That's a GOOD way to get on my BAD side

Dear self centered, mean, bad mannered, ignorant, hard headed, stubborn, undeserving, ungrateful, non productive member of society,

You've got one more ugly remark to say to the most brilliant, godly, beautiful, outstanding, talented, amazing, selfless, giving, and again I say BEAUTIFUL, woman in my life before I GO OFF on your sorry tail.

For your sake [and for hers], I pray that God grant me half as much patience and self control as she has before you tick me off one more time. And if He doesn't....

God have mercy on your soul.

Goodnight,

Stephanie

Barely Out of Tuesday

I don't have anything to offer

I am not a profound thinker
I cannot play an instrument
I am not good with words
I do not have money to give
I do not have wisdom to impart
nor resources to pull from
I cannot preach
I do not sing


What I do have is love.
A love for God, a love for His people and a love for His work.
He gave me a body and I'll do my best to wear it out before life wears me out.

Maybe it has something to do with playing sports growing up. "Give all you've got", "Leave everything all the field". If I don't leave church tired, I still feel like I've got more to do. If I haven't given God and His people my everything, then I have not done my part. Because my part is filling in the gaps...

Somewhere there is someone who needs help tearing down a puppet stage, picking up the leftover bulletins, putting away mic cords, cleaning up their Sunday school room, locking up so they can go home..etc. I want to help do these things. I have not been given gifts that allow me to minister in front of people, but what I have been given is the awareness of the people around me and the desire to work with and for them. To help out how I can.

Many people will go through life thinking they can't do anything (or refusing to do anything) because they cannot minister in front of people, but God has given me eyes to see beyond that mindset...and that is a gift in itself.

Honestly, I am glad God hasn't given me a gift that puts me in front of people. I feed way too much off of people's praise. Not being talented keeps me humble. Plus, loving people is just as much a gift as any....at least it is with the people I'm around.

This is the gift that He's given me.
Love.
The love that He shows me and the desire to show love to others.

Hard, Hard Working [Wo]man

COMPLAINT DISCLAIMER:

I do not want to go to work.

I want to go to Stockbridge.

AND

I want the kids CD's to come in so I can put motions to them.

AND

I want to go to Josh Brown's concert tonight

Saturday, February 21, 2009

and the Woodstock Coffee House 

at 8:00pm

Who I am Hates Who I've Been

Check out David:

"Judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness
and according to the integrity that is in me. "

Holy moley. That is a big statement. Many times I tend to skim over words like 'righteousness' because I've heard them so many times. Today it stopped me and all I could think was 'dang'. What if I could speak that over my own life? I wish I could pray like that.

Alot of times I think that I am right... it's that "eous" that gets me in trouble. While I may be right in comparision to some other folks, I fail on the righteous end. I don't even want to start on integrity. Too many times I base my integrity off how much better my standards are than those around me, when I should be comparing it to God's standard for my life.

I cannot wait till I can pray Davids prayer
When my heart is pure and my intentions focused on Him
When I come to measure my integrity by the incorruptablilty of my own heart
And when I'm less concerned about being right and more concerned about being righteous


Props David. You had alot of guts.

I'm a hazard to myself

I don't know if its because I grew up as a pastor's kid...being at the church 23/7 for most of my life..or because getting a sign is more gratifying to my impatient nature...or maybe its because I just want everything to be deeper than it is sometimes...

but I read way too into things.

For whatever reason, I feel like every situation that I encounter has to be turned into some kind of example..some kind of Sunday School answer.
Like there's a moral to every choice that I make...or the bumper sticker on the car in front of me holds the answer to my problems.But really....

some times I think that life is just life. And, even though I want to believe it sometimes, the song playing when I walked into the gym this morning probably wasn't speaking to my situation.

When we're in line with what God has for our lives HE will help us see our situations for what they are. He'll show me the plan He has for my life. 'His plans to prosper [me] and not to harm [me], plans to give [me] hope and a future'. (And a freakin' awesome future if I do say so myself.) But that doesn't mean He's sending me signs through the new episode of Heros, or in what my friends status' are on facebook.

If I could stop trying to fit God into MY plan and just stick to the plan HE has laid out for me, I'd be alot better off.

Today I stop looking too deep into what other people say and do. Cause as much as I love Coldplay, God has way bigger plans for me than can be contained in their songs.




And maybe when its all said and done, I'll have a good story to tell in Sunday school....if not, I'm okay with that too.

Its been a really good day :)

My Front Porch Looking In

Perspective is an amazing thing.

It's something that we all have
(but most people don't have enough of)

It's one of those,
the.more.you.have- the.less.you.have
type deals

The more I start to see things from a perspective other than my own default window, the more I start to realize how much different my situations are than I originally had thought. How different everyone situations are than I originally had thought. How many different angels there are to my circumstance than I had been able to see before. I wanna be able to see from different perspectives. Not only so that I can help my own circumstances...but so I can be more aware.

Of those around me
near to me (cause you can be around me and not near to me)
far from me
un[known] to me.