FALL, A TIME FOR CHANGE

It's fall y'all.  The green summer leaves gives way for the oranges, yellows and reds of fall (of course there is those brown leaves too) and the warm summer breezes become cooler and cooler.  We change from tank tops and tee shirts to sweatshirts and sweaters, shorts are packed away and the jeans and sweatpants come back out.  Baseball has been transformed to football and campfires move into fireplaces.  It's season of many changes.  I am weird.  I love change.  I love the different seasons.  I love Michigan because for me, this is home.  My children and grandchildren live here within an hour of where we currently live (okay I have 2 children and 2 grandchildren that live in Toledo, Ohio).  This is where I grew up, met Jerry and this is where we raised our family.  For me home is not a house, home is where my heart is, with my family and friends.

We have lived in quite a few different houses over the years.  The longest we stayed in one house was 15 years.  There are many of you out there who have lived in the same house for 40 or 50 years, my mother-in-law has lived in her house for 60 years I believe.  That's great for you but that's not my desire.  Like I said before, I am weird.  I have loved each home we have lived in and each one represented a season in our lives.  Right now the season we are in is one of downsizing.  A brand new, smaller home with less upkeep and no repairs.  But there will be room enough for all my family to gather together.  

Change for some people is very difficult and even heartbreaking.  It can cause anxiety and depression for some.  I totally understand.  Life is hard enough sometimes without throwing in a change like moving.  Some of you out there ave struggled with the thought of selling and moving, some of you dread the thought.  Let me just say this...life is full of changes, some good, some not so good, but in order to grow, in order to become the person God created you to be, you must be willing to change.  

A change of heart and a change of mind will affect not only our way of life it will also change our words and our thought patterns.  By allowing God's Holy Spirit to transform our hearts and renew our minds, our lives can be more peaceful, more joyful and blessed.  Our fears can fade, our anxiety can calm, our faith can increase, and our words can be filled with love.  Although this process of change is not always pleasant, to look in the mirror and see the reality of our heart condition, the result is life changing.   

To be honest we can do our best to try and change our heart and renew our mind on our own but it will not work as well as when we allow the Holy Spirit to dive into the deep recesses we keep hidden from even ourselves.   Only the Power of God working through the Holy Spirit can reveal the truth.  So today I ask you to allow God to dig deep.  Allow change to become a new pattern for growth in your life and I am going to join y'all.    

CONSTRUCTION ZONE AHEAD

Enter At Your Own Risk!!!  Construction Zone Ahead!!!

The process of construction can be exciting.  The endless possibilities and dreams of what could be encourage us and propel us into a new adventure.  Decisions to make can seem endless.  For example last week I woke up at 5:00am.  I found myself tossing and turning over what countertop to choose.  I had one already picked out but I doubted my decision.  Was the one I chose the one I wanted or not?  Do I want granite?  Quartz?  Marble?  Concrete?  Then there is the color and style.  Some countertops are so busy and then there are others that are plain.  A simple decision of countertops can leave me frustrated. Which to choose????  
   

This process is not for the faint at heart.  It takes a lot of hard work and a lot of training to build a house.  First things first....picking our a plan.  How many bedrooms?  Do you want the kitchen in the front or in the back?  Dining room?  How many bathrooms?  And on and on and on.  I literally searched house plans online every day for months.  There are millions of plans and which one you choose depends on how much you want to spend and how much square footage you need.  The endless possibilities sent my head spinning but over time I finally found what I was looking for.  Thank God!  The process is just beginning.  A pole barn is in place to store all our stuff.  Now we patiently sit and wait for the next step.   

Construction--my life is a construction zone.  God is continually building me into the person He wants me to be.  The process is as exciting as building our house but it also has its challenges and frustrations.  There are many times in my life that I want things to go my way, not God's way.  There are so many times I have to choose between the narrow path and the wide path.  God never forces me to take the narrow path, it's a choice I get to make.  I get to choose between right and wrong, good and evil.  I get to choose if I say yes or no.  The thing I have come to realize is that with each choice I make, each decision I decide on...I have to face the consequences of my decision.  I have to live with the choice I make.

I am a work in progress.  God has the blueprints for my life and He is constructing me in a way that is best for me.  Others may not approve of God's plan for me, but I do.  He always works things out for my good so I trust in Him to continue constructing me more into His image.  While I still have decisions to make in my life, I trust in His guidance just like I'm trusting in our builders guidance.  They have the blueprints and the knowledge.  One is building my house here on Earth and the other one, God, is building my eternal home.  

