report card in the late spring and it showed that I had passed to the fourth grade.  Did you have report cards like mine?  They were a little darker and yellower than manilla folders.  Goldenrod is the color, I think.  They were folded into three sections.  The first page was my information, age, address, grade.  The second and third pages were grades, and then the rest of the pages were for notes back and forth between the teacher and my parents.  I do remember one teacher that I particularly liked, so I behaved really well in her class.  At the end of the year she wrote that I was a joy to have in the classroom.  My dad wrote back that he and my mom enjoyed me at home also.

I don't remember being much a source of joy to many people in my lifetime. I was usually too worried about something or another to care about how I was affecting other people.

Back to getting my report card in third grade. My immediate thought was, okay, I made it through third, but I'm not sure I'm going to make it through fourth grade (no lie!). It's going to be a lot harder, and it might be too hard!!

It might be too hard...worried about what's going to happen in the future...that I might fail, or look foolish, or that I won't be able to handle it.

Do you do that? Is your first thought when faced with a challenge is to think of the ways you might fail? It.is.a.waste.of.time. As I said, I've wasted a lot of time in my life doing just that. But I've finally figured out that 9 times out of 10, whatever I've been worried doesn't happen. Maybe I've experienced that often enough or maybe I just got tired, but I'm a little more successful in stopping myself from worrying about the future. That's a big part of living in the moment. You've got to trust that God knows what's going to happen and that he's going to take care of us. Ahhhh...but that means that we have to let go of our control of the situation (or perceived control). The two things are really tied closely together, letting go of control and living in the moment.

Secondly, we have to learn to stop regretting the past. If you're like me, you've made some really bad mistakes in your lifetime. Even now, if there was anyway I could take some of my actions back, I would do it in a heartbeat!  But I can't...

Let it go...show yourself some of the grace that God has already given you  You deserve better than the critical way you view yourself.  Nobody is grading you. You are a lovely person inside (even if you don't feel that way about yourself, God does).  You deserve to be treated with love and respect.

I promise you!! This is the truth!!

So living in the moment can't come until you stop regretting the past and fearing/dreading the future.

As I mentioned in the last blog.  I pray every morning before I get up, giving God the day.  I also pray, I'm going to live this day to the best of my ability, looking to him for guidance.  When my mind starts to wander to things in the past that I'm sorry for...or challenges in the future that I might fear, I stop myself and turn my eyes back on God.

The only way I'm going to be able to bring joy to others, is by living in this moment and not allowing myself to be weighed down by regret and fear.  I think I'm finally learning how to let those things go, and I'm learning to live in peace.

His grace is for this day only, tomorrow will take care of itself.

I spend an hour and a half in the car every day and I spend a lot of that time praying.  If you feel yourself weighed down by regret or fear, please post or send me an e-mail and I would love to pray for you!

Thel's Week

This is my boss, Marilyn (former boss - she moved back to Indiana a few months ago)  I'm the one on the right.

Yay!!! My seminary degree from Liberty University - Masters in Religion, Christian Ministries.

This is my study. It's kind of messy right now, been doing a lot of recording and video editing.

I'm a musician wanna be...I do sing though...

This handsome hunk is my husband...I call him Punkin (his real name is Arlie)

This is my tribute to Sara...I'm choosing joy...every day!!

Control

One of the things that I've been thinking about quite a bit over the past few days is control.  The control over my life, over what I do, and over what happens to me.

My parents have laughingly told the story about me when I was just a tiny thing, two or three.  They would rearrange the living room, or one of the other rooms in the house.  I would come in, probably from a nap or something, since I wasn't exactly out on my own or anything. I would see that the room was different, and apparently get a little huffy.  I'd want to know why the room was changed.  My parents would explain their actions (they were very patient parents) - they put the couch over there, because you could see the TV better, they moved the couch over to the other side to balance the room, or whatever they explained to my demanding self, and I guess I would be okay with it then.

I was a control freak even then...

I'm sure you know someone, even if you aren't one yourself. Or maybe you are one. Let's see. Do you feel like you're just waiting for the other shoe to drop? Would you rather do something yourself, because then you know it will be done right? (I bet I get a lot of you on that one) Or do you delegate some task, and then tell that person (husband or wife maybe) the best way to do it, or maybe you follow up behind them and fix it after they're finished.

Do you manipulate people or situations to get the outcome that you perceive is the most beneficial for you?

I have done all those things a million, trillion times (not really an exaggeration).  I have lived my whole life trying to control what happens to me.

I believe in most situations, this need, this compelling need, comes from fear. Yes, fear!! Why else do we (I) run around like a maniac trying to control everything that surrounds us (me)?  I have spent most of my life living in fear.  It has haunted my choices, shadowed my joy, and made me dread a future I couldn't see or control.  

A year and a half ago, my boss lost her husband. he was a young man, 52 or 53. He had just had knee surgery a few days before, and she went home to get him to take him to physical therapy. He was dead when she found him, from a blood clot she found out later.  I was the second person she called, after the paramedics. It's been a painful journey, and I have had the privilege of walking it with her over the months after that horrible day.  It's helped me to remember to treasure every day I have with my husband.

We really know, inside, that we can't control our lives.  That's why we live in fear.  Wow!! What an epiphany, right!! Well, it was for me.

That was one of the things that Sara Frankl taught me.  She lived her life, basically not knowing what was going to happen the next day, the next month, or the next year, but it probably was not going to be good - at least physically.  But she knew that God was in control, not her, and she left him to it.

God promises us that all things will work to the good for those who love him.  All things...even all those painful things...the things we can't control...the things we might fear. God, in his infinite mystery, will turn them around so that they are the best for us.

Would Sara say that now??  Was the illness and pain and isolation worth it?? I think she would say YES!! She touched and inspired so many people, people she would probably have had no contact with if it weren't for her illness and isolation.

I'm trying to let go of the fear and the compelling need to control what happens to me.  Every morning, before I get out of bed, I pray, 'God, I give you this day. I know that you already know what's going to happen, and that's good enough for me.' Some days are better than others, but I can see how he is lovingly and gently prying my gripping, white-knuckled hands, off my life...so he can do with it what he wants and what's best for me.

Thel