Contentment

I've been a bad blogger and neglected you all far too long. There are a lot of things that I have in mind to blog about so I will hopefully be posting fairly regularly until they are all common knowledge.
This year as most of you know has been a hell on earth for myself compared to the majority of all my other years. I do not regret it, nor in hindsight would I do it differently, it has been a learning experience and a period of tremendous stretching in my personal life. I could say that all of it began last September-October when a friend was rendered speechless for a period of time and I began praying for healing and comfort in the meantime. That later culminated into the dream I posted about in March.  During that time in between, I prayed for her daily along with all the rest of the people and issues I pray for and I felt a near constancy to continue that. After the dream, it was constant and came to a point of literal physical pain on my part when I prayed for her. I've prayed in earnest before for people, but never had an experience quite like this. I communicated with her during this time minimally and restrained from telling her about the details of the dream other than that I was praying for her like never before. Sometime in the late spring she sent an email asking for prayers for an attack she was experiencing and this told my head what my heart had known for months but wasn't sure how to verbalize. I did tell her face to face the majority of the dream in the mid summer and she received it well and told me some about what had been going on during the months. I was not at all surprised to learn what she was telling me and it only solidified my thankfulness to God for pushing me to grow and for me being open to do so. This attack ended and the project saw fruition on my birthday this year and I told her that was the best birthday present I could have ever gotten! Through all of this and the purchasing and remodeling of the house and my going back to school and other family issues that have arisen, it has been a YEAR.
Through all of this growing and stretching I have realized that I spent at least the last year content in my spiritual life all the while thinking I was exactly where I was supposed to be and that God and I were doing good in our relationship. I'm here to tell you now that this is completely amazing to me how ignorant I was! As a result of this now I find myself a a place where the people I have around me are not always on the same page as I am spiritually. Do not misinterpret, I am certainly not better than any of them nor am I holier than thou at any of them. I have however spiritually matured to a new, deeper level and I feel wonderful about that and about where my life in Christ is going, but am burdened now for the people I see who are exactly where I was a year ago. I want so badly to be able to share and tell them that they are comfortable, but I know that just as it would have only upset me a year ago, it is not wise to do so and therefore I leave it be where it is.
Suffice it to say that I am now more in love with God than ever and that I want so badly for the people around me to join me here and experience what I am experiencing even with the pain.

No regrets

Originally this blog was to be about Agape love, but that will be saved for another time.
My family heard just a little while ago that my grandfather, my mother's father, passed away this morning. He lived 90 years and accomplished so many things that I'm not sure I could accomplish half of them if I live to be 190.  But he leaves behind multitude of family who love him and will miss him dearly. I can sit here and write this through tears all while smiling because I know that he is now with Jesus and rejoicing, and because I know that he would want me to carry on. Don't lose faith he'd say, and he's so right.
I love that I have so many memories with him throughout my life, and will treasure them now even more than I already did. From teaching me to play ping-pong while I stood on milk crates so I could see over the table, to watching him do his devotions every day and know that he had the Bible memorized ten times over, to listening to him tell stories about his life and his childhood, and courting my grandmother, and then being utterly confused when he tried to help me with Algebra homework. Through all these and dozens of other memories, I always knew that he would drop anything to help any of us accomplish something, and that he would spend hours teaching us lessons that you can't learn in a classroom. The value of hard work, honesty, faith, family, and friendship among others. I can say without a shred of doubt that I have no regrets for the time I've had with him, even the times when I know I let him down and disappointed him because he was always ready to reach out and pull me close and assure me that even though I may have hurt him, there is a lesson to be learned here and when he got finished talking, I wouldn't even remember that I had hurt him.  So for now, this is my ode to him, the man who showed me what it truly means to live as Christ in us and to see the good in people.

Things that make me smile

I needed to remind myself of these simple things that make me smile today. You get to observe. ☺

1. A bunch of daisies
2. Traveling
3. Babies laughing
4. Puppies
5. Seeing my friends happy
6. Feeling the sun warm my skin
7. Being still in the woods and just listening
8. Watching college football
9. Kittens playing
10. Riding the motorcycle
11. Spending time with friends and family
12. Feeling sand between my toes
13. Walking in crystal clear, spring fed creek water