The Mayo visit

This is Doctor Moore checking my neck for lumps. Thankfully, none there! :)

Funny we both have the same look on our face. This was our discussion about when I come back and what happens then.

He's letting me skip my Dec appt with him, and see my ENT in town for that visit, although, now that I asked for that, I think I will actually miss seeing Dr. Moore! lol.  We decided I will come back in March to Mayo and have my 2 yr PET scan three months early.  I'm glad I'm having a PET again, but of course, those always worry me!  I'll just be praying and trusting God that it's a good NED scan!

The last picture, I asked for, and he so graciously said sure!   It's funny, when I first met this man, he was all business, not personable at all, just looked at my PET told me what he could do for me and that was it. But the more visits I have, the sweeter he gets and I can tell he really does care about his patients.

I thank God for this man, someone so devoted to caring for other people's lives. 

and I thank God for healing me through Mr. Moore.

:)

More of him.

I don't know why, but sometimes I just feel led to share what I am learning along the way here.  I'm sure by sharing my thoughts and being such an open book, sometimes I may not make myself look real good but I am OK with that.

I think God wants me to share my faults and airheadedness with others so they know they are not alone.

I was with some of our church family last night, and I realized how much we are all on different levels. Some are so advanced in their faith and knowledge of our Lord, and not just knowledge, but true heartfelt understanding and love for our Jesus. Then there's others, like me, who all along have  thought the love I had for God was good, and in my mind, I did love him, but in reality I wasn't doing much of loving him at all.

The wonderful thing about our God is that he gives LOTS of Grace and Mercy and Love. He knows us. He forgives us when we ask for it.  I am so thankful of that.

I think back to blogging in the spring when I went for a walk in the morning and I was walking toward the sunshine at 5:30am and it was so bright and warm and it just felt so good. I just remember the feeling I had that I didn't want to turn around and walk the other way, or go in the house, I just wanted to bask in that sunshine.

That's how it is with Jesus. The closer you get to him, the more time you spend with him, the more you want, and the more you love him.

He loves to bless us and give us favor.

I was reading this morning, Psalm 34

God will deliver us from fear, save us from our troubles, guard and deliver us, show us goodness, supply our needs, listen when we talk to him and redeem us.

But the following statement was, to receive these things, we must do our part.

What is our part?

Crying out to him, trusting him, fearing him, refraining from lying, turn from evil, do good.

So it's not a one way relationship here. Yes, He loves us. No matter what. He died for us, and you don't die for someone if you don't love them A LOT.

But when we do our part in the relationship with the Lord, he blesses us more. He gives us favor.

I want that.

God's been really working in my life the last few months, really convicting me of things and opening my eyes to things, and helping me understand things that I didn't before. He's giving me wisdom that I prayed for. It's a bit scary. lol.

Jesus' light is not only warm and inviting and feels good, but sometimes his light shines nice and bright and uncovers some really ugly sin in our hearts.

There's a verse that I heard this week that struck me pretty deep. The New king James version is this~

Psalm 66:18

If I regard iniquity in my heart,

The Lord will not hear.

Here's a  few different versions of the verse~

If I had cherished sin in my heart,

the Lord would not have listened;

Or

All believers, come here and listen,

let me tell you what God did for me.

I called out to him with my mouth,

my tongue shaped the sounds of music.

If I had been cozy with evil,

the Lord would never have listened.

But he most surely did listen,

he came on the double when he heard my prayer.

Blessed be God: he didn't turn a deaf ear,

he stayed with me, loyal in his love.

The verse is saying, if you have sin in your heart, if you become cozy with it, living with it daily and accepting it as OK, God turns his ear from you.

That scares me. I do NOT want God to turn his ear from me and not hear my prayers. Will he still love me? Yes he will. But sin can put a wedge between us and God. He's a holy God and can't be around or tolerate sin.

No, we can't EVER be perfect in this life here on earth. But we can sure be more aware of our sin and not allow the sin he shows us to dwell in us.

