When I started this intentional journey of writing my autobiography and then about 9 months later writing this blog, I did it to give help to the readers for their own journey.  Today, however, I sense a desperate need in this journey for wisdom from outside of me.  Maybe for a reader it is good to know one is not alone feeling helpless and abandoned.  I write this and know I am not abandoned.  No matter how tough a situation might be, I know beyond a shadow of doubt I am never abandoned.  The assuredness of God’s presence is stronger than any feeling of abandonment.

For me the desperateness I am experiencing is due to a total lack of words and approach to an ugly situation.  I’m not in control of it but it is very close to home so I want to be in control and take charge.  God has repeatedly talked to me about my need to support only.  Learning to support outside of control is difficult for me.  My childhood taught me well that as an adult I would never let something/someone control me again.  Yet, as an adult watching a situation where disregard is present, I want to step in and take control.  So, I have this wretched anguish going on inside of me.

The peace in the midst of the storm is very difficult to find in moments like this.  I truly don’t even like posting this message but I am driven to be honest about my journey so I am doing it.  I’m going out to the raspberry patch to pick the first picking of them as I complete this writing.  I always find God in tender ways in the garden so I’m going to seek this peacefulness as I conclude today’s entry.  I still know God is good all the time and all the time God is good.  Patience in the midst of this present storm is likely best found in the garden.

God’s love and mercy never change, I know.  However, it is sometimes difficult to see and know it when the issues of man in this world are screaming around you.  I have written the past two days about this.  Last night our quartet was singing for a church group in Boise.  The theme of our message was Peace–Peace in the Midst of the Storm.  Ahead of time we prayed for this to be felt and known by all present.  We were singing several new songs so we weren’t singing with confidence like we’d want.  Instead, we surrendered ourselves in spite of this.  Well, as it turned out, The Holy Spirit was rich in presence.  The songs and our spoken words seemed to be just what was to take place.  The amazing thing too was that not only did the people present get blessed, so did we.  It was such a good reminder that every storm we encounter in life is already seen and addressed by God.  We don’t know what He knows, but He asks us to trust Him with our unknowns.  I want to keep growing in this area.

God is so good and so desires to make Himself known to us if we will stop for a moment, no matter the storm, and surrender whatever He shows us needs to be.

God is truly an amazing God and finding the path in this journey which keeps God always in the lead is no minor task.  The situations I wrote about yesterday are just as real today.  In my devotional time I end with praying over my prayer list.  At the top of it I have written:  Embrace the Cross.  I rewrite my prayer list every few months to keep it current with life’s daily challenges for those on it.  I rewrite this statement at the top for my reminder that I need to Embrace the Cross for those on this list.  Today, as I was starting my prayer, God showed me that my job was not to change the decisions for those struggling but to bring them to the Cross where the ultimate decision about wrongs was done.  So, instead of anguishing more about the needs/choices of these ones I love, I simply brought them to the Cross in my prayer rather than the problems.  It is there that Christ has already done His Work.  It is also each one’s decision to accept this work for them.

In two weeks our Celebrate Recovery moves from Wednesday nights to Thursday nights.  This decision was made last winter and is a good one for many reasons.  Our church has built a children’s wing which gives spacious room for that department to grow and flourish.  Our CR has been using the children’s room for our meeting and it has now overgrown the facility.  The church suggested when the children move to their new wing we could move to the youth room where we will have ample room to continue growing.  Thursday nights will allow us to have no competition for rooms.

I write this because in the past week there have been numerous issues coming up with the individuals in leadership of our CR.  One leader told me last night she felt we were under attack.  When I went to ask God this morning if this is so He immediately responded even as I was writing the first word of the sentence.  His response was simple.  “Satan never quits attacking.  Don’t be caught off-guard by this but instead, be prepared.”  God’s Word tells us to be prepared at all times and to lift one another up.  I’m going to send this reminder out to all of us this morning.  It is amazing to me to take a step away from the attacks to see that they are individually based on each one in leadership and they cripple each one of us privately.  No one wants to sound like “a baby” so we keep them to ourselves.  Also, this move comes at the start of summer where we all are taking individual family breaks from common routines.  Well, Satan wants to make all of this seem like we are failing when God wants us to see how we are prospering.  I’m choosing to keep my eyes on God’s Work for each person finding victory from their hurts, hang-ups and habits!  God has asked me to send this reminder out to all the leadership and so I will.  God is already the Victor and we all need to remember this even when we might feel weak for in our weakness, God is made strong.

