My New Years’ Prayer From Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power

It’s hard to believe we are starting another year together. Time seems to fly faster as we get older. Wasn’t it just yesterday that I began Coffee Hour?

That Chicklit Power Ministries began? As we begin this New Year, I can’t help but reflect on the prior one and do a bit of inventory. How else can I prevent myself from making the same mistakes? Gain victory over struggles? Appreciate the journey? Grab your coffee and come on in.

To reflect is to marvel at His hand in my life, and not just the distant or recent past, but my present and my future. As I do this, the words overflow out of my heart, through my fingers and onto the keyboard, and thus out to you. Here is my New Years’ prayer for you and for me:

As this year begins, Father, be my beginning and my end

Entwine my heart with yours and be my very best friend

May my life be an act of worship speaking louder than my words

A fragrance more pleasing than the sweetest of all created herbs

Help me begin each day lingering in your presence

Worship you more and more, letting go of resentments

Help me not to get lost and drown in any and all sorrow

For your Word promises you will bring joy in my tomorrow

Help me seek your Word for answers and your unfailing advice

When I’m lost and wandering in problems rising to great heights

Help me keep an eternal perspective despite adversity

And to remember any trial I endure is only temporary

Preparing me for greater things is your refining fire

May an eternity with You be my consuming desire

Help me not be directed by pride, but seek true humility

Knowing I am nothing without You residing within me

May I continue to remember I don’t need to know it all

For You don’t call the qualified but you qualify those you call

When physical or emotional pain threaten to rob me spiritually

Pick me up and hold me, mind body and soul completely

Help me just be still, and soak up all life’s precious moments

And help me, Abba Father to not be guided by my emotions

Father, I have one more wish as we begin another year together

Help me to love the gift of my husband that honors you a lot better

For when I get there we won’t talk about what he did or didn’t do

But about how I loved and cared for him through the power of You

Yes, Father, You began a great work in me a long time ago

And I’m thankful for your grace that helps me to know

That as another year begins, I need to remain teachable

For you will carry me beyond anything unreachable

Oh Abba, help me to remain on the wheel each day

For you are the Potter, and I long to be the clay

Mold me and make me more into the likeness of you

So others will see you in each and everything I do

I pray this for me and for you… Now let’s get seat-belted in for the ride through 2013! Join me tomorrow for our first WOW of the year!

Evinda

Nana Holds From Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power

Welcome to Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power and thanks so much for taking time to come have coffee with me. Grab your coffee and come on in.
Before I get back to where we left off, let me ask you a question; it’s one that I answered one way in the beginning months of becoming Mama/Nana, and now can honestly answer it another way: Who is more “blessed,” the woman/man who has much, struggles little and has no need for a relationship with Christ, or the woman/man who has less in the way of monetary things, struggles quite often but has this consistent joy, this untouchable peace?

See, in the first few months, I was asking “why” every bit as much as I was seeking Him for the “how.” One of those times I asked why and how came the second week. We were taking a walk around the neighborhood, one of the ways we were learning how to help Bryden spend some of that energy that I so wish I could bottle for George and me, because if I could, I’d be downing a big drink of it toward the end of the day. It’s like about 5:00 or thereafter, my energy has taken flight and it doesn’t return until the next morning! (Now, at about 3:00, I pray for strength for the next shift, the final shift of the day!) Anyway, we had all three of our four-legged kids – both of ours and Bryce’s big four-legged child – and we would attempt to let Bryden take one of the leashes and off we’d go.

We would go down our street, left at the end and head up that street which dead-ends at the golf-course. The first time we did this as we got closer and closer to the golf course, Bryden became more antsy and unsettled and then as we began to pass it, suddenly, out of nowhere, he stopped and began to cry with everything in him. George and I stopped in our confusion and his word collided with my realization of where his sorrow was coming from simultaneously.

See, he and his daddy used to always take a walk with the little red wagon. Bryden would be in the wagon and daddy would pull him; that is until they got to the golf course. Then Bryden would get out and they would both down into the ravine, looking for the golf balls that had erroneously disappeared from a golfer’s view and had gathered down in the wash/ravine. It was like a gold mine down there.