I have sins that dwell. They've been dwelling for a long time, and it's time I get rid of them.

Jesus died so that I could be a victor not a victim.

The bible says we are more then a conqueror in Christ.

We need to make the decision to put Christ FIRST in our lives.

We need to stay in position where we receive his favor and blessings, that position is a repentant heart. Loving him, making him LORD of our life, and repenting of our sins DAILY.

I want God's favor and blessings. I don't want to live insignificantly for Jesus. I want to be his hands and feet and face and let him be seen through me. I can't do that and continue to have unrepented sin in my heart.

I was reading in 1 John Tuesday morning and recorded some verses.

1 John 1:6-7

 If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth.  But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

The commentary says~

Just as darkness cannot exist in the presence of light, sin cannot exist in the presence of a holy God.

If we want to have a relationship with God, we MUST put aside our sinful way of living.

To claim that we belong to him, but then go out and live for ourselves is hypocrisy. Christ WILL expose and judge such deceit. 

What we need to think about is, what does living for ourselves really mean?  It means, we are not putting him first. We are not living for him. We have idols in our heart.  We love other things more then we love God and put those things before him. It could be anything that you choose to love more then God.

Things God has shown me lately as Idols are~ my own comfort and convenience are idols for me. Wanting to be able to relax when I want, do what I want, not having to clean up after others all the time. A clean house is an idol for me. Being accepted by others, another idol...........

For some, it may be money, or sports, or exercise, or their looks, anything can be an Idol to us, something we put before God. It's got to go!

They are Idols of our heart and God wants to be first.

Remember, we will have to stand before him one day and give an account. He IS coming back. What will you have to say when you stand before the mighty king?  I sure don't want to have to hang my head and say I'm sorry that I thought "I" was more important then the King of Kings.

We are to have no other God's before us.

Exodus 20:3

“You shall have no other gods before Me.

Deuteronomy 5:7

‘You shall have no other gods bbefore Me.

Judges 10:13

Yet you have forsaken Me and served other gods; therefore I will no longer deliver you.

Back to 1 john 1:6-7 that I posted above,  We can't love God and court sin at the same time.

When we commit our lives to Christ, by accepting him as our LORD and savior, and thus identify ourselves with him, his death becomes ours. We need to die to self.

If that is not happening, maybe we never really accepted him as LORD.

It's something I've been thinking about a lot lately about myself and my own relationship with him.

1 John 2:3-6

We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands.  Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person.  But if anyone obeys his word, love for God[a] is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him:  Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.

1 John 3:6-10

No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.

 Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.  The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.  No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.

I don't want to be known as a child of the devil. No thanks.  I'm a Jesus girl, which means I should be lookin like a Jesus girl.

Today in reading Psalm  34 I wrote down, When we take the first step of obedience in following him, we will discover that he is good and kind. As we trust him daily we discover how good he is.

That is my mission to give up Amy for him. More of him and less of me.

I should have stood up.

So the last post I actually wrote on the 19th,  yesterday morning, but I didn't publish it right away. 

Last night I went to listen to a speaker, and once again, God blew me away.

He either puts the right things in my hand to read, or puts ME in front of the right people, always at the perfect time.

So I had my "revolution" in the morning then go and hear this women talk.

What did she talk about you ask?  ;)

Well first she talked about how people would rather "SEE" a sermon, then "HEAR" a sermon. In other words, the gospel being LIVED OUT, not just someone talking about how wonderful Jesus is, or saying they are a Christian, but LIVING it.

 Not preaching him, but LIVING him.........

 Hmmmm, funny she's talking about that when I just got my wake up slap in the morning. ;)

The rest of the night she spoke on the book of Ruth. If you don't know the story, you need to get your bible out and read it. It's a great book of the bible.

