Life Preservers

I recently met up with an old childhood acquaintance via facebook...The last time I remember seeing him was when I was approximately ten years old at a church function....This meeting has definately been a life changing moment for me.....Let me explain....Before this meeting I had been praying that God would send people into my life that would bring change.....You see I felt like a person in the ocean and I was drowning......Why did I feel this way?....Well I do not have enough time to go into that...let's just say lots of life events.....What did this person do that brought life to me?.....Words.....Words of encourgement......Encouragement to find the gifts that God had put in me and let them come out....A HUGE life line.....

I was sitting here at my computer pondering all of this when this picture popped into my head....You see I am a visual person and God knows this, so he uses pictures to get his point across to me.....the picture was of me sitting in a chair in a dark room, just sitting....now beside me was a lamp, but it was not turned on.....all of the sudden a person walked into the room, walked over to the lamp and turned it on.....looked at me and took my hand and said "ok now it is time to get up and get going, you've sat here long enough in the dark"....though this was just a picture, God definately got his point across to me.....He had sent me a life line, an encourager......and just in the past week, it has made all the the differance to me.....

Now for you my reader.....Are you a life line or could you be a life line to someone?......Go ahead throw out a word or two of encouragement today and see what happens......There are lots of drowning people out there......

Middle aged body with a cheerleader inside

Why do I feel like a cheerleader trapped in a middle-aged body?.....No I really mean it.....I have this picture that keeps playing in my head of me in a cheerleader outfit, with pom-poms and then I am doing cartwheels and flip-flops.....perhaps I was a cheerleader in another life....lol....No actually I believe God is using humor to try and tell me something......These are the words that keep going off inside me...."Donna I want you to be my cheerleader".......I am studying right now to be a counselor, so that kind of fits the mold....But let me take it a step further....I think if we are God's kids, then we are all called to be cheerleaders, encouragers....So if you see someone that is down, take the time to give that person an encourgaing word or two, you never know what it may mean to them....

So next time you see someone that looks as though their bottom lip is dragging the ground.....get out those pom-poms and cheer, cheer, cheer....they may laugh, but you will have cheered them up.....GO TEAM

"But encourage on another daily..." Heb. 3:13

Thoughts on Religon.....

I am rereading a book that I read sometime ago, Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller....On the front cover it says, nonreligous thoughts on christian spirituality. The first time I read the book I was having what a friend of mine called "a crisis of faith". The book changed my life....I was just on the verge of giving up on my faith....and after I read this.....I came to the conclusion as the author of the book did, that instead of religon....God just wants relationship with us through his Son Jesus Christ. He wants to communicate with us......

To sum it all up I have a friend thats says it this way "It's not about religon, it's about relationship"........In Blue Like Jazz, Don says, "I believe that the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil but rather have us wasting time. This is why the devil tries to get Christians to be religous. If he can sink a man's mind into habit, he will prevent his heart from engaging God."

I now have relationship with Father God, not based on rules or regulations that man would try and put on me, but based on an understanding of his great Love and Mercy.....It's awesome.....

Homelessness....What does it look like??

This is a hard topic for me to address. Why you might ask.....Because I find myself at this time in my life, well homeless......When I was in my twenties, if someone would have told me that at age forty-six I would be divorced, no home, no job......I would have laughed at them.....No not me.....I am a christian and that is just not going to happen.....Well guess what folks? .....Christian or not it does happen......Life happens.....What happened that would make me want to blog about this....I saw an interview recently with a twenty something year old on The Today Show.....basically showing the new face of homelessness.....she says that not all homeless people are addicted to drugs or alcohol, some have cell phones, access to computers and live in their cars.....It's scary but it happens and with the job market the way it is today well their are lots of people either homeless or on the verge......In my case I sleep on couches... Thank God for couches and the people that allow me to sleep on them.......Now I am not sharing this so that people will feel sorry for me, I am sharing it to say whatever picture the word homeless may have conjured in your head in the past, well you might just get rid of it.....look into my face and see homeless.....no not addicted to drugs or alcohol and have never been, and staying on differant peoples couches, but still do not have a home......

Like the girl in the article, I am a hopeful and positive person and do believe that everything will be ok.....but God forgive me for judgement in the past.....