VIVA...LAS VEGAS!!

Just wanted to let all my readers know I will be in Las Vegas for the next three days for a convention, so don't freak out when you don't see any new posts!!

I will be living it up Vegas style!!

You know what they say......What happens in Vegas...stays in Vegas!

Love to all!

100% Me - Approved and Accepted!

You know I hadn't plan on writing this today, I had another post started and just needed some finishing touches and I was going to post it. Well, things have changed and I now feel compelled after watching a Joel Osteen program to write something totally different. Joel talked about negative feelings....about ourselves. "Feeling good about who you are" was the title of his sermon. Over the last few weeks I have lived in that world of negative feelings...about me. Feelings of unworthiness, feelings of not being good enough, feelings that I needed to change who I was. What Joel had to say about this really made me think. (I will use a lot of what he said in this post put into my own words) Living in a world of negative feelings-not towards others-but towards myself is damaging and not in agreement with God. When I am critical with myself than I am being critical of God...because he created me. He created me for good, for his purpose and I have to believe he knows what he is doing. It is the enemy’s job to accuse me, to point out all my faults, to give me the nagging feeling that something is wrong with me, that somehow I don't measure up and It is up to me who I listen too.

A couple days ago I wrote on the qualities of love and how as Christians we must show these qualities to others as a witness for God. But I never placed the same idea on applying those qualities to myself. God commands us to love one another, to love our neighbor as OURSELVES. So in other words we can not properly love our neighbor as God intended if we don't love and accept ourselves. Wow! You can't give away something you don't have. If I have negative feelings about myself it will affect my relationships with others and worst of all my relationship with God. What I send out ...the feelings I have of myself...is what will come back to me. I can spend all my time loving others, but If I don't love me that love will never reach them. Love starts with God, it flows to me and it is then up to me how it flows out of me. I can change my rags of condemnation for robes of righteousness (good one, Joel!) I can take inventory of what I am good at, not keep list of what I am not. When I can do this, I can live out and give out the love that I was intended to.

I must have a better opinion of myself, get into agreement with God. I must not let condemning voices take root in my mind. Instead of picking on myself I must try and do my best. Will I fail....yes! But God knows my heart, he knows I desire to be a better person and he is on my side. He is not focused on my faults, he's not keeping a list of those faults, he's sees the diamond in the rough and everything I am trying to do right. He is not focused on all my bad moves; he forgets them the minute I ask for forgiveness, he focuses on all my good moves. The ones that make a difference, the ones that impact his kingdom. And when I am feeling less then worthy, less than perfect, he asks me to lean on him and he will make the changes that are needed to perfect me.

So this is me, I am; outgoing..friendly..compassionate..loving..caring..sensitive..deep..open..real.. romantic..giving..funny..attractive (yeah, I said it!)..an improvement over yesterday..and most of all a woman who's sole purpose and desire is to seek after God. Notice, I didn't put any negatives....oh believe me I have some and I really would like to change them, but little by little I am growing and making progress in becoming more on who I can become and not focusing on who I am not. God is pleased with me, he approves of me, he accepts me just the way I am.....warts and all. I am starting to feel good about who I am. I am beginning to get into agreement, that I am a child of the most high God and if he accepts me and loves me, than I accept me and love me.

I may not be who I want to be yet, but thank God I am not who I used to be!

I am 100% Me - Approved and Accepted by God! Well if I'm good enough for him.........I am good enough for me!

Love

In honor of today being Valentines Day it seemed appropriate to write on love. The one thing most people place the most importance on. Most of us would give up success, money, power all for just a hint of real love.....I know I would! Love can bring so much happiness, joy and fulfillment. We can find it in so many place; our spouses, our children, our friends and family and the most divine love of all...with our Savior. We enjoy being and feeling loved and we also enjoy showing and giving love. Love is the most powerful, positive emotion a person can experience, and we were all created with that need.

I read something today that I would like to share. It was an article written on the impact of Godly love and it used the parable about the prodigal son. What a wonderful story of love, compassion and forgiveness. Here is what the article stated as the Qualities of Love:

Love energizes
Love heals
Love encourages
Love has power to forgive
Love brings about generosity
Love enables joyful serving
Love restores
Love builds self esteem
Love is kind

I wonder what kind of world we would live in if every person would express these qualities of love. As Christians this is our job to live out these qualities so that people can see God in us. It affects our witness to others and impacts God's kingdom. Just as love influences our own life we must use love to touch others.