How the story was told last night was that Elimelech and Naomi who were from Bethlehem, took their family, (themselves and their two sons Mahlon and Killion) to live in the country of Moab. At that time that was probably not the best decision because Moab was a place of disobedience and Idolatry. The two sons married Moabite women (Ruth and Orpah) which was another no-no.

Naomi ended up losing her husband and her two sons. They all died. So she was left with her two daugther in laws.

Things were just bad for Naomi and eventually, she heard that God came to the aid of his people back in Bethlehem, she wanted to go back home again.

The speaker kind of used Moab as a "place" we go when we are not following God. A bad place, full of sin and disobedience and Idolatry.

Could be anywhere or anything for us. Whatever our particular sin is that keeps us away from following the Lord, that's our Moab.

Instead of living in a place like Bethlehem, where you know God is providing and things are good, you "visit" a place like Moab, and sometimes you stay there, sometimes for a long time.

For me, My Moab would be, not laying down my will, not living in God's. So of course, this struck me as a powerful talk from the Lord.

The speaker said, If you are in Moab,

Are you ready and willing to head back to Bethlehem??

Are you ready to rise up from the place you are living in?

She asked for those who were to stand.............. I should have stood up.  I knew what I learned in the morning yesterday, and I Knew what I needed to do. I needed to stand, and I needed to be prayed  for, that God will help me through this process. I need to head on back to Bethlehem.

At the end of the night, they asked the new people to fill out a card and when you filled it out, you hand it in, and they give you a free cd of a teaching. I picked one, out of the girls hand, not looking at what they were. I put it in my CD player in the van on the way home.

You KNOW what it was about.  I didn't even get to finish it yet, but what I did listen to of it was ~

Ephesians 4:17-

So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking.

She says to live a life WORTHY of the calling.

And.........

"If  you wanna know why you don't have abundance, you have to choose to let him change you. Who will you serve?"

(remember, I was wondering why I didn't have fruit?)

We can't be on the fence. We can either serve God or serve man.

I should have stood up. Cause I'm ready to get out of Moab and I'm running back to Bethlehem.

Lay my life down.

And I find peace, I find peace.....








And my soul sings.....



I'll post all the words to the song at the bottom, right above where you can listen to the beautiful song.

I am feeling peace today.

This morning I felt my soul singing as God finally gave me the wisdom I've been seeking.
I know I've expressed on my blog before about God answering prayers or speaking to me, but I love to share it because he is so real and so involved in our puny lives if we look for him.

So the last month or so God's been doing some serious chiseling away, and frankly, I didn't like it very much.

I've been on antidepressants for about 20 years for anxiety,  I God decided about 4 or so months ago that it was time for me to be off of the meds.
It was a slow weaning process with lots of headaches and dizziness and just plain stinky. I survived, and thankfully my family survived it too.
I think I am over all the withdrawal symptoms now, whew.
Unfortunately, after with drawls were over, something even more ugly came from not taking the meds. It was, the real Me, my "inner self", my  heart............my ugly, broken, selfish, heart.
This is not a person that I wanted to meet, and I'm pretty sure my husband and kids didn't either. Not to say that I was never crabby before, but this was different.

The bouts of anxiety I have are nothing compared to the crabby girl I became.
My patience was thin, My tolerance of pretty much anything was real low,  everything made me crabby, or yell, or pout, or cry.
Sounds like a simple solution of get back on the meds right? I thought, " If I have all these symptoms, I must need the medicine."

Thankfully, I have a mom, who is strong in her faith, someone who's been through anxiety/panic/depression before, who had the guts to say to me, " You don't need them". 
Of course I thought , who is she? Is she crazy? What does she know?

Then I picked up a book,  and in this book, she explained that our anxiety and or depression is not always from a chemical imbalance, that sometimes, it's from..............our heart.
That we need to look at what is going on in our hearts, (meaning sin) and take care of it and the problems will fade away.

So, I began on a journey, one that I really didn't want to be on. lol.
My crabbiness really didn't get any better. Most days I'd be crabby about 10 min after someone would interfere with my quiet time.

