The Journey Part 2

 Good morning everyone! 

    Sorry I missed last week, We had been in Vegas for a conference and our ETA of 7:30 pm to get home turned into 11:15 pm for me. Since I had been gone Valentine's Day, Andrew and I ran away from home for a bit last Saturday, so the blog went by the wayside.

This is the week to continue my weight loss journey. I am to the point where I have slowed down losing. I knew it would get there, in fact, everyone, even my doctor, is surprised I haven't hit a stall. I have lost 6 lbs in the last month, bringing my total to a little over 140 lbs. I am STILL chasing the elusive Onederland, but I am 3.1 lbs from it, so hopefully within the next 2 weeks. I also travelled a lot last month, and even though I walked an unreal amount (17 miles in a 24 hour period week before last) and really didn't do bad at eating, travelling still makes it hard. So, I am giving myself grace because I know I am still eating right for the most part and still working out and it will come off.

The first post was about my teenage years. After high school, I started working and honesty, maintained the 150 lbs for quite a while, I got up to 180 once but turned around and got it back down to 150. I worked jobs that I was on my feet all day, first at the Dairy Queen, then Richard's Farm Restaurant, then while at the Farm, I added Richard's Refinery and was working a minimum of 12 hour days every day while I did that, I went back to the Dairy Queen for a bit and then finally to Walmart. I pretty well maintained my weight but told myself since I spent so many hours on my feet, I didn't need to exercise. While at Walmart, I switched jobs from being a sales associate to Loss Prevention. I caught shoplifters. I loved it but I wasn't very strong, which played out in a bad way the day that we had a heavy set lady stealing video tapes. I got beat up, pretty bad actually. ended up in the ER. That day, I decided the being on my feet wasn't enough and started exercising. This was my first stint in running and I got to where I could run a mile, I also dropped a few pounds and then Andrew and I started dating, got married and I got pregnant.

When I got pregnant, I gained 10 lbs almost immediately, nobody could understand it. 3 weeks into my pregnancy, I lost a baby. A lot of people doesn't know Robert was a twin. I had never heard, until then, that you could lose a twin that early in pregnancy and keep the other one. Then, to top it off, they didn't tell me I had actually miscarried. The just said that my baby was still there and I would need to go on bedrest so I didn't lose it. That is a whole other blog post for someday. So, here I was, home alone because Andrew was on the road remodeling Walmart stores, and I could be up 10 minutes for every 20 minutes I laid down. I gained weight, a lot of weight. 68 lbs to be exact. The day I went to the hospital, I weighed 218 lbs. The day I came home, I weighted 209. I started working on getting it off and nothing seemed to work. We lived in Hanover Pennsylvania at the time and I would tell my doctor things didn't feel right and she would tell me I was homesick and probably had a little postpartum depression. So  I settled into this is how life was and me and my 209 lb body tried to be friends. I wasn't depressed, seriously. I loved Robert and was extremely excited by every day with him and Andrew and that is just not part of the post partum depression. We had a pediatrician seperate from my doctor, so after my six week visit after Robert was born, I didn't go to the doctor anymore. We actually didn't even have a family doctor out there, just the OB/GYN.  I wish I would have had a bigger voice to have them do some more checking on me. 

More to come next month.

I want to remind you that our bodies are amazing things. God is incredible when you think about all the things he made happen. All our organs working together, how neat our fingernails and toenails are (and since we were talking about babies, aren't baby toenails and fingernails just amazing?)

Remember for this week that Psalm 139:14 says, "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well."

Just the fact that God can create us to support another life inside of us, and produce a miracle and it happens everyday, that is amazing to me.

And, just because it seems like life is a little crazier than normal and I have my state monitoring visit coming up this week, I am leaving you with my theme song, and actually my word for 2024. 

I picked this word because I want to be stronger not only mentally, but physically. Last year my word was transform. I think I did that, ;-)

So, here is Ann Wilson's Strong because I do know who makes me strong.

My favorite part is "Lord knows I've tried but I'm good at falling down, Thank God you're good at picking me up off the ground". Yep, story of my life, right there.

Have a great week!

What are You Talking About?

 Good morning everyone, I hope you all had a good week.

I saw something on facebook this week that made me know what I was writing about.

This:

And I really thought, this is good to remind everyone but I really don't think there is an age limit on this. 

Words hurt, and when people are talking about you, it hurts, no matter how old you are. And honestly, yes, it hurts worse when people just keep reminding you but it hurts even when it happens for a short time.

The last few years there has been a thing going around that says, "What other people think of you is none of your business." I don't know if it is different being from a small town or what, but I can't wrap my head around this. If there is someone out there that can tell me they truly don't care what anyone thinks of them, I believe I would show you a picture of a pretty lonely person. But maybe I am wrong. I know I personally care very much what others think of me.

