Numero Uno

I am so excited for the year to come. Surprisingly enough I did not make any New Years resolutions, I wanted something bigger and longer lasting than my last few new years resolutions that lasted about as long as it took me to write them down. This year I needed a promise of more and a little help (ok a lot of help) I needed a promise from the Lord and I got it! I have been praying for quite some time now for the Lord to bring change, healing and stability in my life and after almost a year of praying the same thing over and over a realization hit me, which was I was praying the words but not giving it to God. I was holding on to my life in my own hands so tightly that the only way I can explain it is imagine holding on to something so tightly that it starts melting in your hand ( like M&M's) I was melting my life away and I had the stains in my hands to prove it. So this year I am giving the Lord all my M&M's for safe keeping :-) that was pretty cheesy! Anyway I became so sick of hearing myself even talk, because everything I was saying was not even close to what I was doing. I wanted change but wasn't allowing change. Matthew 6:22 speaks to me with such truth that it gives me goosebumps, "Your eye is a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is good, your whole body is filled with light. But when your eye is bad, your whole body is filled with darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is!" That was me during all that has happened with my family and in my life the past few years my eyes have only been seeing the bad they have been so confused so misled so directionally challenged and corrupt looking for all the wrong things so much so that is has literally been tearing me apart from the inside out. I need to see things through God's eyes so that there is no more darkness. Anyway back to my "needing of a promise from the Lord". On Christmas eve while standing in church where I honestly did not want to be, I felt God give me his promise and I knew from that moment on that 09' was going to be full of changes for me and healing for me if just give it over to him. I felt reassurance that by next Christmas eve when standing in the exact same place my life will in fact be completely changed for the better, and most importantly not just my life but my families life. My daily prayer is to give over my life to God even in the little things......I DO NOT want control anymore. There are some things that honestly I struggle with some days on an hourly basis, but the reward of not giving into those things will be SOOOO Much greater in the end. The trick is to truly surrender your life and ALLLLL of it I mean down to the deepest part of you are. Sometimes I feel like Sarah ( Abraham's wife) when the Lord sent and Angel to tell Abraham and Sarah that they were to have a baby "Then one of them said, "I will return to you about this time next year, and your wife, Sarah, will have a son!" Sarah was listening to this conversation from the tent. Abraham and Sarah were both very old by this time, and Sarah was long past the age of having children. So she laughed silently to herself and said, "How could a worn-out woman like me enjoy such pleasure, especially when my master—my husband—is also so old?"
Then the LORD said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh? Why did she say, `Can an old woman like me have a baby?' Is anything too hard for the LORD? I will return about this time next year, and Sarah will have a son." Sarah was afraid, so she denied it, saying, "I didn't laugh." But the LORD said, "No, you did laugh." Genesis 18:10 I feel like I too laugh at God's promises thinking they are too great to ever be true, but even though Sarah laughed the Lord said "is ANYTHING too hard for the lord" and he fulfilled his promise. God's love for us is so amazing and we are so unworthy, the LEAST we could do is believe and trust in him and his abilities more than ourselves!!!!!! I am so looking forward to this year when for the first time I am rid of everything that was holding me back from achieving the great life the Lord has planned for me, I am an empty slate and have nowhere to move from here but UP! My heart desires to find purpose in my life, stability, healing within myself and my family and to find God fearing Wonderful Man that I can spend the rest of my life with :-) I will no longer settle for the things that make me happy in the short term, I am looking for long term JOY in my life, and I am finally willing to give up the day to day minute to minute satisfactions in order to reap the Joys of the Lord. Cliche maybe but the promise of the JOYS of the Lord are my strength through all of this!

I am human and I will make mistakes and I will mess it all up like normal..but all I can say about that is that I am SO thankful for God's amazing GRACE!