Getting started...

This year has been difficult to say the least and I've had lots of "recovery" time on my hands. I admit that it hasn't been used in the best ways--other than regaining my health--but the imposed down time was for the best. However, I have also been "downtimed" at work and find I need a way to keep my mind engaged with life and, most importantly, how God is always at work in mine. Therefore, a blog. 

By nature I am not an introspective person. My life seems fuller by the presence of other people and helping them in the places God gives me to touch them; or, as this year has proven, to let them touch me. However, as I mature--therefore the "old lady"--I find people want to know how God moved in my life in different situations. Thus, I find it appropriate to investigate how I can best pass along the wisdom that has come from my intimate experiences with God.

There is the hope that this blog will come from my current Bible devotional life however old and possibly musty the illustrations that come to light may be. My children--3 girls--are grown and sometimes I fear that my life illustrations missed getting transferred to them; but I refuse to live in that regret. I currently have 4 grandsons--with the possibilities of more "grandies"--with whom I hope to leave my spiritual legacy.

Today I read from Psalms 39 (The Message) and realized how this idea that David puts forth of us as "puffs of air" and "shadows in a campfire" has been my life understanding of my importance to God. Not that I don't balance that with His great love for me because He demonstrates that daily. But the fact that His will for my life and His daily presence accompanied by His awesome power, just draw my obedience if I will hear Him. He is God! And, I, as His adoring creation will seek to do His bidding forever. 

"The words I kept quiet but the longer I kept silence the worse it got and my insides got hotter and hotter. My thoughts boiled over; I spilled my guts."

I've always been a 'say-my-piece-and-think-about-it-later' type of person. However, I've come to realize over the years this comes from the necessity to have my pride assuaged by speaking what my flesh thought was important. Instead, I need to be listening to what God wants me to say. This life-long lesson is one I'm getting better at recognizing and learning how to handle. My heart wants my tongue to learn that, "If the Lord is saying it, speak it out boldly! If He isn't, it has little merit."

So I hope that God will say what He wants to through this blog and that you receive a word from Him for your life too. Some of it may be rambling as I try to put my life into a perspective that I, too, can understand. The more I see God in my life, past and present, the more confident of Him being in the future and that I can be bold in who He has made me to be. 

I'll try to pull a "ladying" (as I've coined from my girls calling me "lady") for each blog entry which I hope you can apply somewhere to your life as God leads.

LADYING FOR OCTOBER 8, 2012: "If God wants it said, you better speak up! If He is quiet, it's OK for you to be quiet too."