Preparing for a Future Valentine

Over the past 16 months, I have been striving to purposefully prepare for a Future Valentine. You can read a little more about how that came about in the About Me tab. This entailed 3 main different areas where I focused my energy. Learning to honor, submit to, and respect the men in my life, especially my father and brothers whom I had to deal with everyday.(Ephesians 5:22, 33b) Gaining knowledge and learning skills that would help me in future marriage.(Proverbs 2:3-6) Learning to guard my thoughts and heart, so that the overflow would be uplifting to those around me.(Luke 6:45, 2 Corinthians 10:5)  But recently, whereas I have still been striving to respond to my circumstances in the way I hope to respond in the future, and have kept these things in mind when I am tempted to ignore what effect my actions may have on the future, I have not been working purposefully towards these goals as fervently as I had been in the past. I mentioned this to my mother, and she ask

In the last 24 hours, I have had 2 arguments with my parents that left me quite upset and wounded. In both cases I submitted to a direction that my parents gave me, but unfortunately both times it took me much longer to submit than it should have. The argument last night went way longer than it should have,  and I spent the rest of the evening, including my 3 1/2 hours at work, regretting it and hurting from it. The argument this morning was resolved rather quickly, in that I realized how I needed to submit and took that step fairly quickly, but it did leave me hurt. So essentially in the last 24 hours, I have been pretty wounded, wearied, and also overwhelmed with realizing what I need to do in these relationships and in my life to improve the scenario. Though it is always best, it is not always easy to submit. And sometimes in the submitting process, your own pains and hurts are overlooked and need to be dealt with at a later date. So I am glad to say that God is giving me a sp

For those of you who are wondering if this is a post about Joanne Weaver's book, it is not. For though I wish to read Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World , I have not as of yet accomplished that goal. But as I was talking to my parents about this particular book, an interesting conversation arose. My mother asked me what was the main difference between Mary and Martha? My first answer was that Mary placed Jesus as top priority. But Martha was making him top priority as well; she was making serving him top priority. Then I said that Martha was trying to serve him, but Mary realized that learning and listening to Jesus was most important. But my mother said it was even deeper than that. Martha was intent on doing something for Jesus, while Mary recognized the importance of being with Jesus. I have been struggling more recently with having a Martha spirit. I used to be the kind that naturally spent time with the people around me, and with God, but had to be reminded to take

A couple of days ago I had a very successful baking experiment, which hasn't been the norm lately, and it really made my day that my father absolutely loved it and I shocked him at the same time. And the experiment was this: Homemade Samoas! Or some of you may know them as Caramel deLites. I was able to make them successfully on a Saturday afternoon while my father was driving back from a work conference, and hide them before he arrived home. Then yesterday morning, we had a birthday brunch for my father, and these were my gift to him. When he lifted the towel that covered the plate of cookies, his jaw dropped. He was incredibly shocked that they were homemade. And after he had a bite, he decided that his earlier declaration that he would probably share was now completely void. He really really liked them, and told me that he was very impressed. I have been on cloud nine ever since. *smile* Lately my cooking has either been rare and few between, or my experiments don't work

When I was 15 years old, I went on a short term missions trip with Teen Missions to Malawi, Africa. One of the most amazing and yet physically difficult experiences of my life. But before I went to Africa itself, I went to Teen Missions training camp in Merritt Island, Florida. I went in late June and was there in Florida for almost three weeks before departing. Let me just tell you that though Florida is beautiful, you don't really want to be in the swampy islands there in the summer. It is hot, sweaty, and muggy beyond belief. Thus they called our training there Boot Camp. At Boot Camp we slept in tents, bathed out of buckets, had toilets that we had to manually flush with a bucket of water, ate on benches with no tables, did a daily obstacle course which included swinging over a swamp, and functioned on a constant lack of sleep. I have never sweated more in my life, had that many bug bites, or had to put up with anything more annoying physically than the jungle rot that I a