I’m struggling today to write.  When I started this blog I did so with the commitment to always share what God is doing in my life and my own personal battle/victories connected with the walk.  The past couple days have hit right in the midst of my family. I won’t go into the specifics of it, but choices (right vs wrong) is making life horribly miserable.

I awoke this morning at 4:00 am and instantly found myself telling God what He needed to do to make choices be different today.  I found myself quickly correcting myself and instead of telling God I switched to thanking Him for using all of our choices to grow us.  I did go back to sleep.  As I got to my journaling during devotions I asked God what I needed to know from Him today?  He quickly informed my mind that He does not use His power/strength to interfere with man’s choices.  If He did so He would be breaking His pledge to man.  Instead He uses the choices of man to bring him to Himself.  I really needed this reminder.  I can use my relationship to encourage right choices being made, but my role is left there.  God also reminded me that my timetable is not the one He uses to determine His actions.  I needed that reminder also.  I grew up experiencing life with an abundance of wrong choices.  I struggle so much feeling helpless when I see others making those that will hurt them when the right choice is only a step away.

As difficult as it is watching ones you love make incorrect choices, I do praise God for using all of them, good and bad, to bring each and everyone of us to the place where we face God/Jesus with the reality of our choices.  The beauty is that He is there with open arms when we decide to come to Him.  I’ll keep praying for this to happen.

It is incredible how God continuously uses man in all of his sinfulness to complete His work here on earth.  In spite of the man of God David had been, his life is filled with sin and its effect.  As David’s lust brought about the death of Uriah and the death of his infant child, later his son’s lust brought his own death from his brother Absalom.  I won’t go into all of this but it is found in II Samuel chapter 12-16.  It makes my heart hurt as I read this knowing this pattern of behavior is still deeply impacting man today.  Our sins cause us deep regret and its impact always hurts.  It is reading all of this, but also knowing the New Testament, that we today find the hope in Jesus Christ!

Joyce Meyer talks in one part where David’s son abuses his sister sexually.  She herself was abused by her father.  This impact caused her to believe many lies for many years about her own value.  I too know this bondage.  Yet, I too have learned that God is the only way out of this bondage.  What a loving God we serve to provide this freedom in spite of what man has done to man through his selfish sinfulness.

Jesus is our only answer!  One could easily get bogged down with the plights of man in the Old Testament, but praise be to God.  He provided a permanent means of escape from this bondage through His Son Jesus.  I am So Grateful!

Well, I got myself out of the trip this week and called my sis who was arranging for my two sis’s and my niece and her husband to meet with me for dinner Friday night.  I still need to do something with the plane ticket and will get to it this morning.  This is a good lesson for learning some valuable things God has been wanting me to take out of denial and put on the table.  I no longer have to hide weaknesses as though they are flaws.  These kind of characteristics are only weaknesses when we hide them hoping no one will know about them.

Today in scripture reading from II Samuel I read about David’s continued victories over all the enemies of Israel.  God was blessing him from every angle.  David, in the spring while his armies were out fighting, didn’t accompany them on one occasion.  Instead, he was at his palace and saw a beautiful woman bathing.  She was the wife of one of his soldiers.  He had her brought to him and had an affair with her.  She became PG and the sin complicated even more.  He had the husband killed on the war’s front when he wouldn’t go to bed with his wife.  The scripture goes on to say God was very displeased with David’s actions of sinning and hiding it for so long never recognizing it and confessing it.

