Helloha!

Saturday is a casual day for me, that actually feels casual. This inspires me to blog on a less-important-more-personal note. LOL. This past week was a good week. On Monday, the Lord repeated to me something He had told me last Sunday and it was just what I needed to meet the challenges of the week. My best girl friend and I were sharing and recounting the goodness and intervention of God in our lives recently and as she succinctly put it: "One word from God can change everything." Right on.

This past week I've had wonderful moments with my family. My niece, Jade, turned 7 years old, and there was some shopping buzz in anticipation of my mom's birthday tomorrow, on Sunday. This past week, we also celebrated our Independence Day which was a quiet and satisfying day for me. And as my kids, who are actually my little sister and niece, enter a new period of their life as young adults, it's been a mixture of 'weird' and 'sad.' My kids are all grown up! This week they both overhauled their wardrobe and they've been shopping for fresh new stuff, which is quite symbolic I think. I've helped to sort, toss, and launder clothes which they didn't even remember they had. I also did make-up and I was inquired of for fashion advice. Ahh, it's great to be a girl!

This past week was also a great one of more sharing of my testimony of great things which God has done in me and my family, in bringing us a lonnnng way from what was a very dysfunctional background in a relatively short space of time. Twelve years ago, I was so discouraged and had had enough, that I was plotting nothing except how to leave home and leave them all behind, without ever looking back. Today, I am seeing answers to prayer unfolding before me in the lives of certain family members, as well as in my own. It is a humbling, joyful, and at times, overwhelming thing. God has done a lot for me in every area of my life! In speaking to a new acquaintance who candidly shared various details of her personal background, as well as her continuing challenges because of it, I had the opportunity to realize that I've been covered and upheld by God in amazing ways. God has actually "fixed" so much of my personality from the stuff I've been through that people see me or hear me and are totally surprised by some of the stuff along my path. To tell you the truth, sometimes I am too. Funny how it happens though, that sharing a less than perfect past opens someone up to share their own needs with you. Grace, grace and God's glorious grace!

Someone also wrote me recently to request prayer and shared some personal stuff with me because they said they felt they could trust me - and I hadn't even shared anything personal yet. That's brave! To these types of experiences and statements I want to say, "Lord, arise and receive Your glory!!!" (And now, I find myself also thinking of Paul Wilbur's joyous song, Let God Arise, so I will share that with you at the end of this post :-D). Another person wrote to request that I blog my testimony of how Jesus found me. I would like to say that this is a great idea for a comprehensive narrative which may likely be in the future for me. Right now though, I try to blog with my heart and so a lot of my personality, experiences and background will come through, and come up, in bits and pieces.

Enjoy this weekend and may God bless and keep you!