Beautiful and Quiet and Noisy

I am not a "nature girl" at all. Don't get me wrong, I love nature. God has made some wonderful things, including stars, trees, oceans, lakes, flowers, animals, and about a zillion and a half other things. I love them all. However, I cannot take heat and humidity, and I hate being "eaten alive" by insects, so I stay indoors most of the time. For a little while tonight though, I was a nature girl.

I went outside to bring the dog in, and it was just so beautiful outside that I just sat in a chair with Cubbie lying quietly in the grass at my feet. Living in a rural area there are not many lights, so on a cloudless night the sky is dark and full of stars, along with an occasional airplane flying by high overhead. For quite a while I just sat, looking up. Praise and prayer just came naturally, sitting there surrounded by all that beauty and the cool air with its occasional refreshing breeze. I quietly sang "Our God is an Awesome God," and the first few lines of Chris Tomlin's "God of Wonders" as I marveled at the stars and the vastness of space.

It was so quiet and beautiful.

Then I sat for awhile with my eyes closed. I started hearing all the life around me. There were insects and frogs nearby, filling the air with their chirps. The birds that spend their whole mornings singing were asleep, turning the stage over to them. Far away, I heard a few dogs barking. A cow mooed, one short, quiet moo. The insects and frogs were the main focus of tonight's concert though.

It was so noisy and beautiful.

Our God truly is an awesome God!

Tiredness + Thirst = Yuck!

Wow, did I do something stupid the other night.

I have been waking up at night not only very thirsty, but also with my mouth and throat as dry as cotton. I try to keep a bottle of water next to the bed for those occasions.

The other night I woke up incredibly dry and thirsty. I was also still very tired. I grabbed the bottle that was next to my clock, sat up, and opened it. Then, for some reason, a still small voice inside of me said, "What if it's not water?" I barely gave it a thought, but instead of gulping and swallowing almost in one fluid motion as usual, I just poured some of it into my mouth and held it for a second. That was definitely long enough to realize that what I had in my mouth was not water, but witch hazel (with rubbing alcohol). I spit it out and rinsed my mouth a lot, then drank from the water bottle that had been sitting right behind the witch hazel.

YUCK!

Fortunately, even if I had swallowed the mouthful of witch hazel solution it would not have killed me, but it scared me to think of what could have happened if it had been something more dangerous. I will definitely be more careful about what I leave near my bed!

Thank You God for that still small voice.  :)

How Does God Speak to You?

Something happened last night that just served to remind me that God speaks to me all the time--I just have to listen and be aware or I might miss it.

I take a few prescription medicines for health issues, including two types of blood pressure medicine. With one of them I take a full pill and with the other I take half a pill. My doctor said that if I ever feel like I need a full pill, I can do that.

That said, yesterday I forgot to take any of my medicines. By the time I realized it, I figured it would be too late, as it would throw my medicine schedule for the next day off, so I didn't take any. I felt okay, so I figured it wasn't a big deal.

When I started getting ready for bed I noticed something odd. My blood pressure machine, which I had not used in a few days, was partly wrapped around my alarm clock and partly on the bed. Had I inadvertently moved it when I turned my alarm off in the morning? Had the cat been fooling around there and moved it? I don't know. What I do know is that when I saw it lying like that the first thought I had was that I should take my blood pressure right then.

I'm glad I made that decision because my blood pressure was high. I decided to take half of the one pill right then, and I would take the other half when I took the rest of my medicines in the morning.

That is the first way God spoke to me on this matter. The second came a few minutes later. I didn't want to take the pill and go straight to bed. I have read that you should sit up for at least two minutes after taking a pill rather than lying down right afterwards. I grabbed one of my crossword puzzle books and the closest available pen and started working on a puzzle. It was very late, and I needed to get some sleeep, but the puzzle was interesting and I was really getting into it. Then, a couple minutes into the puzzle, just as I finished a word, the pen ran out of ink! I thought to myself, I guess it is time for bed! I checked my blood pressure again, and it had come down significantly, so I went to bed.

I truly felt God speaking to me in this. If I had not checked my blood pressure right then, I would not have known that it was way too high. The ink in the pen lasted just long enough to give me the time I needed to know the medicine had done its job.  Some may think it was just a coincidence. I just know that I serve an AWESOME God!!!

