A New Me, A New Venture, and A New Outlook!

For anyone who has been following my blogs knows that I have not published anything in roughly a year. Well, it seems that I am BACK! 

This last year has been very hard emotionally, and we have lived under some of the worst stress in this Christian walk. But, God has seen fit to bring us through, and now that the "old me" that needed dissolving has finally been dealt with, He is introducing some new ideas into our lives.   

I have been taking pictures of our home life, for ministry, and travels for over six years now. Unfortunately, almost all of the pictures from the house we gave up over four years ago were lost when my computer crashed, except for a precious few I had submitted to Google Earth, and a few albums on Facebook.  I have learned that, when God wants you to turn loose of the past, He will take away the reminders, so that it makes us less likely to return there. That is a good thing if some of those memories bring pain that He wants us to  turn loose forever. Finally, I feel that has been accomplished. No one could be more thankful than my husband.  God bless him for all he has gone through with me, and for me.

So, with all those pictures, and a lot of them used in *ministry, I had a lot of "extra" pictures left over. And, some of them are very good. So, God moved me about a month ago, to come up with my own logo as a "photographer". I built a small website to show off the best photos. And, now it has developed into a concept called "photomanipulation", and I now have art that I have created from my photos for sale on fineartamerica.com; a website where literally millions of people display, and sell, their artwork. It is an avenue that I had never considered before just a few weeks ago, and even though it could be listed as a "hobby", I know God will use it to minister to someone-or many someones-in the future. 

I have always loved to "create". When my kids were small, I made all of their clothing (and most of my own).  I had my own landscaping business until the economy tanked a few years ago. I designed many gardens, and built many from "the ground up".  Pun intended.

With this picture taking in the midst of God's creation, I realize that God is an artist,  a designer, a gardener, a CREATOR, in a more meaningful way than I ever learned in Sunday School lessons. To see a snippet of who God is, look closely at the center of a daisy, or the wings of a dragonfly, or the web of a spider. All these things make wonderful images on paper, or on the computer screen.  But, there is wonder and amazement in the arrangement of God's creation.  And, if He has fashioned the flowers, birds and bees with such diversity and uniqueness, then imagine how He has fashioned us. No wonder that David said that "we are fearfully and wonderfully made." 

* Proclamation & Prayer Albums on G+ 

(How Proclamation & Prayer came about is featured in my blog Favoring Joseph.)

The Sins of the Father

All of us have negative things from our childhood that leaves a mark on us as adults. Some come from parents, other family, peers or friends. My particular ‘thing’ came from my father.

Growing up, I could never be good enough to please him; everything I did was either wrong or criticized. When that didn’t have the desired effect, the ‘authority’ card was pulled out. “As long as you live under my roof, you’ll do as I say.” Or, “I don’t care what you think.” Or, my favorite, used only once, when I challenged that authority, “You’re getting brave, aren’t you?'”

I wasn’t rebellious in the traditional sense~I never did drugs nor alcohol, so there wasn’t any time that he had to get me out of trouble. I never dated until well past my 19th birthday, so there was no boy trouble, or anyone calling the house asking for me.

But, a year and a half after graduating high school, I met someone who was just as eager as I was to get away from his parents as me. Just before I turned 20, after dating for only seven months, we ran away to another state to get married.

We did not have all the legal documents we needed for the marriage to take place, so we came back to his hometown with the intention of staying with friends, then going back on Monday to try again. What I did not know-or expect-was my parents to come looking for me.

After a confrontation, and a slap across the face-his usual reaction to me-my mother stepped between us, and expressed her concern that if he didn’t at least listen to me, that I was '”of age’, and that I could leave and they would never see me again. My dad backed off, and I agreed to go home with them, but them with the full knowledge that I would be getting married soon.

After we got back, my dad called me downstairs, and suggested that I go with him to look for a lost beagle he had named Charlie. The dog was really missing, but he used it as a ploy to talk to me. In that conversation, I came to understand how I came to be here. He had dated my mom for about 4 to 5 months, and came to tell her he was breaking up with her to go back to his former girlfriend. But, she told him she was pregnant first. He said he knew Edward-my mom’s dad-would kill him (literally) so he kept quiet. Until then. He told me all that to ask me if I was pregnant. After reassuring him that I was not, and that there was no chance of me being, everything seemed to, temporarily, calm down. So I had a church wedding about 3 weeks later, but with no blessing from my father.

So all the slaps across the face, all the harsh words, the judgments made in anger, wanting nothing to do with me-it all made sense. He had to marry my mom, instead of his true love; so he had resented me all of my life. Even though I was an innocent child, I was the product of his sin.

It has taken literally over half my life so far to realize the emotional damage that has been done to me. Always trying to please him, but never able. Laying awake at night wondering why he hated me, but ‘loved’ my younger sister. Crying myself to sleep at night while praying that when he went out hunting on those cold autumn nights that he would not come back home again.

Just last week, I believe I finally put the last demon to rest resulting from that childhood experience. All of my adult life, I had carried with me a rebellion against male authority. Only last year did I realize that, for me, the emotional equation for authority was that it meant no love. That was a real eye-opener, and since then, all the emotional issues I has suffered through over the years made sense.

What I learned~that is, what I was healed from~last week was the taking of negative comments personally. In the past, I always felt justified if my pride/ego/feelings were hurt because of someone else’s words. But God decided to teach me a lesson once and for all. At the end of that, I realized I was taking ownership of something that did not belong to me.

If someone spat out hurtful words, I word reach out and snag them, and apply them to myself, making them mine. Now, I see that if negative, hurtful words are spoken~even if they are spoken in my direction, I do not need to claim them. They are not “automatically” mine. With this realization comes a great sense of freedom.

I have the freedom to choose whether to claim words or not. Before I felt compelled to take them no matter what. Now, I am no longer bound by the words of someone else. No more deep-seated anger; no more upset seemingly coming from nowhere. The words belong to the person speaking, and I can choose to take them, and apply them, or I can choose to reject them. Now I am in a position to say a prayer for the person who speaks negatively, where before in my taking personally those negative words would cause a reaction of anger.

God has shown me how to not suffer the sin of my father: resentment.