I had an incident happen almost a year ago where I was told by several people things about my personal business that was told to them and of course, who told it. It killed me, and of course, just like the age old game of telephone and I am sorry, but also like the REO Speedwagon song :-), "tales get taller on down the line". 

By the time it got back to me, it had taken something that I had done and twisted it and turned it into trying to cheat someone out of something. I was heartsick, and I truly don't remember telling this friend anything, but I didn't know I had to watch what I said around them. Needless to say, I know now and I have come to see this person as someone who needs to make sure people knows they knows everything about everyone. And that in itself hurts. 

There is a big difference between being concerned and just wanting to know everyone's business. I am watching someone close to me go through some things right now and part of what has been standing in the way of healing is worrying about what everyone is going to think. If they hadn't seen and heard other people be belittled for the same issues, it wouldn't be so bad, but it has been bad.

So, I want to talk a little bit about gossip today.  There are a lot of verses in the Bible that lets us know gossip is a sin. 

Proverbs 16:28 says "A perverse person stirs up conflict, and a gossip separates close friends."

Proverbs 26:20 "Without wood, a fire goes out; without gossip, a conflict ceases."

Proverbs 11:13 "A gossip goes around telling secrets, but those who are trustworthy can keep a confidence."

Leviticus 19:16 "Never gossip. Never endanger your neighbor's life. I am the Lord"

Proverbs 18:8 "The words of a talebearer are as wounds, and they go down into the innermost parts of the belly."

James 3:5 "In the same way, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it boasts of great things. Consider how small a spark sets a great forest ablaze"

I could go on and on and on, there are many of them. It is wrong.

While researching for this post, I ran across this too, 

"Notice, we never pray for folks we gossip about, and we never gossip about the folks for whom we pray! For prayer is the great deterrent." 

Leonard Ravenhill

I also ran across this one, "Whoever gossips to you will gossip about you". I find that to be true. 

I learned years ago that when someone tells me something someone else told them about me, my first reply is, "and what did you say".

Remember that when choosing friends.

I don't know if I have less desire to just run and tell everything I know because of my job but I work in a job where confidentiality is a must and so I guess I just don't understand that just because you know something means it is your job to tell the world. 

I see a lot of people hurting and needing help, and many of them don't come to our agency as soon as they could for fear someone will find out and criticize them for being weak. In our office, gossiping is a firing offense. 

Let me bring this back around to the bottom line.

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, is perfect. Nobody is immune to falling on tough times or getting off of their straight and narrow path, and NOBODY is good enough to be able to talk about anyone else's downfalls. If one single human was perfect, Christ's death and resurrection would have been a joke.

I leave you today with Mark Wills' "Don't Laugh at Me". If you normally don't take the time to watch the video and listen to the song, I beg you, please do so today. Make sure you see that part, "Don't get your pleasure from my pain."

See you next week.

Back to the Basics

 Happy Saturday morning everyone!

I hope you have had a good week, mine has been busy, but I have accomplished a lot. Getting ready for a couple of weeks of traveling so things are about to get a little busier.

So, a series of events has prompted this week's blog. First, we started a new book study Sunday night at church, it is called The Unsaved Christian and it is very compelling to me. It is about our friends and family who confess to be a Christian but have never really accepted Christ as their Savior, or have that personal relationship with God, in one point of the book it mentions that a lot of people believe if they are not atheists, they are Christians, One of the study questions was, "If someone asked you why you're a Christian, or more specifically, how you know you are a Christian, what would you say?" We discussed 1 Peter 3:15, "But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect."

Then Monday morning, on my way to the gym, listening to My Daily Bread, that verse came up again. And wouldn't you know, on Thursday, while on the treadmill, watching David Jeremiah, it came up again. You know how sometimes you wish God would give you a sign? I think He was saying, "Here's your sign".

So, today, I give you my own testimony as well as a path to salvation if you have never really made this about you and God.

I was saved when  I was 12. Well, I will back that up a little. I believe I was probably saved earlier than that but my dad was a big believer in the age of accountability and he didn't want me to profess to be a Christian before he was sure I was old enough to really understand what that meant. So, the year I was 12, I  went forward at the end of church service and professed to our congregation that I wanted to be a Christian. Our pastor at the time, Richard Young, took me through the following verses to make sure I understood.

There is a set of verses in Roman's that spells out the entire path of Salvation, we call it the Roman Road. It starts with Romans 3:23

"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

This means absolutely everyone. We are human so we are sinners. Many people believe they are good people, so they don't sin. You know when you spouted off in anger at a friend or loved one, or even a stranger as you were driving down the road? Or when you had a not so nice thought about someone? Or when you told "a little white lie" or got upset because someone you didn't believed deserved something got it? That is all sin. Sin is not limited to getting drunk, having an affair, or premarital sex, stealing and murder. It's the little things and I am afraid we all do them. Bottom line, the first step to being saved is understanding you need to be saved.

