Just give me Jesus with a smile.

Jesus met no strangers.

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.

As long as I can remember I have talked to God and about Him.  Even as a  child He occupied my seemingly every thought.

I remember talking to several friends as we walked...They both ask me.  Is it natural to talk about God all the time.  My response was...What else is there.

Even now He occupies my thinking.  My dr says I am overly religious.  I am consumed with thoughts about my faith.  He thinks this is part of my illness.  I would respond and say...It is just as I am.  It is who I am.

I do not mean to imply that I am overly saintly or spiritual it is just my life.  My life with Christ.  I filter everything and everyone through who God is and who I am.



God is continually working in me and my heart to bring me to a greater trust in Him.  I have been told I am obsessed with religion.  It just is who I am.  I don't know how to not think on Jesus.


I have been consumed by the thoughts of my sin.  I had to work on not being obsessed with inward thinking.


There were times when I was sick I would spend hours in quiet and meditation.  Jesus and the Father and Spirit are my constant companion.  They enter my life through thought of their love for me.  They continually teach me, correct me, comfort me, draw me and lead me where I should go.  I am one with them through the grace and compassion and love of God for  me.  He loved me in my mothers womb.  Some of my thinking is natural.


I  have many friends and our time is spent talking about the gospel and how God is working in our families and our lives.  It is a joy to be with them and pray for our families and teach each other.


There was a time I did not talk about God so much.  Then I thought it is who I am.  I am not going to change and not talk about the love of my life.  So I began to talk about God more graciously.  God worked in me and I think my family and others began to see change in me.  I was not just a preacher that talked and didn't live what I believed.  God humbled us all and we began to love each other with a pure love and selfless love and it showed.


I see God in and though everything.  His heart has become my heart over the years and His desires mine.  It has taken a lot of suffering and guidance and help from others more wise than me to bring me to a point of the joy that I have with God.  I depend on those more wise than me to guide me and I am so very thankful.  I learn from everyone.  My children are some of my greatest teachers about God and life and people.  They are wise beyond their years and I pray for them to love God more than anything.


This is just a few lines into who I am and how I walk with Jesus.  He is my constant companion.  He is teaching me now about His glorious righteousness and peace and contentment in Him.  How my life is not my own.  I am not my own.  I am His servant and it is a joy!  I Have learned this through much pride discontentment, jealously of the life I wanted and didn't have.  I have been healed and loved into the kindness of God beyond the preciousness of a child that I am and do not deserve.  My love continues to grow and I continue to see how I bring nothing to Jesus but my heart and that is a challenge.

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All I know is God pours His grace out on a lost people and it sings with hope and joy in the midst of a world that is His own.

I love to talk to my special friends about my relationship with God and my family.  I boast in my weakness that Gods glory might shine.   I talk to everybody and any body about it.  I don't have to know them to ask them if I can pray for them.  To tell them what God is doing.  To ask them if they know Jesus.  To ask them if Jesus is why they smile or are so happy.  It is the greatest joy in my life to talk to anyone anywhere about my Savior.  He is who I want to grow to serve and when I serve others it is partners with Him, for and with Him.  I see it as never before and with great joy this is not my life.  I have been bought with a price and Redeemed.

Beauty is brighter

For all you who have been so faithful to think and pray for me and my family thank you so very much.

Even when we do not see or understand Gods purposes never fail.  God will only allow those things in our lives that will refine us, Tim Keller.

I have gradually felt better as there have been a shift in meds. Your prayers carried me as I had no idea of what would transpired or how long the changes would take.  Always knowing that to feel sorry for myself would be a temptation when things seem to not get better.  Gods mercy kept my spirits and kept my eyes fixed on Him even though without reminding I would not have remembered how good and kind God and others are even if I do not understand what is happening or why.  Those who believe that Jesus is always enough kept the faith unto righteousness.

 Today was very good.  I got to spend the day with friends.  Doing things I enjoy.  I even feel like my thinking is so much more clear.

I was reminded how beautiful the righteousness of Christ is and how He keeps us unto Himself.


My heart is sad for several of those whom I love and have ties with.  Life is such a challenge and so hard at times.  It seems I celebrate with some and grieve with others.  I praise God always and thank Him we are so blessed even in difficult times.

I have prayed that God would not leave me to myself and He does not.  He rescues me over and over again.  I think I am close to quitting and I dare not.  I think I am close to letting go and He never lets go of me.  Hope never stops and I do not fail to see beauty and my heart does not faint and lose hope in Christ and the gospel.  He is my hope and my identity.  I no longer live but Christ lives in me.  I must decrease and He increases.  The more I lose of myself the greater I know who I am in Him.  I feel inspired to serve and love as never before.  My focus on the gift of Jesus is greater than my eyes and heart can contain.

As many suffer they have the hope of knowing Him more.  I praise Him in greater ways than ever.  As more of myself is not my own the love of Christ indwells me.

I have spoken of how drugged I have been trying to get the dose right on my med.  It has taken patience and lots of care from my family.  It has silenced me.  I have seen my pride as never before.  I love to reason and think and I have been prevented from that with my confusion.