This really hit me as I was reading it.  No one knows sin and hiding it any better than I do.  Also, no one knows the guilt and shame which develop within us as we stay in hiding any better than me.  Even as we begin to address our hurts, hang-ups and habits, we stumble with sin.  God wants us to take advantage of the help He offers us.  Some of this help is with our spouse (if we are married), some is with friends, some with accountability from a support group, etc..  God nudges us to talk to someone, but our pride and insecurities scream that we will be disowned if people know.  Also, there is that voice in us which says, “I enjoy this sometimes.”  Well, no matter what the circumstances, God has given us His Son Jesus Christ as our example.  Christ in turn has given us The Holy Spirit to strengthen us to step in rightness.  I’ve never taken this step and found judgment.  Instead, since I’ve begun my own journey of recovery, I’ve found support, forgiveness, love, tenderness, mercy and grace.  All of these are God’s characteristics for which He offers when we are obedient to His Spirit’s nudges within.  I truly want to keep on this track as my journey continues.  Reach out if you find yourself nodding your head knowing you are hiding something.  God is waiting with love, support and overcoming.

God was very kind yesterday making known to me what I wrote.  There is something however I was still needing to grab ahold of regarding the new creation God gave me.  In my mind I’ve always wanted to be a person I’m not.  I was fine with the fact I love to garden–any kind–vegetables as well as flowers.  Both give me great delight.  I also love singing and working with people as I do with education and with the ministry connections.  I’ve hated the fact that the worldly definition of “manly characteristics” included at the top of the list:  sports, mechanics, building things, etc.  These were not strengths for me.  I wished I could be a person of all of this.  Well, I’ve settled in my mind I am ok with who God created me to be and I can be “His masterpiece” with who I am.

So, yesterday another flaw I’ve known about me came to the forefront just as I was going to bed.  Last week I was in the attendance of some tremendous training specific to the educational consulting I do.  It was excellent.  From it three of us, two from the state dept of education and I, are going to a conference at the last minute which the presenter invited us to attend.  If Kathy had been with me she’d told me to check my calendar.  I even texted her about checking hers to see if she could go along.  She couldn’t because next week is VBS and she’s taking grandkids daily.  I on the other hand didn’t check mine, I just “knew” I was OK to go.  As I was getting ready for bed last night I was reviewing next week’s schedules in my head and was grateful the conference didn’t conflict with the quartet practice we have next Tuesday.  I leave Wed. am.  Then it hit me!  Our quartet is practicing next Tuesday because we are singing a big program Thursday night in Boise which has been on my calendar in my phone for 3 months.  Somehow, today and Monday I will need to see if someone else can go in my place to the conference.  I’m writing all of this because something that I have known is a weakness is checking detail.  Usually when this happens it is just a matter of rearranging things so they can still take place.  In this case, I can’t abandon the quartet and it is a costly error in that the flight is already booked, etc.

In times past I would be beating myself up for days regarding this.  Today, God is wanting me to see that I’m a new creation that is still human.  He has given me a great detail wife who I need to access compensating for this weakness.  She’d happily complete this area with me if I’d allow her.  So, today I will swallow my human pride and ask her to help me do this.  She has been trying to get me to coordinate our phones so she can see my calendar as well as her own.  Now, I see why she wanted to do this!  She knows my weakness too.  God gives us those who will complete us if we will only use this help.  I don’t have to beat myself up for being incomplete.  I can instead thank God for giving me a strength to compensate for where I’m not.  Only Satan and my “old self pride” wants me to resist help.  My new creation recognizes my weaknesses and seeks to fill the gaps with the help God has already given me.

This morning’s devotion showed me something I’ve longed to know and understand.  It started with a devotion by the Blackaby’s which was titled: Tempted as We Are.  It defines from scriptures:  Hebrews 2:18 and I Corinthians 10:13 how we can be tempted and God gives us a way of escape.  Then I was reading my scripture which was the end of I Samuel and the start of II Samuel.  Saul and three sons including Jonathan were killed.  When David was informed of this he mourned and led the mourning for all of his men.  Joyce Meyers writes a footnote about the importance of mourning and that God comforts those who mourn.  She goes on to say that if we keep in denial what we are to mourn we will have side effects which will lead to unhealth.

As I began to journal I wrote to God telling Him I’ve mourned the loss of my innocence but I still do have struggles with temptation and finding the way of escape as He promises.  I asked what I’m missing here?  It was quite incredible to have Him say, “I want you to back up.  Yes, you have grieved the loss of your childhood and the abuse of the child you were.  The physical abuse and sexual abuse were two things, but added to it them was the abuse mentally to who I created you to be.  No, you were not like your father or many of your brothers.  You learned to despise yourself for this and thought you were less than a man for this–thus you thought your own sexual use was due to this.  You now know this is a lie, but you have never found the love for the very one I created you to be.  This is what I want you to see.  Ephesians 2:10 says I created you as My masterpiece.  There is no mistake in this.”  He went on to tell me that believing the truth that I am a masterpiece adds the element of strength I’ve missed all this time.  It is now time for me to grab ahold of it.  This truth of character is part of the new creation God has given me.