I want to wish all my friends today in honor of Valentines that they find the love that God meant for them to have. I wish for them to find the agape love that comes only to us by the Holy Spirit. To have the love of family, friends, and the passionate, romantic love that comes from a mate (something I'm still searching for!). Know that I love each of you with all of the above qualities and you all bring blessings to me.

Happy Valentines Day!!

The Elephant Is Gone

There has been an very big and ugly elephant standing in the way of a relationship. He was blocking the path to a person that meant so much to me. He was very scary and I was too much of a coward to ask him to move. He was too tall to climb over and every time I would try and go around him he would hit me with his big trunk, knock me to the ground and step on my heart.

He wasn't a very nice elephant.

So, last night over a plate of spagetti, an hour of American Idol and a little heart to heart, the elephant was tackled, bound, put in a crate, placed on a ship and was set sail for......well....I really don't care where.

I didn't like that elephant. I hope I never see him again.

The Obstacle of Pride

"but the worries of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful." Mark 4:19

Yesterday I wrote about a stronghold that I suffer with and how God has convicted me of it. So I put it out there, I "confessed" it and repented of it. So I started moving forward, convictions over and in place. Man, was I wrong! God definitely wasn't done with me yet. He still had some convicting to do and whoa....did it hit me square between the eyes!

I sat down to do my quiet time this morning and started a new week in my Beth Moore study. The week was titled "To Glorify God", innocent enough it seemed. I do that already I thought, maybe she can teach me something new. Whoa......wrong again! What the week is about is pride and how it hinders us from glorifying God. A mind captive to self was the title for Day 1. What do you think about when you first awake in the morning... is the first question she asks. Okay there it was, a straight shot...square between the eyes! The last few weeks of "morning" I have woke thinking about me and my image and what was wrong with me. I'm not good enough, people don't love me as I am, I need to change....in other words I was suffering from low self-esteem. Pride wears many masks, she goes on to say, even the mask of low self-esteem. Ouch...that hurt! Most people associate pride with people who think too much of themselves, who are self centered and think they are better than others. Well I have learned that even low self-esteem is self centered. Anything not captive to the glorifying of God is pride. Humility is God-focused not self-focused.

I have been showcasing me rather than him. Something I desire and have expressed too many people, is that people will see God in me. I don't want to walk into a store, a meeting or even church and have people look at me and say...wow she looks good, I love her outfit; I wonder where she got it. Although this is something I enjoy knowing, that people find me attractive and think I dress really "cool"; I don't want this to be my focus. I desire that when I walk in front of people they see something different about me, a light so bright that they have to shield their eyes... I want them to see God. I don't want them to wonder where I got my outfit; I want them to wonder where is that light coming from and where do I find it. I want them to want what I have in Jesus, the true glory that comes in having him in my life.

So I think back over the last couple of weeks and the many times I have been in front of people and I wonder did they see that light that I so desire to shine? Nope...I don't think so. I have been too self-focused instead of God-focused. My light hasn't left but it has dimmed because I have hidden it under a cloak of low self-esteem...of pride. How many times have I missed showing God to people? How many opportunities have I lost while thinking of myself, to talk God to someone that needs to know him? Pride is satan’s specialty, it's what got him expelled from heaven and he will use this tool to bring us down even in the form of low self-esteem... anything that doesn't keep us God-focused. Pride is an enemy that destroys lives, relationships, marriages, ministries, but most importantly it destroys our chance to shine God’s glory. It destroys our usefulness.

I have a calling, I know that. I know that God is working through me to bring the gospel to people and not just the unsaved, but the saved as well. He wants people to see that what he can bring to their lives by what they see in me. Someone in my church that I respect and I strive to attain the Godly-ness that she portrays sent me an email and told me that she admires me and she looks up to me. What?!....Me?! But I look up to her, how can she look up to me? I had shared with her my weakness with depression and she reminded me of a line in the song we sang in church on Sunday..."you use the weak to lead the strong" and then she gave me the scripture of 2 Corinthians 12:9.."And he has said to me "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." Sometimes it's had to see ourselves as a instrument of God through our weakness’, we just want to get rid of them, make them go away, but as the rest of the scripture says: "Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me." Humility comes only from admitting our weaknesses."