I finally started wondering, really, what is my problem anyway? I mean, I am a Christian. I have been for about eight years, so if I'm a Christian women then why don't I have the fruit of the spirit to prove it?

I searched scriptures every morning. I seriously killed my brain reading books, bibles, commentaries, even asked sisters in Christ what the deal was.  I came up with nothing. Nothing!
Talk about frustrating.

My pastor did two sermons, in the last few weeks about sin. ( Of course, just another coincidence).
The first one, which was the 4th of Sept he talked about ~Christ living in us........

We are to live in accordance............

Because of Jesus that we can live a holy life...........

Was I reflecting Christ?

Sinfulness is ALWAYS about selfishness............

He talked about the tongue, and how if you can bring destruction with your words~ fear for your soul.........

A heart turned toward God gives Grace........

Let go of selfishness...........

Gospel says to die to self..............

If we live selfishly, we are betraying the gospel of Christ............

Of course during this sermon, I was not feeling well. At all. I almost felt the need to get up and get out of there. (This sickness started before the sermon so I'm quite sure it was the evil one trying to keep me from hearing what I needed to hear)

So, of course, now I'm MORE frustrated that he was talking to ME. Everything he said was true, and it was all me.  It was one of those sermons where your sitting there thinking, "what does Tommy know about my heart and did he write this sermon especially for ME?"

So back to more bible reading.........book reading, searching for answers, praying............asking friends..........Nothing.

Nothing.................really God?

Then a week's break of a sermon with a guest pastor talking about God and how much he loves us and how we can look at him like our "daddy", good heart warming sermon.

Still crabby..............still frustrated..............still searching for answers to why I don't have the fruit.


I google "sin" and I find great info on how to kill it. I print it all. Make a Sin binder........I'm feelin a bit better.......I'm going to figure this all out.......

What in the world is God doing???


This weeks sermon~

Doctrine and Living.

Again, speaking right to me. 

You can know the doctrine.
 You can read the bible and know the verses.
 You can call yourself a Christ follower.

Examine ourselves..............
live wisely, not foolishly...........

We have an "idea" of ourselves, but that is not REALLY who we are inside....

Look carefully how you walk...........

Don't be foolish but understand what the will of God is.

To find God's will~ Kill mine.
Lay down what I want.
Until we yield ours, we can't find his.

Take all my wants and desires and lay them down..............................

His will is perfect for us.

Tommy said, " It scares us because we have not grasped the truth that God the father wants more for us then we do".

So I walk out of church, go home and be crabby. Why? Because I don't get it. Because I'm frustrated.
When I look at myself, when I examine the Amy within, I am not laying down my will.

 I don't know how, or what that means...

I do all these wrong things, my heart is ugly. Am I even saved??!

So last night, I email my pastor out of frustration. My poor friend Tommy............I just let it all out. All my frustrations and questions.............why didn't anyone have any answers for me and was he planning on explaining the "how to's" next weeks sermon? lol

 (Which by the way is our "friends day" for people to come check out our church, so please come! Unless, you don't like convicting sermons, then you may want to stay home. lol)

So, last night, I pull out a book, (that a frind from church gave me over a year ago and I never read it) out of my kitchen hutch (where I stash important things that I am not using), and I open it up and start reading it. It's about Agape love.
I start reading about this women and how she was so moody and crabby and her thoughts controlled her, and..........Is this book about me?
The random page I'm reading leads me to Chapter 14, Which is "Eight steps to survival".  It's eight steps to surviving, from......................Sin............
I decided since this is not my book and I shouldn't write and highlight in it to make copies of the entire chapter. So I did that last night.
Then this morning I began reading it............
and the fog cleared..............

Finally! Praise Jesus, God finally broke through the steel trap and I understand!!!!!!

The reason that I did not have God's fruit was because I was not laying down my will! I was not laying my life down for him.
Boy, do I feel like an idiot.

