Wow Moment with God

As you may have noticed, you never quite know what you might find here on my blog.  I write about a lot of random thoughts and observations, tell funny (I hope, anyhow) stories about my kids or things that have happened around here, and sometimes I'll post about things that happened when I was younger.  Generally, I like to keep things light and fluffy here, since I'm not very "touchy feely" when it comes to discussing my innermost feelings.  However, I've decided that I need to do something a little more from time to time.  (Don't worry, there will still be plenty of corny jokes and random thoughts forthcoming.)

I was raised in church, and became a Christian at a young age. I've kind of "coasted" in my faith for a long time.  It's not that I'd turned away, or stopped following Him at all, but I hadn't been growing as a Christian-I was just kind of rooted in place-still praying, still believing, but not knowing where to start with Bible study (although I was reading it), and not being very faithful in my church attendance.  That started to change a couple of years ago, very slowly.  God's been working on me, and I need a lot of work!  I've always said that if God wants to tell me something, He pretty much has to hit me over the head with it, and that's been happening more and more frequently.  I've started to refer to these times as Wow Moments.  I've decided that I would like to share some of these Wow Moments here-I pray that they will encourage or inspire others in some way, but if not, at least by recording them, I'm allowing myself not to forget them. 

My Connection Group/Bible Study Group for church is doing James MacDonald's Gripped By the Greatness of God. I've already had several Wow Moments in this study, and we are only in Chapter 3!  It's dealing with Isaiah, which I find is a difficult book to read, so this study is really helpful. Today, as
 I was catching up on the week's devotionals (yeah, I was behind-refer to the title of the blog, LOL), I ran across this verse:

"Can a woman forget her nursing child, and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you.  Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands." Isaiah 49:15-16 

Now, this was written long before Jesus was ever born, but envision Jesus' nail scarred hands.  Picture Jesus looking at His hands, and thinking of you with love-because he DOES think of you with love!  He has inscribed us on the palms of his hands because he loves us THAT much.  Not because we deserve it, or because we've earned it, because we never could, no matter how "good" we are.  God, the creator of the universe and every living thing in, it cares about our problems(small, large, whatever)-yes, we'll still have problems, but he will be there with us in our trials, holding our hands, loving us, and guiding us if we listen hard enough, and wait upon Him.  Waiting is the hard part-but things happen in God's perfect time, as part of His perfect plan-He is sovereign.
If we wait, God has this promise for us:

"Those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles.  They will run and not get tired." Isaiah 40:31

The next time you are worried, or lonely, or feel unloved or insignificant, remember Jesus' nail scarred hands, and rest in the comfort and overwhelming joy at the fact that He has written your name there if you are a follower of Him.  He hasn't forgotten you, and He loves you unconditionally and always will!

This particular topic isn't new to me, really, I know that God loves me, but that first verse, combined with an image of Jesus' hands, really overwhelmed me all over again with how much He loves me, and the huge significance of what He's done, despite my imperfections.  It was a major Wow Moment!

Catching Up

No, I haven't abandoned my blog.  I keep meaning to post, but honestly, there hasn't been much to write about.  We've had a lot going on, but the entertainment value of it all isn't very high, so I've kind of been hoping something funny would happen, so I'd have an interesting topic.  No such luck, so you are stuck with a "catching up" type post.

Saturday was the annual school carnival.  In addition to the carnival style games and crafts that they usually have, the auxilary gym was set up with inflatables this year.  Having already spent most of their tickets on the games, my kids only had enough tickets left for one inflatable.  The jousting game caught our attention first.  On top of a flat, square inflatable were two pedestals where kids stand with stuffed, long stuffed sticks and try to knock their opponent off their pedestal. My kids really wanted to do this, and I thought it would be fun for them, too.  I mean, really, what Mom doesn't want to see their kids take a few whacks at each other in a controlled environment? (Just me? Really?! Huh.) Unfortunately, my son wasn't old enough to play, so we decided to find something they could both do.  Our attention turned to a long caterpillar inflatable-I snickered to myself when I saw it.  Not because the caterpillar was wearing socks and tennis shoes on it's many feet, but because the caterpillar had......... a butt.  With butt cheeks hat the children crawl out from between as they exit the caterpillar tunnel! For real! For some reason it struck me as really funny, although none of the other parents seemed to be amused.  (That happens to me a lot.) My children paid their tickets and crawled through the caterpillar's mouth, as I stationed myself with my camera poised to take their pictures as they came out the end.  A dad waiting for his kid gave me a funny look-I'm not sure why.  How can a person NOT take a photo of their child being pooped out of a caterpillar?  I'd post the pictures, but they didn't come out very well. Good times.

On Sunday, I got to have a "Mom's Afternoon Out".  My work friends and I went to see Footloose at the dinner theater.  I have to confess that I am one of the few 30-somethings in the world who has never seen the movie, but the show was enjoyable.  The cast did a good job, but it was kind of hard to pretend that the women in their 30's and 40's were teenaged girls, and Rand (who was probably about 30, too) seemed like he was more interested in boys than girls, so his character wasn't very believable as the cool, ladies man, either.  Still, it was fun to watch, and I'm anxious to go back in a month or so when they perform Hello Dolly, and again in the summer with my daughter to see High School Musical.

After the fun of the weekend, Monday and Tuesday were a blur, as I was busy back at work.  Yesterday, I had to go to the Lady Parts Doctor, which is never fun anyhow, but even less so this time, since I found out that I will need to have a "procedure" soon.  It's really not a huge deal, but there is a (very) small cause for concern, so I was pretty anxious.  I realized something about myself yesterday-when I'm worried about something, I tend to downplay it to others when I talk about it, so that they won't worry, too.  I don't really know if it's because I honestly don't want them to be afraid, or if it's because *I* need them to not be worried, so that I will be able to feel more confident myself. I'm not a very strong person, so the latter is likely the real reason. I gave it all over to God last night, and I'm actually not worried at all about it today-it's so relieving to be able to just lay it down at His feet.  Typically, when I "give" something to God, I tend to keep trying to "take" it back, but this hasn't happened yet.  Someone is obviously praying for me.  I know it probably sounds corny and trite, but yesterday my prayer was "Jesus, hold my hand", and He really is.  faith is a wonderful thing.

I know, the picture doesn't have anything to do with my post. It's my son yesterday at Cub Scouts.