His love overbears mine

Today I was looking at the little boy with autism I meet with each week.

It's been hard. EXTRA hard. Getting peed on, yelled at, pushed, table dropped on, picking up everything he dropped, giving foot rubs, trying to motivate him in order to do exercises... alas, it was hard and exhausting. It was annoying, depressing, hopeless, sad... Yesterday I simply cried all the way home and fell on my knees as soon as I made it to my room... Back to the little boy....

As I was looking at ____________ go after the dog in his backyard, just frolicking along; then the Lord said, "It's hard to love unconditionally isn't it?"

All I could do is shift my eyes wherever ______________ went and hear my heart beating.
Unconditional love.

Loving when I get yelled at and pushed.
REALLY loving when I'm trying to do what's best for him and he refuses me. Loving, even when I get [on purpose] peed on.
Genuinely loving when I have to follow ______________ each step of the way to keep him from hurting himself as he drops papers, throws his toy bin across the room, tips over heavy wooden chairs and the DVD rack... and (this might sound silly) as the DVDs fall, I must LOVE.

Then I realized.... how short I fall... of Him.
I realized how tiny I really am and how grand His love is.
I realized that God loves _______________ with all his shortcomings.
And I realized that God loves me with all my inexcusable shortcomings.

Even when I refused what He offered, He followed me to keep me from going under.
Even when I was having a ball ignoring what He was saying, He kept motivating me to "Come to Me all who are weary and heavy laden.... I will give you rest."


He saw me before I was ever made, and loved me...

Amazing.

I [don't] know

Lord, I know You can see farther than I can.
I know You know why this is happening.
But I don't.
And I know that it's best that way...
Right now I am not understanding.
I want to ask, "Help me understand please..."
Yet the thing that stops me from asking that is knowing that at least YOU understand.
Even when no one else understands what's going on, much less me, You do and that closes all my further questions.

Even with the uneasiness, You know.
I wonder how my faith is right now... being uneasy and all.
I read a saying this week, "Faith- is not believing that God can do it, but that God WILL do it."
Good refrain.
That battles with my heart though.
Or on the contrary, my heart battles with that.

Right now my heart says, "Why? How? What does this mean?" of my circumstances.
Are those the right questions to be asking?

I've always tried to live thankful, as Your Word says.
Maybe not being in the most desired circumstances, yet persevering just because... because You're still there. But does that mean not doing something? If right now I'm in an undesired circumstance, do I "go with the flow"? In other words, wait till You bring something else my way?

Honestly, I don't want to. I want to act. I want to do. I want to move.
Maybe I am moving and I'm not even noticing.

Lord, I know You can see farther than I can.

I know You know why this is happening.

But I don't.

And I know that it's best that way...

Right now I am not understanding.

I want to ask, "Help me understand please..."

Yet the thing that stops me from asking that is knowing that at least YOU understand.

Even when no one else understands what's going on, much less me, You do and that closes all my further questions.

My Teacher

I was listening to a sermon recently. The preacher was saying that there are a bunch of books on prayer... "How to pray fervently", "How to increase your prayer time", "Praying at all times."

Honestly, I own books like these. Trying to search for a better strategy to pray. "Maybe when I read this book, I'll definitely be praying more often."

Yet, the preacher said, there is only One teacher. The Holy Spirit is the One who can teach you how to pray. No book, no 5-steps-to-success pamphlet, no one can teach you how to pray better than the Holy Spirit.

"He is your teacher."


How easy has the Lord laid it out for us? Yet, I tend to complicate things... tangle them up;  only for Him, His grace and love to swoop down and untangle my mess one time and again.

The Simple Life

Today: the more you possess, the more worth you are.
Jesus says the contrary. He says that you're more blessed when you give away.

Right now I'm sitting in my room surrounded by bundles and random mounds of things that I don't know where to put. I have so many things that I have no space left to put them.

Since about a month ago, I realized that I loathed my crunched, no-budge space in my closet. SO full that I had to literally put my whole body weight in to push clothes apart in order to retrieve a shirt I wanted to wear for the day. More than 50 pairs of shoes... I was compared to Mariah Carey & her closet (NOT a compliment in my mind).

Those are glimpses of her closet. I was watching a video where they're actually walking through her closet... x-p

Ok, moving on.

So I started picking clothes and other material things that I hadn't used in a while. I took those and donated them. Now, I usually donate them to Goodwill but then my mom told me about this other place where they give out clothes for free to people who need them. I thought that was a great idea!! Not giving it to Goodwill so other people could buy it, but giving it to a place where people can get free clothes. And not even knowing it, I found out I was donating my clothes to a Christian ministry! :)

Yet, I still live in excess. Maybe it's my room that's too small... uuuh NO. Excuses.

As I was staring at everything all over my room, I said, "Ugh, I just want to possess less. Live a simple life. Less material things." I'm just so fed up with things.
The eye will never be satisfied and the flesh will never cease to want.

I find that the more you possess, the more attached you become to earth, and the farther you get from God's heart.

And please don't allow this post to be a standard for you in any way. The Lord deals with each and every one of us in different ways & He is dealing with me now about my heart.

HE is our standard.

HIS life was the simplest life that glorified the Father to the utmost.