Blessed

I sit here on the porch in the beauty of the day. It is my favorite place to spend time with the Lord. I love to sit there rocking back and forth on the bench reading my bible and listening to the sounds of His wonderful creation. I can hear many different types of birds chirping harmoniously, creating a wonderfully soothing melody. The sun shines brightly as it filters through the leaves of the many trees in our yard. The squirrels playfully scurry about as they chase each other around trees. I can see a couple of bees buzzing nearby. I can feel the peace in the Lord's loving creation all around me. It beckons me. I feel a sense of God saying to me, "I created all of this for you because I love you and I want you to enjoy all of the beauty around you." I think of this and all of the blessings the Lord has poured into my life and I feel truly overwhelmed by His goodness and grace. He has blessed me beyond what I could ever imagine. I feel humbled by all that the Lord has given me and done for me. I give all of my thanks and praise to Him. I acknowledge that everything that I have is from my Heavenly Father. He has saved my life. He has saved my soul. He has saved my marriage. He has blessed me with a healthy, happy son when I was told that I would probably never be able to bear children. He has given me a wonderful Christian husband who loves me with all of his heart. The Lord has placed me in a fulfilling job in which I am truly happy. I get to help others who are sick and injured while I work alongside a group of truly amazing coworkers. I feel blessed to work with people who care about others and will help them and me in our times of need. My cup runneth over. I continue to sit and enjoy the peace of God's creation. I can feel Him in the creation all around me. He is the gentle breeze blowing through my hair. He is with me always and He loves me. I am His daughter and He is my Father.

Psalm 23:5-6

 ⁵ You prepare a table before me
   in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
   my cup overflows.
⁶ Surely your goodness and love will follow me
   all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD
   forever.

Distracted . . . to Peaceful

I spent time with the Lord this morning. I prayed for those in my life who are ill, hurting or need prayer in other ways. Then I sat and listened. At first, I didn't get any words from the Lord. I sat there at the table and listened to the sounds of the house: the washing machine swishing, the dryer running and the tick-tocking of a nearby clock. I really tried to focus and relax. I shut my eyes. I thought I could hear the faint humming of the refrigerator. I found that as hard as I was trying, I just couldn't obtain complete concentration due to the lack of silence. My thoughts were interrupted by these random sounds. I was distracted by the things around me. I really thought about this and realized that God was showing me something important here. It reminded me of a vision that I had a few years ago.

I can actually remember it like it was yesterday. I was sitting at the triage desk at work waiting for the next patient to come. I was looking out the front window when I saw a vision of a long road or path. At the end of the path was the Lord. The path was littered with a lot of large debris like fallen trees, garbage, man-made things, etc. In order to get down this path to the Lord, I must remove all of the debris. With each piece of debris that I remove, the easier it is to get down the path and the closer I get to the Lord. The path in this vision is my life and my walk with the Lord. The debris is every distraction (good or bad) that gets in the way of me following the Lord. I must put all things aside to focus on the Lord. This includes all of the emotional "garbage" that I've collected over the years as well as the worldly distractions that are all around me.

How easy is it to let things of the world distract us from spending necessary time with the Lord? It doesn't take much for us to get caught up in worldly desires and activities. These distractions aren't always considered "sinful" either. Watching too much television or spending a lot of time surfing the Internet can certainly interfere with our devotional time. I admit that I have actually let my favorite hobby of knitting come between me and God. The Lord wants our best. He wants our first, not our last. He wants our attention, devotion, love, faithfulness and time. He wants us to come to Him regularly to completely give ourselves over to Him. He wants us to follow Him and be like Him. That's one reason He gave us Jesus. He sent His Son to this world as a living, breathing, perfect example for us to follow. Then He documented these specific examples of perfection from Jesus' life in the Holy Bible. He wants us to read it and to learn about Jesus so that we can be like Him. And then He wants us to teach our children how to be like Jesus. He doesn't want us to stop there, He wants us to tell our family, our friends, our coworkers, our enemies - well, pretty much everyone we can about Jesus and His perfect example of life. We need to tell others how He is working in our lives and share the Good News. That is why I started this blog, to share God and what He is doing in my life with anyone who is willing to sit and read it.

I'm certainly not perfect. Trust me, I am far from perfection. Jesus is the only person who is truly perfect in every way. I'm just saying that when I feel the Lord prompting me to do or say something, I try to be obedient. This is sometimes very difficult. Often people look at me like I'm an absolute freak. But that's OK, I don't really care. I just want to carry out God's plan for me. I feel that if I don't respond to God's calling, I or someone else will most likely miss out on His wonderful blessings.