Whoa, to those that think pride is a problem only in the lost or unsaved or that it is only defined with the people that think highly of themselves...what a wrong road you are on. I have learned this today. I am a Christian and I suffer from pride. I don't think highly of myself, neither am I conceited, but yet I suffer from pride. I have not made every important undertaking the last few weeks; God glorifying. I have not desired his glory above my own and in my service to others I have not shown God in me. God can only show himself great and mighty through the humble. He wants to make himself recognizable through me and if I allow my focus to become about me than it makes him unrecognizable.

This is a difficult lesson to learn and I have had to fall upon my knees in repentance (and confess it on this blog) and I am crying as I write this knowing that once again I am showing myself in a not so pretty light....but I do this, I hope in a spirit of humbleness. There is another conviction that God is working on me and I will write on it soon when I am able to admit to it. Pray for me friends! Pray that I live my life without pride, that I live a God-focused life. To live the life that I so desire and that God desires for me.

I leave you with this scripture and one last thought: My hand made all these things, Thus all these things came into being, declares the Lord. But to this one I will look, To him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My word" Isaiah 66;2 - What an amazing thought... having God look to me! For God to respect me when I remove the obstacle of pride: I want that, I desire that! As Beth Moore put it "God just likes to hang out with humble people" WOW!

The Bricks of Insecurity

Disclaimer: This blog in no way is meant to hurt anyone, make anyone feel guilty and most importantly these are my problems and my convictions and are not meant to point at anyone else. I can not stress this point enough, this is about my feelings. I also am not trying to enlist anyone to feel sorry for me and to change the way they talk or act around me. I would hate that more than you could imagine.

It has taken me several days to write this blog. It has not been easy and I have walked away many times refusing to write anymore. I have cried so much and prayed so much that I don't feel like I have anything left to give. This is not something most people want to share with others, to be this real is scary. It wasn't until this morning at church that I realized - by something Kyle said in his sermon - that I knew I had to face it, I had to bring God my Song of Pain. I had to deal with it. I do not want this stronghold to hinder my approach into the 40 days study that is starting this week. We were asked to come to the front of the church and dedicate the next few weeks in really finding what God has for us through this study. I knew until I faced my problem I could not give to the study what was needed in order to truly learn the Purpose that God has for me. So here it is what I have been struggling with the last few days and why I haven't written any blogs. Here I am being real and letting people see me in what I consider a not so pretty light........

The other day while talking with my friend Amanda on the phone she told me about going to a women's meeting at her church the night before. She told me that the speaker for the night was wearing a backpack and she had bricks with words written on them of things that as women we struggle with. She had someone place them in her backpack, one by one. By the time the bricks were all in the backpack the woman could barely walk. She did this to demonstrate all the different things- or feelings- as women that we carry everyday on our shoulders. This story really stuck with me over the last few days and I have realized that my backpack is full of bricks of insecurity. My shoulders are heavy from carrying them around and I really want to lay them down.

The fear or the feeling of being unloved is probably my greatest source of insecurity. My relationships with my friends have been in the forefront of my life the last few days I have been searching for my value and my place and have not come up with the answers I wanted. I have always struggled with friendships and trying hard to find my value within them. This is something I hate about myself and it is something I wish I could desperately change! I always seem to have the feelings that friends given the choice would really rather be with someone else than me. I know they love me and I know I am not bad to be around but they would choose someone else if they could. I have seen it happen lately and it hurts. I don't want it too and I try to fight it and not take it personal: but still it hurts. Being left out is something no one enjoys, neither is feeling second best. I often wonder what is wrong with me; do I not give enough to my relationships? Have I been less than attentive or loving? Do I give too much of myself and it turns people off? What can I change to make them love me more? I have often thought the last couple of weeks about walking away and starting over somewhere else. Go somewhere where no one knows me and not allowing anyone to get close to me, that way I won't get hurt.

I know that some of you are already shaking your head and saying she's crazy and self centered (please see disclaimer above) and soooo...insecure. Yep, I am insecure that’s the whole point of this blog. I am not saying that I should be the only friend that my friends should have. This could not be farther from the truth! I am the type of person that loves having a multitude of friends and could never be satisfied with just one and would never expect someone else too either. I HATE, HATE having these feelings of insecurities!! I often cry wondering what it must feel like to be truly loved, to really feel safe within a relationship. To know that I bring value to someone’s life. That spending time with me is not something they feel they should do, but something they want to do.