All these years, thinking I am living for Christ, and I was living for ME! I thought I was following him, but really, I was following no one but my own selfish stupid will!
I can't help but throw my hands up and say, Why? Why didn't anyone explain this to me years ago? OR........

 Why was I so blind to this but yet thought I loved God?

Laying down your life/will for God is not about morning devotions. It's not about going to church on Sundays, it's not about doing bible studies, It's not about ANY of that!
(These ARE good things, that we should be doing, they do help you grow, but they are not what brings forth the fruit)

It's about giving up EVERYTHING you want, for EVERYTHING HE WANTS. It's about letting your dreams, your plans, your wants.........your comfort..............DIE.

Like he did.........On the cross..........for you and I.

What does that look like?

Being a living sacrifice for God.  Basically instead of killing an animal as a sin sacrifice like they did in the old testament, you are IT, but you are alive. lol. You sacrifice yourself, your life, while your living.

We Deny ourselves~ denying our "justified" feelings, our rights, our frustrations, our offenses, and our hurts.
We set aside our our own thoughts, emotions and desires.  We deny ourselves, our will, and live God's will.

We cannot be God's disciples unless we are willing to lay everything down.  We don't have to "feel" like it, but we are willing.

When we are mad, or upset and want to blow up at someone, or ignore them, or stonewall them, or pay them back for their wrongs, we need to ask ourselves~

"Am I really more concerned with doing God's will in my life then I am my own happiness?"

What would Jesus do in this situation?

We have to be WILLING to to obey God's will, no matter what he tells us to do, no matter how we feel, no matter what we think, no matter what we want. We are to get up and be willing to do exactly what God has asked us to do. (THEN we start to look like Christ!)

God is asking us to set aside our own emotional responses and choose to act totally out of faith.

We have to TRUST God that when we follow HIS will, he will fill us with his peace and strength, and FRUIT. If we trust him, give it to him, and let him flow through us, not let our emotions flow through us, but HIM, He shines. Jesus shows through in us. His light shines.

That if we let HIM live through us, we will produce the fruit.  Can I get a big AMEN here sisters??

This is how Christians shine Jesus light, this is how we become more like him, we allow him to live through us, by laying down our will.

This is how marriages are saved.......

This is how others come to Christ..........

Now, I'm sure not saying this is going to be an easy task for me, I know very well it's not. So if you just read this, please lift me up in prayer! Daily! :)


But I feel a relief that my eyes have finally been opened to really understand what It means to lay my life and my will down, and do God's will. To carry my cross, to die to self..............
to be SECOND.
Second to God and second to everyone else..........

The song. At your feet, by Casting Crowns. We've been listening to this song at bible study for weeks, sure, I love the song and enjoyed worshipping him with it, but now, this song has so much more meaning to me.
I lay my life down.......at HIS feet.



At Your Feet lyrics








Here at Your feet I lay my past down


My wanderings, all my mistakes down


And I am free






Here at Your feet I lay this day down


Not in my strength but in Yours I've found


All I need, You're all I need






Jesus, Jesus, at Your feet


Oh, to dwell and never leave


Jesus, Jesus, at Your feet


There is nowhere else for me


There is nowhere else for me






Here at Your feet I lay my future down


All of my dreams I give to You now


And I find peace, I find peace






Jesus, Jesus, at Your feet


Oh, to dwell and never leave


Jesus, Jesus, at Your feet


There is nowhere else for me



There is nowhere else for me






Here at Your feet I lay my life down


For You my King, You're all I want now


And my soul sings






Jesus, Jesus, at Your feet


Oh, to dwell and never leave


Jesus, Jesus, at Your feet


There is nowhere else for me


There is nowhere else for me






'Cause I am free here at Your feet


All I need is at Your feet


And I find peace, we're at Your feet


We're at Your feet






I am free here at Your feet


All I need is at Your feet


I find peace, we're at Your feet


We're at Your feet, we're at Your feet


We're at Your feet






Here at Your feet I lay my life down

Children are gifts.

