I'll Just Hold On and Enjoy What I Have

It has been months since I've written anything here. Soon after the last blog entry I started an exercise/health/nutrition program and it's taken all my energy and time to lose the 20+ pounds to date.

I go to strength training twice a week and walk daily. I eat a balanced diet of protein and carbs 5 times a day. At least, most of the time I eat right. I do tend to add something "fun" once in a while and that keeps the weight from dropping like my trainer wants it to. I'll finish just before Thanksgiving and hope to be able to keep my eyes on the goal during the holidays.

So, what have I learned during this time?
1. I can do something if I really want to.
2. When I pray for God to help me (lose weight), He answers.
3. Take advantage of His answers.

Since last June we have had some other major changes in our lives besides the health program. Our oldest daughter came to live with us. That has been good and has added to our busi-ness. I have added the first two books of a Detective Joe Denali trilogy to Amazon Kindle. They are books I had written a few years ago but had been rejected as "good but not great" by an agent. I made them available for $.99 and have sold quite a few along with a few more of my first book. (They are on Amazon under the name Barbara Leachman.)
I have the third in the detective trilogy partly written.

I'm also in the midst of writing an inspirational historical fiction novel set during the Revolutionary War. And I have a memoir almost completed. But I'm stumped. Not writer's block. Time to sit and think and write.

Once again I'm talking to God about all this. Daughter needs a job, we need God's help in keeping our relationship from getting messed up (Isn't that always a prayer about someone we love?), and time to write while thanking Him for giving us all the time we have had to work on our outer bodies. Now it's time to look again at our inner souls.

Fall is the most beautiful time of the year in New Mexico. We live near the river. The cottonwoods are a brilliant gold, the sky a cloudless deep blue and the air crisp and cool. Yesterday morning we walked for an hour in the bosque. We saw mallards and their mates swimming and feeding the water, Sandhill cranes and geese flying overhead. Soon they will be migrating here for the winter and feeding in the open space fields. We'll be able to see them every day. I love it!

All this beauty and blessings makes it hard to ask for anything. More than asking is thanking and contemplating and knowing that God is in control. The most comfort a person can have is to realize God's love and his soverignity. The world may turn upside-down, but He never will. I believe I'll just hold on to that and enjoy life.

Who is in Control?

With a move in our future, our life has been busy organizing, cleaning out and throwing away. We have to keep the house in order "just in case" all the time. In the past few days we've hit a rough place, and although we are sure the Lord is directing our steps there have been moments of doubt. Just how much is God really in control of our lives? We throw around the word sovereign and say we know that is God's main attribute, but what does that really mean in our lives?

We receive a preacher's email messages and when we received this one, it spoke to our spirits. I hope Russ doesn't mind me copying and printing it here, but I couldn't say what it any better. I hope you get a message from his "New Year. Who is in Control?"

Here we are in the first day of a new year and I'm not quite through with the old one. I tend to hold on to some things, like memories of the past week. Like many of you my wife and I planned a trip to be with our family and friends who live about 2,100 miles away. We left on schedule and after 2 days, had traveled less than half of the way home. We were confronted with snow, Ice, freezing rain and eventually a blizzard, before we decided to turn around and drive back to California. We made the trip with clear sky and dry roads almost all of the way, in one day.

As I have thought about what happened to us, I have wondered if God might have had a hand in our travel difficulties. Now I know how impossible it sounds to think that God might put a blizzard in place just for our benefit, but could he?

Then I remembered Paul in Act's 16:6-7 where we read, "Next Paul and Silas traveled through the area of Phrygia and Galatia, because the Holy Spirit had prevented them from preaching the word in the province of Asia at that time.
Then coming to the borders of Mysia, they headed north for the province of Bithynia, but again the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them to go there." (NLT)

I also thought of Jonah in the Jonah 1:4 where Jonah was headed in a direction God didn't want him to go. We read: "Then the LORD sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up." (NIV)

So, could God put a storm in our path to prevent us from going somewhere? I believe that he could. You might ask, "Would God cause something like that to happen when it might affect someone other than just me?" Think about this, "Was Jonah in the boat alone?" No, he wasn't. So, could God affect our physical lives in some way to cause us to do what he wants us to do? Yes, I believe he can. If you don't think so, why do you bother to pray for the sick, or those out of a job or for safe passage on some trip? Do we believe he will only touch our world when we specifically ask him to?

OK, here is the point! Much of our world looks to the New Year and makes plans for their future. We make "New Year's Resolutions," planning what changes or direction our lives will take. The trouble is that it may not be the things God has in mind for us. We forget that he is still in control of our world, not us, not the scientist, not the politicians; it is God who is in charge.

We were disappointed that we didn't get to make our planned trip to Ohio, but one passage of scripture keeps floating to the front of my mind. Do you remember what James writes in James 4:13-16? James writes: "Today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and will stay there a year. We will do business there and make a profit." How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog, it’s here a little while, then it’s gone. What you ought to say is, "If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that." Otherwise you are boasting about your own plans, and all such boasting is evil."

As you look to the New Year, don't forget to plan on God being involved with your life! If things don't go as you plan, maybe their going according to some plan that God has for your life.

Does He or Doesn't He?

Let's go more upbeat today.

As is so often said--This is the day the Lord has made.
Is it?
We know God created the world, and we know it is His.
Did He make this day for me personally?

Our small group talks about this often. Some people don't see God as "in charge" of our lives. One man doesn't even like for us to pray for people who travel because he says God doesn't have any control over the cars on the highway, etc. Another believes God never changes and we make our own choices which determine what happens to us. Then there are the few who believe God has a hand in our lives. A couple of us believe God speaks to us. Others have never heard Him outside of the Bible.

I can look at so many instances where I can't help but see God's soverignity at work in my life. And I can name many times I've heard His voice.

What do you think? Are we kind of on our own or does God really lead and guide us? Do you hear God speaking to you?

For Such A Time As This

Chances are I will never be able to adequately put into words the revelation I had Sunday morning, but I'll try.

Our preacher, Wyatt, spoke on love and mentioned Reid and me. We opened our home and our casita to him and his family for several weeks when he had no place to hang his hat. We grew to love having him, of course, because he's really quite lovable. He even started calling me "Mom."

Here's where the revelation began. I saw my life going back through the years---marrying Reid, buying this house with the casita, living alone for six years in Oklahoma, husband dying, moving to Oklahoma, marrying husband, several really hard, horrible, years with some major missteps in Beaumont, divorce...all the way back to my childhood. I attended a class on Esther this past winter and spring, and just as she was in a certain place "for such a time as this," I saw how God had led me to this town and this house for Wyatt. With Wyatt's help God is bringing our church family into a huge new place with Him--of that I'm certain.

And God let us play a small part in it by having a place for Wyatt to call home until he found one of his own.

The greater blessing for me was seeing how, even with my missteps, God was able to get me where He wanted me to be. I saw it in Beaumont when I met my husband there, and I saw it again Sunday. God is truly sovereign. We think we are in total control, don't we?

How He must smile at us while He covers us with His love and leads us where He wants us to go.