I hope this makes some sense to you as a reader of this blog.  It is foundational for me.  I thank God for His patience as He continues to create in me (each of us) the new creation He gave to us as we accepted His Son Jesus into our hearts and received the Gift of The Holy Spirit into our lives.

Today wraps up a work week that has been a continuous time of surprises seeing God working in multiple settings .  I was able to talk with my sis Bonnie last night and she sounded like a new person.  She knows nothing yet about her test results but it was good to talk with her while she felt so much better. My other sis in Calif. is coming this summer as of yesterday’s call.  She is being accompanied by her daughter.  Bonnie may come with them.  All we need is to get our third sister from Indiana and we will all be together for the first time since my brother Ralph’s funeral service four years ago.  With the waning health of some, it would be a blessing from God if this could materialize.

Yesterday morning as I arrived to the training I’ve been attending this week I walked into the auditorium to have standing right in front of me, the speaker who will come in July to work with our Idaho team of consultants.  I thanked him for his great work and availability to work with us.  He then invited me to come to his focused training next week in San Diego, Thursday and Friday.  he gave us tickets allowing us to attend and bypass the $700.00/person cost.  He also reserved rooms in the hosting hotel.  He is bringing together the leadership for the districts across our country on their next steps.  So, the state dept. lead and I will be attending this for our own state.  I just stand in awe of how God is opening up the doors we have needed to get this coming year’s work aligned with His Purposes.

Yesterday in my journaling I asked God what He wanted me to know from Him.  One thing He said that took me by surprise was that He’d healed me of my voices of self-doubt.  He wanted me to know He’d place a hedge of protection around my mind.  I thanked Him for this but I was reticent to write it.  However, this morning’s scripture had me reading about David’s assurance from God of His leadership in his life in spite of all the doubting family members he had about his being Israel’s next king, etc.  God wanted David to only trust Him and His leadership in his life and David did just that.  Joyce Meyer wrote a footnote in this saying how God had brought her to this point in her walk with Him and her ministry work.  I just felt confirmed that this is what God was telling me.  How affirming this is as well as humbling to know God cares intimately for each of us in this way.

I just have to start today wrapping up yesterday.  Kathy’s testimony last night was truly a God moment.  She was fully present, but more importantly, God’s Holy Spirit was even more present.  I always love it when men are as touched by a woman’s testimony as they are from one of their own gender.  Thank you Father God for the way you use the story of Your work in our lives to assist others with their own walk and healing with you. I do not know yet what the outcome of my sis’s tests are.  I’m hoping to know something today. I know God is Good all the time and I am trusting Him.

Another unexpected miracle happened yesterday that I know is God’s work.  I’ve been attending 3 days of training for the consulting work I do for our state’s educational system.  I asked permission to be part of it for it’s training isn’t being done intentionally for the work I do.  The gentleman presenting yesterday has written a book I had read and am actually presenting tomorrow to some fellow consultants.  I knew this book was right on target for the work we will do next year.  I had shared this with the 3 state dept of education folks also attending this by their invitation.  We were going to meet with the author and presenter following his work yesterday to see if there were anyway he could do a specific training just for us and specific to our work with highly struggling schools.  Well, only as God ordains, He is available next month and we are now on his calendar.  This just never happens with internationally acclaimed people like this.  Yet, God is always in charge when we just let Him lead what He has us doing.  I thanked Him yesterday for having this door open but this morning while reflecting, I just smile with the opportunity to see Him mightily at work in what I used to call my secular work.  I know that all is done for His Glory.  He told me a year ago that He wanted me re-entering this work.  I was struggling so much to say yes to it thinking it wasn’t God’s kingdom work (in His eyes).  He assured me that was only in my head for all of His creation is His work regardless of man’s labels.

What a Great God we get to serve!