This morning I was doing my usual waste of time checking facebook and have been seeing lots of posts yesterday and today about kids going back to school that just plain make me sad for the kids.

Things like this~

"Twas the night before school started, when all through the town, the parents were cheering, it was a riotous sound! By eight, kids were washed & tucked into bed . . when memories of homework filled them with dread! New pencils, new folders, new notebooks, too! New teachers/new friends, their anxiety grew! The parents just giggled when they learned of this fright & shouted GO TO BED, IT'S A SCHOOL NIGHT!..."

And.........

"Back to reality! No more beach, pools and hearing mom every five seconds!!!"

And mom's talking about new schedules, new lives, time to themselves.............

I am not judging, my heart is just aching for the children......What about the children and their hearts and souls??

Why is it that parents are more concerned about "their" time, and serving others, and training others, when they have these little souls that need them?

I am so confused by this mentality.

I am not saying if you send your kids to school there is something wrong with that, but when I see parents that can't wait to get rid of their kids and get back to their own lives, that makes me so sad inside.

God gave us these children, they are little gifts, not something that is an inconvenience to us and a pain for us to take care of and we'd rather just ship them off somewhere else so we don't have to deal with it.

I wonder how that makes God feel that we think his gifts are a burden and we'd rather shoo them off somewhere else so we can get on with our important lives.  Honestly, what could be more important then training up these little people and loving on them, and giving up our precious time for them?

Is anything more important then these gifts?

The world is just so messed up.  It's heartbreaking to me.

Before you think I am on a high horse because I home school, please remember, my oldest son went off to public high school today. I watched him walk to the bus stop with tear filled eyes, wishing he wanted to home school.

I am not a high and mighty mom sitting here thinking I am all that. Most days I am feeling like a failure of a mom. But my heart breaks when I hear mom's just happy to move on with their lives. Happy that their kids are off to spend 8 hours with someone else.

I fully agree with the words of Ann Voskamp ~

"So to say from the outset, that I do not think in any way that homeschooling makes a family virtuous — and there are other very good options to homeschooling.

Homeschooling is not a formula for perfection, nor is homeschooling a panacea for all the sin in this world.

We’re all messy and fallen and sin-scraped. We and our children are born sinners.

Homeschooling will not fix any of that. Only Jesus and His grace can."

And I also agree with her on this~

"the problem today is that ‘parenthood is no longer lasting as long as childhood‘ — that our children need parents to be intimately involved, moment-by-moment, not till they are only four years old and leave home for school and possible peer dependency, but they need us to be parents until they are fourteen years old and older…. “We need to hold on to our children and help them hold on to us. We need to hold on to them until our work is done,” writes Dr. Neufeld“We need to hold on, not to hold them back but so that they can venture forth.”

For us, forging a deep attachment to parents was a key factor in our decision, so that children had a strong foundation for their own sense of self, saw parents as more important than peers, and as we modeled the preeminence of God in our lives, our children could see too how to live out that faith model.

Where two or three are gathered, there He is also. What I love most about the homeschooling lifestyle is that we are all together, in all our glorious mess, day in and day out. We are not time-torn or fragmented. We are gathered. There is no dichotomy between God and secular: we are making a one-piece life. This works for us. We are real, transparent, and growing –sometimes painfully– with each other, season upon season, and God is in the center, bathing us sin-scraped ones with His Grace. That’s rich."

http://www.aholyexperience.com/2011/05/pros-cons-homeschooling-christian-educatio/

This women speaks my heart.

Our children are only young for such a short time.

My prayer is that moms and dads would take these children for the gifts that they are and love them every second of their little lives. That they would want to pour their lives into these babies while they can. The rest can wait. You will have "your time" when they are grown.

Deuteronomy 6:6-8

 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.  Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.  Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.