Miscellany Monday (and some McManus too!)

Hello bloggy friends!  Here is the miscellany in my mind today...

1.  I desperately want to choose a blog-world craft and finish it!  Yesterday I was in Michael's and Target, (the Sunday before school starts for many...yikes!  Didn't quite feel like the best way for me to keep my Sabbath sacred!!!), and I was completely overwhelmed with just trying to get the stuff to complete my current work in progress.  Oh, but I will be so excited if I persevere!  I just love to be creating something...and I'm on my way to making some super cute headbands!

2.  My desire to be an engaging and consistent blogger continues to be frustrated by the fact that I can't find the disk with the program I need to upload my photos to my laptop.  When I do figure this out, I will finally be able to share Israel with you...as well as everything else from this summer held captive on my camera!  (I promise it's coming Grandma!) :)

3.  Last week I was exhaustingly sick pretty much the whole week, and my down time perpetuated a "deep thinking overload" in my brain.  Now it kind of feels like Writer's Block.  There is so much to think about and do...I just don't know where to start! (My husband would respond with, "How do you eat an elephant?"...)

4.  With "30" looming oh-so-closely right around the corner, (4 and 1/2 months!!!), I am really wanting to set some meaningful, yet attainable goals between now and then to say goodbye to my 20's in a fun way.  (some topics I'm tossing around...a physical feat, creative expressions of gratitude, learning a new skill???)  I feel like I'll sub-consciously be watching myself as a little girl get on the bus one last time, waving goodbye forever to my youth.  A little melodramatic, I know, but hey...welcome to the last 29 years of my life! :)

5.  One week from today I will begin my homeschooling journey with the family I'll be working for!  My lesson plans are ready, I'm super excited, and I am honestly aching to teach and invest in the heart of this little guy.  I know one day I will likely miss some elements of these quiet, childless summers, but this one has been a little too quiet for too long!

6.  (Warning: this is some deep miscellany coming up!)  If I was completely honest, I would have to say God is pursuing me with a gentle yet passionate persistency, in a different, more intense way than I've ever known, asking me to absolutely surrender like I never have.  It's like I'm going through the ultimate refining process...one that I've prayed for and have seemed to experience many times before, yet this time it's different. It's like I'm resisting the pain of the extraction of my deepest impurites more than ever.  Ever since I moved and got married two years ago, I have insisted on holding more tightly to my past, who I was, and what is behind me more than ever before.  And my resistance to the pressure, (whether real or imagined), to release it is fiercer than I have ever known.  I feel the presence of an underlying fear that I know will only be conquered by embracing a perfect love.  I say this because it's what is most strongly on my heart.  And because I know, by God's design, that sharing the honesty of my heart is part of the personal process I'll go through to let it all go.  The sorrow I've experienced is personal, meaningful, and frankly, makes sense to few other than myself.  Yet God's redeeming joy is eminent, and his understanding is unmatched.  When I truly trust in the Lord with all my heart, and lean not on my own understanding, peace will preside.  I will be free to delight in all the ways he is obviously delighting in me. 

"See, I am doing a new thing!  Do you not perceive it?  I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland."  Isaiah 43:19

7.  That said, my gracious and quite handsome husband, (who wore all black today...there is just something I love about that look!), encouraged me by sharing what God laid on his heart for me this morning.  Long story short, he encouraged me to simply "come to Christ."  Nothing more, nothing less.  I am so thankful for this God fearing man I get to walk through this life with.  His patience is amazing...and his longing for God is powerful.

So I now encourage you, as yet another week begins, to simply and sincerely come to Christ.  "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."  Matthew 11:28

Happy Miscellany Monday!

P.S. For further, seriously intense encouragement, check out this Erwin McManus sermon Kevin told me about and I listened to today.  It's a message based on the story of the little boy who shared the food with which Jesus fed the 5,000.  I'll give you a head's up...Erwin will tell you too, it's time to get crazy close to Christ.
It's part of their "Heroes and Villains" series.  Once you click on this link, click on the one called, "The boy with the loaves and the fishes."

Some quotes:
"We spend our lives telling God what we can't do rather than asking God what he can do."

"The moment God allows me to see a problem that's too big for me to solve, what's happening is God's inviting me to be a part of the solution he's going to bring....it begins with proximity; making sure you're close enough to God that in those instantaneous moments when God needs someone to step in, he calls on you."

"God did more with the person who had less."

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