Ultimate Trust

Trust.

When you see that word, what do you think about?

Yesterday I was asking God to help me trust Him with a situation. My husband and I have not gone out to make friends for a couple of years now, literally. We haven't tried, we haven't wanted to. Facebook and Twitter has been the limit to our "friends." We have reasons, ones I don't feel the necessity to go into great detail about. But I'll just say this, we allowed ourselves to trust people and were in turn, broken down by people judging us, shutting us out, turning on us, forgetting us, etc. Before I go further, I do want to say that we understand people are human. People make mistakes, as we do too! But for us, we felt for the time being, we needed to heal, recover, and figure out our priorities.

So we finally found a church we like and might have found a Life Group we could give a try. We haven't been to a Life Group for a while now. So it feels a bit like stepping out onto the water, and into an unknown experience.

When I started thinking about going to a Life Group, my initial reaction was to draw-back and clam up. My human reaction is to run...far, far away and just not give it a chance. But then I prayed. This is what Jesus spoke to me.

"Why don't you just trust Me and let Me guide you? Give it a chance."

Then I felt Him remind me of His death, burial and resurrection. I didn't make the connection immediately. But bear with me while I share what He revealed. You might have already "gotten" this a long time ago, but it really struck home to me yesterday.

When Jesus went to die, he was fully God, yet fully man. The reason he was fully man was because God wanted us to have reassurance that we could live this life on earth and still be pleasing to Him. He allowed Jesus to go through all temptations, and helped Him overcome, so we could see that we also, could go through temptations and overcome. Can you imagine this? Jesus was fully man. So he must've had the same fears we would have if we knew that we were going to die. Fear of pain. Fear of death. Fear of the unknown. Would God really raise Him up from the dead? Why couldn't he just die the way everyone else does?

But He chose to trust his Father. He chose to trust that if God told him He would raise him from the dead, then He would keep His word. He chose to believe in the power of One who was over the whole world and didn't doubt. He knew. He had that confident, deep seeded trust in his Father. May be a weird example, but he had the type of trust you have when you put a pot of water on the stove, turn the heat up on high and leave it for a while. You know when you come back 10-15 minutes later, that water is going to be boiling. That is the type of trust Jesus had when he was nailed to the cross and died. His father promised He would rise again, more alive than ever, in 3 days.

So when I was thinking about making friends and stepping out of my comfort zone, and God reminded me of His death and resurrection, I realized I could trust His guiding. I could trust Him to lead me through anything.

How can you trust God more than to trust Him with your very life? Jesus did it! He laid the ground work. He walked this earth as a man to show us how to trust and how to believe. Stepping out of the boat may take a lot out of you. You may be shaky. You may be scared. But don't be. Jesus stepped out and died for us. He showed His explicit trust in the same God that we serve today. God kept His promises back 2000 years ago. He will keep His promises today, tomorrow and forever.

Raising Daughters

I'm a mom. I have two children right now, and one on the way. Once the newest bundle arrives, I will have two daughters.

The past few weeks, I've been contemplating many things about mothering daughters. It gets a little overwhelming, because, well, I've never raised girls before. :)   This is all new to me. I was raised in a relatively protected environment, for which I am becoming increasingly grateful for, because as I consider all my "options" with how to raise my girls, I wish I could just go to a place where I didn't have to worry about the outside influences that my girls are going to have.

My thoughts on all this began on the night of the VMA awards. We all know about Miley Cyrus' performance and how mortified we were/are over it. Here was this beautiful country girl who used to love the simple life, turned into some sort of "out there" sex object. Miley is 20, I believe and so she's not far away from still being all the teenage girls idol. I, for one, used to love her Disney show, "Hannah Montana." It was clean, silly, funny and for the most part, good. (in my opinion at least.) She has now morphed into a young woman wanting to "be herself" and show the world that it's ok to let all the humanness out. Alright, I'm not all into this "religious" stuff where everyone has to be perfect at all times. The reason being is we are all human and there is just no way we are going to be perfect. We can strive our very best to be just like Jesus, and walk in His steps, but ultimately, when it comes down to it, we are going to fail and our human side is going to come out. But when it comes to just letting ourselves go and not worrying about how our actions are affecting others, or ourselves for that matter, I just don't agree with that.

There are so many things to consider, think about and pray about when it comes to raising children.

My ultimate goal is to raise them to want to love Jesus, to want to follow Him and be pure, holy and set aside as God's servants. Here are a few of the things I've been thinking about:

1. How do I want my girls to dress?
2. When to talk to my girls about the birds and bees?
3. How should I encourage them to have holy, pure relationships with boys?
4. How do I protect them from all the influences of the world, yet not be overly protective?
5. What is "too much" when it comes to encouraging "good behavior"?

Ok, those are just a few that I think about. I'm on a lot of mommy pages on FB and I am constantly reading different questions moms ask, "should I put my daughter on birth control," "should I make my daughter clean her room," "my husband isn't religious, but I am, so should I make my kids go to church" and on and on and on.

Of course, we all have opinions on issues and we should all do what we feel is best for our children. But yesterday, I saw on FB (we've all seen this before, most likely, as it seems to becoming a trend amongst parents) a picture of this young, 13 year old girl holding a sign.

I believe this sign says something like, "I was disrespectful to my parents by twerking at the school dance." (or something like that!!....don't go quoting me...but that is the gist of what was said). We all know that this young girl got the "twerking" dance from Miley Cyrus a few weeks ago. While I understand what this mom was trying to get across to her daughter, I don't feel it is right to humiliate your child. I've seen it happen over and over; a child gets humiliated, then they become more and more withdrawn, stubborn, angry, violent and at times, even suicidal. Humiliation, for me and my children, is just not the way to raise them. But what is sad is that this girl probably thought she was "cool" and most likely was trying to be in the "in crowd" since everyone (literally millions) is talking about Miley Cryus' twerking dance. If she did it, then she'd be popular, just like Miley, right? What is so wrong with that? What is wrong with having a role model to look up to?

My first response was, "well, that mom just shouldn't have let her daughter view what Miley had done." Then my thoughts went a little deeper. Can we really protect our children from things like this? This world is nuts. And impure influences are everywhere. If we send our children to school, they're going to get it there. If we take them to the store, they're going to see it on the magazine racks and in the aisles. If we take them to the zoo, they're going to see women dressed scantily and if we take them to a waterpark, they're going to see a lot more than we ever wish. Can we honestly protect them from that, without causing them to be overly protected? Maybe that mom could have sat down with her daughter, immediately after Miley's performance and talked with her about the dance. Maybe she could have told her daughter why she feels it wasn't clean, wholesome, pure and then back it up with scripture. Maybe she could find her daughter role models that are good to look up to and be like and then show her the difference. 

You can't make your child's choices for them. But leading them in the right way, and showing them the reason for those good choices will influence their hearts and minds. When they see that "twerking" dance, instead of wanting to be like that, their hearts will go out to the person doing it and want to pray for them. Their hearts will be to show their friends it's ok to not follow the mainstream and that it's actually cool to do so! 

I know I sorta bounced around with a lot of different things here...hopefully I didn't completely confuse you, or loose you in the rabbit trails of my thoughts. 

Blessings~