For Bryden, it was ball heaven because his very favorite thing is balls, golf balls, soccer balls, basketballs, baseballs, and let me tell you, he has a God-given talent when it comes to hitting and/or kicking them. Then they would gather them all up and put them in the wagon and make their way back home. A successful hunt was five to ten and an okay night was one to three, but no matter how many they found, Bryden was super thrilled. And we had to keep every one of them. Some went in his toy box in the family room, some in a glass container on the counter in his bathroom, some upstairs in his room, and of course, a few got left in the wagon.

Well, there we were trying to pass the golf course but stopped dead in our tracks. I bent down to reach for him just as he cried out “Daaaaa-deeee. I want my daddy.” I hurried to scoop him into my arms. As I felt my heart break, my mind asked why. Why does a little one have to endure so much sorrow? How does a little one endure so much sorrow and how do I do this, God? How? Somebody show me how.

We began to walk again with me holding him while he cried for a couple of minutes. And as we got away from the place that reminded him of his daddy, he calmed down, and he wanted down. As if it had never happened, he took Sparky’s leash and scurried down the sidewalk and it was all we could do to keep up with him. Inwardly, I was marveling at the new insight I had just received: God had made this little guy tough, resiliently tough and somehow, some way, we were all going to get through this circumstance.

Join me Monday for more of Nana holds, and we’ll return to that question I began our time with today.

Confidently,

Evinda

Nana Holds-From Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power

Welcome to our Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power. I’m so glad you could come by and take a break with me. Grab your coffee and come on in.

As I look back on that first week of being Mama/Nana, it was definitely one of those footprint times when I know the Author and Finisher of our Faith carried George and me, and all of our pain, sorrow and frustration. There’s no need to go into all the gory details and run the risk of glorifying the evil one but what I would like to do is highlight some of the beautiful moments that shone through more brilliantly than all the pain and sorrow. They are moments that bring so many of the promises of God to life within our home and definitely deeply into this circumstance.

And in the midst of living in those moments, there were lessons learned along the way, again, lessons that bring to life the Holy Spirit inspired Word of God, promises that have led us through the most painful part of this circumstance to victory in many areas of our lives. See, He has warned us that we will have tribulations in this world, but He has already overcome them. I don’t know why I am always so surprised by His creativity, His sovereignty that accomplishes so much with one circumstance, but I am and I continue to be awestruck, captured by His characteristics in a way that ties so many knots in my string of faith along the way that I, by His grace, shall never come unraveled in my faith. I may have trouble finding my joy sometimes, and there may be days where I have to stir really hard to bring it up to the surface that it may come out and splash others, but I know too much to go back and too much of HIS Word, too many of HIS promises have come to fruition in my own life for me to unravel!

In the midst of the pain, sorrow, frustration and confusion, I was preparing for our holiday event “Living outside Your Circumstances.” Wow, did He ever prepare me that I may comfort others with the comfort I’ve been given. And in my research, I found some diamonds, big diamonds, Girls! I think they will sparkle so beautifully in any circumstance you may be going through and I’m excited to share them with you. The first diamond I discovered is within the word tribulation and I have to tell you as I dug for a deeper understanding, it became so much easier to keep an eternal perspective in our current circumstance, aka, tribulation.

Tribulation translates to “thlipsis” in Greek and primarily means “a pressing, pressure, anything which burdens the spirit and is often accompanied by anguish.” Hang on with me here because this gets better. So the root word for tribulation is actually a sort of sifting machine, a machine that goes and sifts the bad from the good by applying pressure!

There it is; the 10-karat diamond that sparkles with truth that shows us that circumstances/tribulations can work for our eternal good by sifting out the bad, separating it from the good, if we let them!
Please join me tomorrow for the beginning of the highlights of the moments that nearly took our breath away and etched in our hearts their revelations and lessons.

Marveling at His handiwork,

Evinda