God Put Me Through Beauty School

Ugh….WAITING! WAITING for your soul mate to show up….Waiting for someone to say, ‘You’re hired’……Waiting on some kind of spark to bring you to life again….Waiting for that person to change….Waiting for everything to run smoothly for once, Waiting for the microwave to beep…WAITING, waiting, waiting….

Isaiah 40:31 But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

You might be thinking, “Yeah but for how long? I’ve been waiting for years ….in some cases…all my life.” Ok and realistically sometimes a few minutes or a whole half a day!:)

But no matter how optimistic, “spiritual” or “strong” we are, we have those days we’re just sick and tired of waiting! I wonder if God can relate? I wonder if sometimes we’re really not waiting at all but Running as fast as we can in the wrong direction?…just to be moving?…just to be doing Something?

I wonder if, in fact, God is WAITING on Us?

So a lively, free-spirited friend of mine was going to bust if she didn’t have a summer ADVENTURE. Much to her Dismay….NOTHING was really working out but she felt like God was telling her He had something special for her. Even though she tried to venture out on her own a few times, ultimately, she surrendered and chose to wait on God wholeheartedly. During this process, I watched her go through a “boot camp” of life lessons and grow quickly. Then, on a casual, adventure-free day, she had eyes to see something New. She knew in her heart it was the “something special” from God. This adventure didn’t require a plane ticket because it was in her own neighborhood. It might not have been what she was expecting but it was Much Better. It was also something that had been there all along but she never really noticed it. I believe God didn’t give her eyes to see it until she was ready. I was inspired by this because I could see the wisdom and perfection of God’s timing. He wants to give a Good gift and maybe sometimes we have to learn a few things in the meantime. Maybe we need to grow from the little trials in front of us first. Otherwise, the gift might not even be a blessing. I believe God protects us so we don’t ruin our own good gifts….like pouting before a surprise birthday party because you thought everyone forgot about you. ooooo Just wait …. it’s gonna be worth it!

Isaiah 64: 3-5: For when you did AWESOME things that we did not expect, you came down, and the mountains trembled before you. Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him. You come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways.

He is waiting on you to Remember Him….He wants your attention. He wants you to be ready….so he can give you an AWESOME gift…it’s all part of the Beautiful Adventure.

So maybe God relates to the pain we feel when we have no choice but to WAIT. He wants to give us unbelievable gifts and he’s not ignoring our needs nor our heart’s desires. He’s waiting. Waiting until the gift will be a blessing and not a curse. So, again, just maybe in all of our inner grumbling about having to Wait on God and thinking he’s taking FOREVER….maybe God’s actually waiting on Us.

It might not always be the case…but God I pray today we would stop and surrender. Instead of trying to manipulate our circumstances or expect the other person to change….God help Us to change. Help us to draw closer to you. Help us to remember your ways. And for those of us weary in well doing…help us to let You be the strong one. Help us grow a little more this week. Help us to see you in Heaven dying to give us a good gift:))

Pearls of Wisdom=True Beauty (from my niece Kelli): Don’t try to be so strong on your own. Give God your fear.
“He makes all things new. There isn’t room for perfectionism because God is already the perfect one and he doesn’t require that of you. He wants you to listen to him. Let him be the perfect one and let him make all things new”

I know I told you I was going to write about wisdom next ….shoot….I haven’t forgotten about it.
Hugs and Love
Missy

Let’s Put On Our Fancy Pants and Ride……….

Believe it or not…..God Wants -In- on the Joke! Seriously! God appealed to my sense of humor today to get me out of a major funk!

I just finished two of three video projects and I’m ready to start the next one. This is my crunch time and it’s usually when I do my best work. However, while I’m finishing these projects I also have to follow up on new leads and put together new proposals and I’m already working until 11pm at night! You have to understand, I don’t have a Type A personality and work is never going to be an escape for me! I’m creative and I need a lot of space to ponder life, be still, laugh, have fun, and then discuss it all. But I’m also a hard worker and I would rather be run over than drop a ball when it involves other people. I am constantly pursuing the balance between the two! So yes, sometimes I will work a month straight without blinking and then other times, like yesterday, I pull the covers over my head and HIDE!!!!! Can anyone else relate to this????

I woke up feeling the burden of being a single woman trying to make it for one more month. It seemed like I hadn’t had a day off since high school. I was completely burned out and weak from the unrelenting responsibility!

OK ….BUT THE ACTUAL PICTURE OF MY LIFE IS MUCH DIFFERENT! I’m sorry God for giving in to these thoughts when YOU have provided for me, YOU have taken care of me, YOU have given me time off, YOU have brought me to safe pastures and the wildest adventures!