IT'S BEEN A WILD RIDE LATELY

These past few months have been a season of change for Jerry and i.  We sold our lake house.  Yes, I know everyone asks us the same question..."Why?"  It's hard for me to explain but the truth is that for us it was time to move on to a new adventure.  While I loved the view, God removed the desire for lake life in both Jerry and I at the same time.  I actually stood on our deck, staring out at a magnificent view and said, "I"m done"  It seemed so weird hearing those words come out of my mouth but in m heart I knew our time at the lake was over.  Jerry was in 100% agreement (thank you God). Now to be honest our children and grandchildren were not in agreement but they support our decision. 

Patience, persistence, waiting on God, trusting in His timing all played a key role in this selling and moving process.  We believed God would work this all out for our good.  God's timing is always perfect and His ways are higher than ours.  His thoughts are higher than our thoughts.  We began the process of sowing seeds of trust and belief.  We began sowing seeds of praise.  Waiting on God has been a learning experience my entire life but this one was a little scary.  We sold the house knowing that the process to build would take at least 6 months.  Where would we live in the meantime?  Where would we go?  What would we do?

God had a plan all along.  To be honest it would be a very long story to go into all the details so just let me say this...God stepped up and provided us place to live with dear friends.  They have opened up their home to us and for that I am eternally grateful.  God has always shown up in our lives in ways I never imagined.  I truly believe that the reason God has shown up for us in so many ways is because we do our best to sow seeds of praise and gratitude along with a strong faith and trust in Him.  

I know life can be very stressful and chaotic and depressing.  It's so easy to get angry and upset when things don't go the way we expect them to go.  It's easy to get impatient and frustrated, but those emotions, those feelings, as real as they are, cause us much more pain.  If we can earn to praise God even under the harshest of circumstances, we will reap a harvest of biblical proportion.  

Ephesians 6:7b  A man reaps what he sows. 

So my question to me and to you is this...What are you sowing?  What do you want to harvest? 

WHERE DO I BEGIN?

Where do I begin?  I really don't know where to begin or if you'll even begin to understand what I'm trying to say, but here goes nothing....  

I feel like I have lost sight of myself and who God created me to be.  I have a very hard time explaining this but ever since we bought our lake house 3 years ago I have felt like I have been in a spiritual battle that I was losing. The truth is that God took me through a time I really didn't expect.  For so very many years my TV viewing was wholesome shows with happy endings.  No crime shows for me for probably about 7 years.  Then I got hooked again.  NCIS, Criminal Minds, Blacklist and a few others got me back into the crime shows.  This time it was different though, the thing I love about crime shows and mysteries is solving the crime, solving the mystery.  Figuring out what triggered someone to commit a crime, what happened in the past that caused that person to commit a crime.

I love to try to figure out what's going on in a persons mind, what makes people tick. For a very long time I felt guilty for watching these shows.  What would God think of me watching these shows?  The thing is these shows taught me some very valuable lessons that God has used to help me.  One of the main things I have learned is that there is always a reason, whether real or imaginary, as to why a person does what they do.  Now I'm not just talking about TV shows and criminals, I'm talking about real life.  

Hurting people hurt people.   Now this is not an excuse but it does explain a lot. There are a lot of people out in the world who are in a lot of emotional and physical pain.   Through these shows I've been watching, God has taught me about the human heart and how it can affect our minds, our moods, our attitudes and our actions.   He has reinforced a truth I have known for a long time...out of the heart, a mouth speaks.  

Our mouths, our tongues, are weapons that can be used to destroy others.  Our mouths lead us to act out in ways we normally wouldn't even dream of.  Our mouth can build up a rage so deep inside us that it can lead to unspeakable acts...just watch the news or listen to a police scanner.  Hurting people are hurting people.  It's real.  TV may dramatize it, but the reality of it is true.  Our hearts are wounded, bruised and have become hardened.  Because of that we act out in ways we shouldn't.  We say things we never imagined would come out of our mouth.  But don't give up.  There is hope.

Jesus Christ can heal and soften and restore even the hardest of hearts.  He can forgive even the harshest criminal. He can change not only our hearts, but our words and our actions.  He is the one who died to free us from the chains of our past.  Let Him heal your heart today.