I will admit that lately I haven't been spending time in the Lord like I should. I can feel a difference in myself and see a difference in my life. First of all I can tell that I'm just a little grumpier or crankier than usual. I don't get along with my family as well. It seems like we argue and disagree more. I just feel uneasy or unsettled . . . like I don't have that peace. You know, the peace of God that transcends all understanding? When I don't spend regular time with God, that peace is gone. I hate that. And then when I start to draw closer to Him again, the peace returns like water gently flowing over me. That, my friends, is truly the greatest feeling in the world - the peace of God. Have you experienced it? 

A Pinteresting Easter

Ryan had the past couple of days off school, so we decided to do some Easter crafts, pinterest-style. We started with making these adorable nests with candy eggs. Aren't they cute? Here's the link for these nests: http://www.thecurvycarrot.com/2011/04/07/birds-nests/

The next thing we did was color Easter eggs like we do every year. This year I thought that we should incorporate Jesus onto our eggs, so we made scripture and worship eggs. I actually really love this idea and I'm pretty sure that we will do this every year now. What better time to share the love of Jesus than Easter? We listened to worship music as we created our miniature masterpieces. We used white crayon to write the words and then re-dipped the eggs in a darker or brighter color. You could certainly use any color of crayon or marker to write your message onto the eggs. I can't wait until next Easter to see what wonderful worship eggs we can make.

Lastly, we made cute flower cookies. I also got this idea from pinterest. However, there was no link or recipe, just a photo uploaded by someone. After studying the photo, this is what I came up with. Start with a vanilla wafer. Add white icing (you need to make it very thick to get everything to stick together.) If you need a simple recipe for the icing, leave me a comment and I will post it. Then use a junior mint for the center and M&Ms for the petals. Lastly, dip two pretzel sticks in icing and stick them onto the bottom of the wafer. You need to let them sit a couple of hours to let the icing dry and harden a bit. They are so cute and actually quite yummy.

OK, now I have a small confession. Not all of my ideas are great. For example, we started the morning with a coffee cake that I concocted. I modified the recipe a bit. I didn't think we had any blueberries like the recipe called for, but we did have several bags of black raspberries in the freezer. I thought that surely raspberries could be substituted for the blueberries, right? They are both fruit and kind of tart. They are practically the same color. Well, I was so wrong. When raspberries are frozen and thawed, they get kind of mushy and juicy. They turned the entire coffee cake purple. It didn't necessarily taste all that bad, maybe just a little different. I think more than anything it was just difficult to eat dark purple coffee cake. I know it is just a mental thing, but I felt a bit like a character from a Dr. Seuss book. Well, you can be the judge, here is the picture. Is it too weird for you? I think it was for me.

Have a wonderful, blessed happy Easter everyone!

I Made a Skirt From a Mens Shirt!

I made a pencil skirt from my husband's old dress shirt! This is the first thing I've actually made from pinterest. I am very pleased with the way it turned out. I will include all of my pics with a brief description. The much-more-detailed link that I found on pinterest is: http://www.adventuresindressmaking.com/2010/04/one-of-greatest-mens-shirt-makeovers.html. Be aware that I modified the waistband from the instructions on the posted link because I didn't want my skirt to have a high waist.

Find an old dress shirt that your husband won't wear anymore or buy one from goodwill.

Remove the pocket if desired. The pocket on this shirt was too large and I didn't think it would look right, so I removed it. Be aware that the coloring under the pocket could be brighter/darker if the shirt has been washed several times.

Cut the sleeves off of the shirt.

Cut straight across the front, just under the collar.

Cut straight across the back, just under the yoke seam.

Fold the shirt and cut straight across the bottom.

Fold the shirt so that the lengthwise fold is in the middle of the back. Lay your favorite skirt on top, also folded lengthwise. Line up the folded edges.

Cut around your skirt, leaving extra fabric at the bottom to make it longer if desired.

Lay your unfolded skirt onto the front of the shirt. Cut around the skirt, again leaving extra at the bottom if desired.

Sew up the front of your skirt so there will be no gapping. Leave the top couple of buttons unsewn for ease in putting on your skirt. Place right sides together.

Sew each side together.

Cut a waistband that is the same width of your skirt.

Sew the edges of the waistband and pin onto your skirt, right sides together.

Sew the top edges together.

Iron the sewn seam upward and turn down approximately 1/4 inch seam at the top.

Turn the waistband to the inside and iron.

Sew the waistband.

Hem the bottom edge of your skirt.

Enjoy wearing your fabulous new skirt!