I wanted to write out the tormenting thoughts that caused me to shut down yesterday so I could share the amazing way God brought me out of an ugly pit.

It’s hilarious actually! God didn’t minimize my feelings but he strengthened me in a very unusual way! My friend gave me a DVD with four of the sweetest girl movies of all time. I Love it!!! Being the best boyfriend -of all time- Derek agreed to watch one of them with me. So last night he asked me out on a dinner and movie date. We settled on The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants for the movie. haha! Of course we are making jokes about it because otherwise it would potentially be the most painful two hours of his life.:) So we have named this is our ‘fancy pants’ date night. There is a point to telling you this…..

Today, I woke up still feeling the heavy burdens but I just couldn’t waste another day. I felt like I was buried six feet under trying to find the strength to come out of it. This was no joke! I turned to Isaiah 35 which is titled in my Bible: Joy of the Redeemed. It says, “The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom….it will burst into bloom, it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.” It sort of set the tone for what God was about to do. Plus, as I’ve written before, this is the year of Joy! We 3 Queens made a toast to the Joy of the Lord is Our Strength!

Next, I turned to Isaiah 51:9: “Awake, awake! Clothe yourself with strength, O arm of the Lord;”I needed to Wake Up and quit hiding….so this immediately got my attention. Then I turned the page and saw this word repeated a few more times (Is 51: 17) “Awake, awake! Rise up O Jerusalem…” (Is 52:1) Awake, awake o Zion, clothe yourself with strength, put on your garments of splendor…” PUT ON YOUR GARMENTS OF SPLENDOR??? Right at that moment my boyfriend text me and said something about our “fancy pants” date (jokingly) and I was responding …with my Bible open to PUT ON YOUR GARMENTS OF SPLENDOR! LOL! Omgosh ….. GOD IS -IN- ON THE JOKE! Garments of Splendor…it might as well say Fancy Pants! Then the scripture goes on to say, “shake off your dust, rise up, sit enthroned, O Jerusalem, Free yourself from the chains on your neck, O captive daughter of Zion.”

Even though I knew God was speaking to me through the “wake up” word, I didn’t seem to have the strength to step out of the pit. UNTIL, Until…. I realized God was part of our date night joke!! In that split second, I was AWAKE and Laughing and pretty Amazed!! Pit? What Pit? I mean, isn’t it hard to imagine God actually listening to a silly date night conversation?….much less RESPONDING to it!!! God is so real! He was saying, ‘Wake Up and put on your fancy pants! It’s your ‘fancy pants’ day! There’s reason to rejoice!’ haha!

If you ask most people what they find attractive about another person…..’a sense of humor’ is usually right up there with the most important qualities. So doesn’t it make sense that the God who created Beauty would also have a sense of humor! Amazing, right?

Just in case you’re still in a pit…I pray God would strengthen you in a powerfully, personable way. “Awake, awake…and clothe yourself with strength…put on your garments of splendor…”

So lets put on our Fancy Pants and Ride….this is an incredible adventure!

Love you,
Missy

I was writing in my journal today and thinking about Good Friday. After a few minutes, I realized God was giving me the next blog post. It still surprises me when this happens.:)

I had one of my top three Defining Moments on a Good Friday a few years back. Just before Easter weekend, I finished up a journal with an incredibly special “ending.” I was dealing with a tremendously difficult break up at the time and as God promises He was, in fact, very “close to the brokenhearted.” During this excruciatingly painful time…God was practically touchable! After such a significant ending, I knew the next journal had to be extra special. But after a week of searching, I still couldn’t find one. I started stressing about it, actually. Then, I saw a picture in my mind of God Smiling (like He was amused)!! It was odd because “why is he smiling?” Then, I felt silly for stressing over a journal. This isn’t rocket science and God is working through my own creativity …so I can’t pick the “wrong” journal. But that Smile…really stuck out in my mind…It didn’t completely make sense…it was like there was laughter behind it Hmmm…. Then, I went back to my apartment and found a journal my mom had given me SEVEN YRS prior. It was stuck between a bunch of old books. Awh…it was perfect. I remembered thinking when she gave me it to me…it was for a special chapter in my life. There was a quote from Mother Theresa on the cover, “God is the friend of silence. Trees, flowers, grass grow in silence. See the stars, moon and sun, how they move in silence.” It was just a perfect fit for that time in my life as I was very alone, overcoming the seemingly impossible and discovering the love and beauty of God in the most amazing ways. BUT HERE’S THE CRAZY AMAZING POWEFUL UNBELIEVABLE UNEXPECTED THING…….

I went to my little coffee shop and opened the journal and THIS IS WHAT I SAW!
THE SMILE FROM GOD……..