It is a humbling thing to have family and others sort your meds, appointments, etc tell you what and when to do what because you are not thinking straight.  The brain disorder is a very humbling illness to have.  You can tell others about the stigma and that is one thing.  But having others taking care of you hurts your pride when you are as strong a woman as the line I come from.  You want to be able to take care of yourself and think and remember.

So God knows what I need.  Last night as I lay in my confusion and sadness of the whole thing of what might be happening I look to Christ.  I come back to having nothing to offer but my sin.  Knowing that Jesus is enough.  Seeing my pride and heart deeper that ever and being humbled again but God stripping my strengths once again.

Resting in His goodness to show me the depths of my need of Him.  Wondering what else I need to see to say enough is enough.  He is enough and I will bend my knee and close my mouth to the care of those wiser and stronger.  To claim grace is for the humble and see He has once again humbled me.

His beauty is brighter.  My heart is lighter.  My peace is only possible by His presence.  It is a time of celebration and rejoicing with gladness the goodness of God to me once again.  My quiet heart and the stream of tears of giving him my heart once again is enough to bring contentment within.

It is all about His beauty, presence, faithfulness, love, power that drags me into His side of heart of love for me that over shadows in smallness of this life and gives Himself in greatness.  Love is the fruit of repentance.  Others centered with Jesus glory just is as doing and loving in ways I cannot do without even trying.  Love and others and Jesus just is.

What will be is yet to see

Thinking why are we the way we are....

My once pastor said that maybe our life is a reason but it is not an excuse the way we are.

How many times I have thought well I am just like my mom.  Or if it doesn't work I may try being like my did without even realizing.  I am who I am because of the way I was raised.

There are influences in our life that help determine who we are but we can use them to our advantage and for our good instead of a complaint and excuse.

My mom was that way because her dad died when she was a baby  The excuses go on and on.  My dad was not hard on me or my mom was a soft lady  The excuses go on.  Why I should have had this opportunity and poor me.  I just couldn't help it.   This made me the way I am.  I blame my life, my opportunities, my parents, those bad breaks.

Yes these thing do help form us but we can use them all to our advantage and we are not prisoners to our lives or the people who have been a part of our lives.  We may think we are a product but it is not the final say of who we are and the life we will have.

They were small when that happened.  That is why they are like that.

They can't help the way they are.  They were born that way.


Life would be all together different if we believed we had a say so in who we will become.  I am like this because my parents and my world has shaped me.  I can't help who I am.  What I do or what I am like.

The truth is we have a will given to us by God and we have the Holy Spirit given to us.  We have a say so about the people we become.  It maybe a reason why we have a struggle but we do not have to stay that way all ways.  We have a choice about many things.  A God given choice.

We need to see the wonder in our lives and in our world and the people that has helped for us and what we can do and change and help.  Our lives would open wide open and we would become fearless and full of wonder if we saw our lives as no limits.

May we see our lives, others and our selves with the wonder of God.  We are not slaves to sin nor this life but full of hope and Spirit that has no limits.


This does not send a discontentment but instead a huge contentment for who we are and the life we have rather than that we are forced into a place or a life we are most unhappy with.  It gives us a huge measure of control and purpose instead of complaint and discontent.

Life becomes the glory God intended it to be and the joy that it was made to have all at once.

Living each day in the moment and in the fullest.  In the now and present is all we have.

Having nothing

Is it important to have nothing to know how really rich you are?

I have been sick for about 6 mos.  I have been in the hospital, mental.  I have lost my memory short term.  I have been confused.  I have slept for days and weeks and not been able to eat and drink.  I had to get fluids.

We, friends and family and I sat for hours waiting for a room.  We saw the broken, bloody, the sick, the hungry, the insane for hours on in wondering when I might get a space to be.

I was given 124mg/ medication and watched intently.  I stayed for a week.  My new friends were the ones with problems beyond my help.  All I could do was be there.  I had nothing.

My friends and family had to do what I could not do.  My daughter had to change my sheets in the middle of the night because I could not keep from going to the bathroom all over my self.  My husband and children and friends sat with me for hours and watched me sleep for hours.  I could't even make a pot of coffee.  I was so confused.

My heart was before me.  My intent.  I was given nothing but grace and love and care over and over again.

My meds are better now.  I am able to see that I never had anything of my own.  My friends and my family shower me with love and grace and I am so very rich with the Fathers love and my family.  All I want to do is talk to my friends and family and thank God for them and love them for loving me.  All I have is grace upon grace and love upon love and your prayers and care for me.

It falls on my grateful heart as I am in control of nothing I have.  Nor do I feel there is anything I have to give.  I do not even know about writing this piece with a confused mind.  I feel completely empty handed begging for grace.  Pleading with God to never let me feel I am worthy or valuable of anything but given more and more grace and love and gifts and kindness and mercy and love by my family and friends and my God.

May His Mercy continue to follow me all  my days.