Mountaintop and Valley Experiences

We all have mountaintop and valley experiences. The mountaintop experiences (when things are going great for us) are definitely the best, but if it weren't for the valley experiences (when things are not going so well) we probably wouldn't appreciate the mountaintop experiences as much. When we are on top of the mountain we sometimes tend to forget why we are there. We suddenly think we climbed to the top of the mountain on our own, forgetting that God brought us there. It is when we are in the valleys that we remember God is the only one who can get us out.

This morning I had an interesting thought about this whole topic. I came to the realization that sometimes we fling ourselves off of the mountain. We are on top of the mountain, and things are going great, but we make some choices that are not very wise, and in essence, we throw ourselves from the mountain top and begin to tumble toward the valley. As I sit here in a valley, I now know that while I am not completely responsible for being here, I could have probably avoided this particular valley by making a few wiser choices.

Habakkuk 3:17-19

Wow! It was as if Habakkuk was speaking directly to me about our financial problems, and our determination to always praise God and to have faith through all we go through.

"Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength, he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights." Habakkuk 3:17-19 (NIV)

The "What If" Game

How many times have you said it yourself? "What if I had not been there that day? How would my life be different now?" Or, put another way, "If only I hadn't been there that day?" What if this had happened? What if that hadn't happened? The "What If" Game.

I believe we all ask "What if" now and then--it's only natural. I know some people, though, who let the What If Game rule their lives. If I had to determine who created the What If Game, I would not look toward Parker Brothers or Milton Bradley. I believe the What If Game is planted in our minds by Satan. If he can make us question the past, he might be able to manipulate our future.

Don't let the What If Game rule your life. Yes, things might have been different if events had happened differently, but there is nothing you can do about them by worrying now. There are a lot of things in my life that I might change if I could, but since I can't I go forward from where I am now. I know now that if I had followed God's leading, I would not have made the mistakes I made in the past.

I will continue to make mistakes. I'm human, so that is a certainty. I will continue to try to live the way God wants me to though, so hopefully there won't be so many. When I do make mistakes, I will turn them over to God, ask His forgiveness, and try to move on without any "What ifs."

Right now, before you forget, put your "What If" Game in the box, and hide it away on the highest shelf, in the deepest corner of your attic, then get on with your life. :)

I Needed My Mom

I was kind of down yesterday. We are both out of work and have gotten behind on some bills, so we are having some major financial problems. This has created a lot of stress, as I'm sure you can imagine. Even though we are definitely trusting God to get us through this, as He has always done, it does hit me now and then, and I get a little down. When this happened yesterday, I stopped and had a mini pity party.

Right about then, I noticed Soleil Moonfrye's question of the day, at Twitter. She asked what living person and what person who had passed away we would want to have dinner with. My mom died, way too young, several years ago, and she was the obvious choice for the second part of the question.

I know my mom is in a wonderful place now. If I were not confident about that, it would kill me for her to be gone. I would never begrudge her the joys of spending her time with Jesus and the angels, and I look forward to doing that myself someday. But I do have those days, like yesterday, when I really need my mom.

Gray Days

You hear people talk all the time about beautiful sunny days. I love sunny days myself, if they aren't too hot. The weather often affects our moods. When the day is sunny, our outlook on life is sunny. When the day is gray, our outlook is often dark and gloomy. While I do not like too many gloomy days in a row, I believe that too many people do not see the beauty of gloomy days.

I wish I had pictures of the tree down the street from the house I used to live in. Some friends of ours had a fairly large (not large on an oak or redwood scale, but not small) tree in their front yard. On most days it might or might not be noticed. It was a nice enough looking tree, but it didn't really stand out. On gray, gloomy days however, that tree was gorgeous! It had thousands of small lavender colored flowers all over it. On sunny days, you hardly noticed it, but on gray days the lavender color just popped out at you!

I love how God gives us something beautiful to brighten up even the gloomy days! I have a lot of "sunny" days, but I do have occasional gloomy days as well. It is easy to see the good things in my life on the sunny days. It isn't always so easy on the gloomy days, but thankfully God has been helping me find the little lavender flowers of beauty in my gray days. :)