OMGOSH! It felt like God jumped out of the bushes and surprised me! When I was stressing about finding the right journal….God had something special planned. A surprise! It was like he had something up his sleeve and it made him smile in anticipation. IT’S CRAZY THAT I SAW THIS BEFORE OPENING THE JOURNAL…it was so peculiar to me! And then my parents had written, GOD SHOUTS HIS LOVE FOR YOU!!!!!!! It was like I stepped into a surprise party! So I began intently thanking God with stunned reverence. Then, another strange twist… I began sensing God’s presence withdrawing….like I was doing something wrong….like maybe I was giving the wrong response. I was even more stunned and I stopped and I said with great carefulness… “okaay God” and then the thought came to mind, “if your friends jumped out and surprised you…or if you showed up to a surprise party …would you spend an hour intently thanking them with such a serious face?” WOOOW! I felt like God wasn’t letting me get away with it. I believed He was WAITING for the correct response!!!! I said very cautiously, “oookay God……um…….if someone jumped out and surprised me in fun…..I would probably say…..ummmm……you crazy nut………..(really God, can you say that to the King of kings?)……… I can’t believe you did that…….I’m gonna get you back?……” haha and then it dawned on me! God was having FUN with me!!!! In that moment, I realized my relationship with God was shallow. Another surprise…I thought it was anything but shallow but I could see that I mostly came to God with Intensity and Tears even though there’s so much more to me. I spent most of my life laughing and finding FUN in every situation except God time. I mean, I thanked God for fun times…but I never had a “fun time” with God…see what I mean? So, I took it as a challenge. I thought, I know I can’t really “get you back” God, what with you being almighty and all knowing …. but I’m going to TRY and surprise you too. The thought of it made me laugh….surprising God…impossible …but what the heck. Sounds FUN!

Fast Forward a week or so to GOOD FRIDAY! Change the tempo……I was about to experience a moment that would mark change in my life. I received a phone call from someone who handed me the kind of news that makes everything go into slow motion. It was the mother load…the enemy’s best shot….a death blow! It was my worst fear materializing and it was handled in the most painful way possible! My heart was being tortured. I hung up the phone and I had not even a second to realize I had a choice to make. I was either going to choose a path of bitterness, heartbreak and disillusionment or a path that would ultimately SET ME FREE…free from the cycles of dysfunction I kept attracting in my life. As for what happened next, absolutely nothing in -me- could have prepared me to choose well…. but I pointed my hands toward heaven and silently shouted ………….. “GOOOOOOD…..THIS IS IT….THIS IS THE TIME I’M GONNA GET YOU BACK ……haha ….I KNOW YOU THOUGHT I WOULD BE ON THE FLOOR DYING OF HEARTBREAK……BUT GOD ….I’M GOING TO THANK YOU INSTEAD….I’M GONNA PRAISE YOUR NAME …..SURPRIIIISE ……ARE YOU SURPRISED?…..YOU ARE GOOD….YOU ARE GOOOD….YOU ARE GOOD”

*teeeeeeeeeeears…………………*

You know when a child falls down and they don’t know whether they should laugh or cry? God had prepared me for this moment and he appealed to my FUN side to give me the nudge I needed to choose the path to freedom…to “laugh”! Isn’t that brilliant! He set me up to choose Life. Rather than giving in to the tormenting cycle…He WANTED TO SET ME FREE FROM IT! God Knew the seriousness of this moment! It was a dark moment of decision and if I had allowed myself to crumble…I wouldn’t have gotten back up! It took me a long while to get there but I was at the end of hope. Looking back I can see this wasn’t just about a boy…this was about breaking up with Me, my family, my dreams…everything!! In the natural, all I could see was devastation and all I could feel was unbelievable pain. But God had given me a different picture…His Smile! And then think about this….He allowed this day to happen on GOOD FRIDAY! The day he was betrayed too! The day he wept! God didn’t let me go through this alone…He shared His day of pain with me.

My resurrection day came a few months later when I got the job in Sarasota as a tourism producer….I walked out this freedom with dolphins jumping, beach side sunsets on every coast and thrilling adventures. Just as my mom had written…..GOD SHOUTS HIS LOVE FOR YOU!!!!!

God thank you for the sacrifice you made! Thank you for the pain you went through so that we might know your LOVE! God thank you that you understand our pain! Thank you for constantly looking for ways to set us FREE! Lord, thank you for also sharing your day of pain with us and just as special….YOUR SMILE! God let everyone reading this post see your smile this weekend! Let them know how much they’re loved! YOU ARE LOVED! SO VERY LOVED! GOD SHOUTS HIS LOVE FOR YOU!!!

HAPPY EASTER……HAVE FUN
Psalm 2:4: “The One enthroned in Heaven Laughs.”