You have to understand these feelings are not something that have just developed over the last few days or even months, it is something that has hounded me for most of my life. I have never felt secure in anyone’s love. To understand this you have to look into my past and see why I struggle. I had no father and the mother I had was so self centered that she didn't have room to love me. I have been physically, emotionally and sexually abused over and over again growing up by people close to me and that were meant to protect me. At the age of sixteen I finally thought God had sent me a man to take the place of the father I never had but.... he had other ideas other than being my father. My own mother threaten to get a lawyer and take my home from me just a few months ago because I had not paid back some money I owed her. Can you begin to see why I struggle with insecurities and the feeling of not being loved or feeling under valued? People that you expect to love you unconditionally, don't. People that you think should care what happens to you, don't. So many of my friends can't understand this because they have never been there. They grew up in loving homes knowing they were loved and that they could trust that love.

God spoke to me a couple weeks ago while struggling with this issue and he has convicted me. He has told me instead of looking for value, I am to give value. Instead of trying to have a best friend, BE the best friend. Instead of always sitting by the same person at lunch or at the movie, sit with someone else that may feel insecure in her place in people’s lives. Instead of dwelling on my insecurities, make some woman feel secure in me. There are so many women right before my eyes that are looking for a friend to feel safe with, someone to show them that they matter, and someone to make a place for them. This is not easy to do, I want to stay inside my comfort zone, but I have realized that my comfort zone doesn't exist anymore. This a excerpt from an email that I sent to Michelle L. a couple of weeks ago after I had my "light bulb” moment:

"I think I had a "light bulb" go off last night at Starbucks. Lindsay, LoriAnn and I were talking about our comfort zone and how we were being taken outside them. I realized that is exactly what God wanted me to do. He wants me to stop putting so much "stock" into a friendship and most importantly stepping out and seeing what (or who) could be out there. I have struggled most of my life on the friendship thing. Always feeling like I am never good enough or that someone is always better than me. Always believing that a friend would rather be with someone else besides me. I know many women struggle with this and many of them could be within the circle of women at GM. Actually I know of a couple. I think God wants me to reach out to them, reach out to people I would not normally reach out to. I think he wants me to be someone a woman can feel safe with. A friend, that when they are with me they feel wanted and needed. I think he wants me to give to them the one thing I have always struggled with, value. I see the way some of the ladies of GM respond to me and I want to develop that and make them feel secure in my love for them. Some of them have reached out to me but I always focused on my other friendships. God is asking me to step outside of looking for validation to giving that validation to others."



I have looked too much for others to fill my empty cup by seeking approval, affirmation and value and have been miserable until something or someone has filled it. Although I believe it is not wrong to have the need to be loved but... it is wrong to think I can make anyone love me the way I need to be loved. This can only be done by the love given to me by God. He is the only one that is never turned off by my overwhelming need to be loved and valued. He seeks to give this love to me, for me to find completeness in him and only Him. He is the only one I should be offering my empty cup and asking him to fill it with, himself. So many people have told me that God will never send me the husband I so desire until I make him my only desire. I think it's more like he won't send him until I have left these insecurities behind and trust only in his love. I can never love or believe in someone else's love until my heart has been satisfied by God's love first. I have to get to that place that God is my only value and the only system to which I measure it. This will be the hardest thing I have ever tried to conquer and It probably will not happen over night. I will digress and take something someone said or did and place my insecurities on it. I have tried the last couple of weeks to do what I feel God told me to do and so of course satan has been on the prowl feeding into my insecurity and it has crippled me. I have let my feelings get the best of me and I have been shutting down. Insecurity is a stronghold in my life and is not allowing me to live the life that God wants and has asked me to live. I have an overwhelming desire to overcome this stronghold and I feel like God has challenged me in this a lot the last few weeks to help me see that he is the only source of power that will allow me the freedom I seek.

Because I am trying to renew my mind and learning to seek God as my only source of value, I am asking that no one respond with comments to this blog. I have no doubt some of you want to comment and tell me that you love me and value me, but please don't....I probably won't believe you anyway. All I ask is that you pray for me, pray that I will find the love and security that I so desperately seek in the only true place I can find it.

Father help me to abide in your love. Help me to seek you always, to never stray from your side. Help me to overcome this stronghold that has wrapped itself around my life and my soul. Give me freedom from it. I so desperately need to feel loved and you are the only source in which I can fill that need. Help me to stop putting so much pressure on myself to be something I am not in order to get others to love me. Help me to look only to you and who you want me to be. "Let me hear Your lovingkindness in the morning: For I trust in you: Teach me the way in whick I should walk: For to you I lift up my soul. Psalm 143:8