When Adam and Eve sinned, that brought sin into the world, and God said because of sin, we would now be subject to death. Romans 3:10 says "No one is righteous- not even one". That means you and me and Romans 6:23 says, "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord."

The book we are reading brought up a point that a lot of unsaved Christians believe in Heaven but not hell. There is both, the Bible tells us so, and if you have never asked Christ to be your Savior, the cold hard fact is, you are not going to Heaven when you die. Hell is not a place I would wish on my worst enemy, and we may have a talk about that in the near future, because the Bible does tell us what Hell will be like.  

As I said, God made a way out for our sin when He sent Christ to earth. Some people may think they have done too many bad things in life to ever be saved. But I want to remind you of something, God MADE you! This may be easier to understand if you are a parent. Your kids can do a lot of things against you but you know you will always love them. There may be times you don't like what they are doing, but you always love them.

So the next verse of the Roman Road is Romans 5:8, "But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.

Nobody and I mean NOBODY is too bad to be accepted by God if they turned to Him.

So, now, you may be thinking that's all well and good, but what is next.

Romans 10:9-10 says "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by belief in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved.

See, God sent Christ to earth, in the form of a human, had him walk this earth for 33 years and then had him die on the cross for our sins. He was the only perfect person to ever walk the earth. And he was put on the cross and died to cast your sins away. Three days later, Christ rose from the grave, which means He is a living Savior, and He transcended to Heaven and is there today with our loved ones who believed in Him in their lifetime.

 John 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world that He sent His only son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life." 

So, when you accept that God sent Christ, Christ died for your sins and by believing that, you will go to Heaven when you die, and you confess that to others, you are saved.

Sounds too easy, doesn't it? People try to put good works with Salvation. Good works is not a part of Salvation, it is a product of it. Once you are saved, you realize that you want your friends and family to be saved too, and you really want to start learning more about what God wants you to do. When you start realizing the depth of love it took to have Christ suffer and die, you find gratitude and that is where wanting to do your best for someone who took on all your failures, mistakes, stains and scars comes in. 

So, I want to remind you of a few more verses:

Romans 5:1, "Therefore, since we have been made right in God's sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us."

and

Romans 8:1 "So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ."

So once you are saved, you are saved.

I know when I was saved, I know why I was saved, I know how I was saved.

I also know that once you are saved, you have the Holy Spirit. When you are a Christian, I personally believe your conscience is from the Holy Spirit. That voice telling you when you know you are going against what God wants you to do. It could be a deep subject to talk about your conscience before being saved, but I believe if you aren't being led by God, you are being led by Satan, and Satan wants nothing more than to have people who consider themselves "good" to miss the boat to God's goodness. So I believe he can even tell you to do good things to keep you from seeing the need for Salvation.

The Holy Spirit can guide you in what you should and shouldn't do, but he is also a comforter. In those times when the weight of the world has been on my shoulders, and I give it to God, I can truly feel the peace wash over me. That is a huge thing to me. Once you belong to Jesus, you are truly never alone.

It wasn't long after I made my public profession of faith that my dad had a massive heart attack. There were many times as a 12-year-old, we were told he wouldn't live. He lived for another year and then, on a normal November day, while doing the job he loved, he had a second heart attack and was gone. I had indescribably peace even though I was hurting.  I have the assurance of knowing I will see him again. I have the assurance of knowing he is in a beautiful place worshiping at the feet of Jesus and our parting is only temporary because I too know I am Heaven bound.

I also know I am a sinner and I sin even though I try not to. Our goals as Christians is to try to be perfect, we know we will never achieve that here on earth, but we must try as every time we sin, we can see the nails being driven into Christ's hands. That is why He died. So you could live. Forever.

If you have never made that personal confession of faith, I just gave you all the steps. Once you have accepted Christ, you want to try to grow in your faith, There are plenty of places online and on your phone to find the Bible, Bible Gateway on your computer and the app YouVersion of your phone are two great places to start. Then, you need to find a place of worship. Seriously, the Church was created in the Bible, so you can fellowship with other Christians and being a new Christian, you will have tons of questions. Learning the answers to those questions is how you grow in faith.

Our church- Hidalgo Independent Christian Church has worship services every Sunday morning at 10:00, we have a Sunday evening Bible study at 6 on Sunday night and at 9:00 on Sunday morning, we have Sunday school. Our Worship service is on FaceBook live every Sunday morning at 10 (just search for Hidalgo Independent Christian Church and like our page)  if you are farther away. If you are close though, attending Sunday School and Bible Study are two great ways to let you discuss with other Christians what the Bible is trying to tell us and we would absolutely love to have you!

I hope this helps someone, if you are already a Christian, maybe this will give you the courage to share your faith. If you are a baby Christian, welcome to the family!

I am leaving you with Chris Tomlin's At the Cross (Love Ran Red), I made the statement earlier that when you realize the depth of God's love, it makes you so humble. This song describes that.

Happy Saturday!