Theme Song Thursday

Enjoy this article? Receive email alerts when new articles are available! Just click on the Follow button or subscribe above.

Tag

 Labels are extremely obnoxious, especially when applied to me.

 By "label" I mean "a classifying phrase or name applied to a person or thing, especially one that is inaccurate or restrictive."

  I felt my frustration bubbling while in conversation with the "customer service" rep.  Because of my "tag," I was being given standard, dead answers.  Needless to say, I left the conversation feeling powerless.  Not a good feeling, AT ALL.

 Upon review, after my frustration subsided, I realized that I, too, participate in this dishonoring practice.  Labeling or tagging gives me permission to dismiss and to give up on.  Is this a Kingdom practice or mindset?

 Graham Cooke challenges us to seek possibilities in these situations.  That's my dot today.  I must discover Kingdom, power-ful possibilities!

 What?  So what?  Now what?  (Thank-you, MB, for sharing that gem with me.)

Enjoy this article? Receive email alerts when new articles are available! Just click on the Follow button or subscribe above.

Theme Song Thursday

Your Love is better than life!!!


Enjoy this article? Receive email alerts when new articles are available! Just click on the Follow button or subscribe above.

Fingerprints and the Next Dot

 How my heart celebrates recognizing Papa's fingerprints in my life!  Sometimes when Papa shows up, His Presence impacts my body and my soul, generally feeling weighty and BIG. Other times He impacts my mind more subtly, like a fingerprint left behind.

 Currently one of His fingerprints is "mustard seed."  While pondering through Matthew, the passage in Chapter 13 captured my focus -- it leapt off the page and led me on a thoughtful journey with Holy Spirit.  Though this passage compares the Kingdom to a mustard seed, what I remembered was my male friends at my childhood church receiving a mustard seed tie tack as a gift from our Reverend. He was a master storyteller and retold the parable (Matthew 17) about having a mustard seed of faith and being able to move mountains as part of his presentation of the gift.  This truth captivated me, and of course, made me wish I could be given a mustard seed tie tack, too. To this day, I am incredibly encouraged by that parable.  That same mustard seed of faith that propelled me to say "yes" to Jesus, can move mountains.  He has already given me everything I need for life and Godliness.

 Kris Vallotton taught the same basic message recently along with the exhortation and encouragement to believe you are who God says you are.  Because I am also intentionally reminding myself of who God says I am, these two messages, fingerprints, are alive to me like never before.  Doug Addison keeps prophesying that breakthrough is imminent.  I want to position myself for breakthrough by wielding my mustard seed of faith and beliving that I am who God says I am!

 God's fingerprints also call to mind those beloved dot-to-dot pictures.  Doug Addison says that finding personal purpose and destiny are like a dot-to-dot picture.  My job is to find the next dot; I cannot hurry to the end to see the final picture.  Each one of His fingerprints is a next dot for me.  Learning to recognize them, to fully see and learn from them, and to keep looking for the next dot, all at the very same time, is a challenge for me.  Yet, nothing is impossible with God.

 What fingerprints are you seeing in your life?  What's the most recent dot?  What are you doing to join God in those places?


Enjoy this article? Receive email alerts when new articles are available! Just click on the Follow button or subscribe above.

Tech Week 2015, Wednesday

 Peacefulness and order seem to be reigning so far this week.  The costume crew has worked hard to be prepared and has found themselves ahead of the plan.  Tonight is the first dress rehearsal, which will birth new projects.  It will continue to be a GREAT week.

 While labeling and sorting through my thread spools in preparation for their appearance at the theater today, I found myself reflecting upon the various projects associated with those thread colors.  I felt warm, happy and comfortable as I pondered, despite my knowledge that none of those projects were accomplished without mistakes and frustration.  Is it maturity and wisdom that empowers us to remember the entirety of the experience, including the messy and painful bits, and yet still find it a satisfying and even comforting memory?  Perhaps the added bit of knowledge that everyone struggles, makes mistakes and gets frustrated in the process is the "vitamin" that keeps this kind of jumbled rumination healthy?

 And then mix in the wonderful revelation that though now we see dimly, one day we will SEE clearly because we are face-to-face with KINGDOM REALITY.

 When dim seeing is this satisfying, how much more incredibly is what lies ahead?!

  What threads, colors, revelations are you seeing these days?


Enjoy this article? Receive email alerts when new articles are available! Just click on the Follow button or subscribe above.

 More than once of late (duh!) I have been told that this is a new creative season for me.

 It has been some time since I wrote an actual post.  Awhile ago, I gave myself the nod to plant Theme Songs on Thursdays for growing seed.  Time to tend the shoots.

 So what do my eyes see in the natural world?  Impossibility.  Where do the hours go?  And then when I have some discretionary minutes -- energy and motivation have evaporated.

 My faith eyes counsel me to believe and to walk.  Off we go. . .

 I have resisted mentioning our kiddos directly in blog posts for a number of reasons, which I will not enumerate here.  Just chalk it up to my desire for privacy for them and for me.  From now on I may or may not be more direct in my references to them.  But I won't default to never referencing them.

 That being said, they do inspire and teach me things often.  Many of them write constantly and consistently.  I want to be like them.

 Then there are my friends who inspire and teach me, also.  One such woman made a comment about all of us having "perceived obstacles."

 Recently a saw a meme that said something about when we see obstacles we have taken our focus off of Him.

 Kris Vallotton shared that God is looking for one person to stand for Him and to step out and do what He has called him/her to do.  With God on my side, what can man do to me?  He is the majority!

 My heart also sings to this tune:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

 The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again,

because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause;

who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, is he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. . ."  (Theodore Roosevelt, "Citizenship in a Republic") 

  After years of shying away from the arena all too often, I am daring to step in and strive valiantly.  Will you join me?

 What are you being challenged to do differently?

Enjoy this article? Receive email alerts when new articles are available! Just click on the Follow button or subscribe above.

The Promised Pictures; Sewing for CHDT, part 2

 Here are the 3 pattern pieces that will become the bonnet.

Two pieces of the brim are sewn together, seam trimmed and turned right sides out.

This picture and the next two are of the long rectangular crown piece pinned and sewn onto the half oval back piece; this was a mind-bender when the instructions were first read and pondered.

The brim is now attached to the crown/back piece.  Top stitching the front of the brim is the final step before:

The bonnet is sewn!  Ribbon ties which coordinate with each schoolgirl's dress will be attached at the next rehearsal.  Seven bonnets completed, with an assist by my #4 daughter on the sewing of one.  By the way, the bonnets are black, although it looks blue in some of the photos.

Enjoy this article? Receive email alerts when new articles are available! Just click on the Follow button or subscribe above.

Sewing for CHDT

It's that time of year again; I am making hats for the 2nd Stage CHDT.  The play we will be performing is "The Little Princess."  Stay tuned for pictures of the process. . .

I also helped with costumes for the Main Stage production, but sadly, have no pictures of that