Joy today

I’ve written before about grace today. But “joy today” just might save my life.

I’m living a chapter in my life in which God has made me feel that it’s autumn because I gotta let go of many things. Sometimes I feel it’s a good thing to be pruned by the wind, like the autumn leaves. But another side of me cringes because: What will I have to give up? Will I make it out alive? And then comes winter, what will I do then?

The autumn colors are glorious but the crisp cold air of change has been making me shiver these past two days. Fear of the unknown has been enveloping my mind, causing me to think things I’m embarrassed of. I’m afraid of the future and how I’ll fare in it. I’m afraid of not making the right choices. I’m afraid of moving away from people that I love dearly. I’m afraid of new things and of not being able to manage them.

Last night a red nose nestled my pillow and a bit of tears still flowed. I cried out silently. And as I warmed myself under my blankets, the words “Perfect love casts out fear” rang in my head. They’re from 1 John 4:18. And I could almost hear God tell me “hide in my love” after I had just said “I want to hide in a cabin forever!”

This morning I was translating a message by John Piper for my mom. And at some point I clicked on another message I had never read and found something perfect. Piper is talking about using acronyms to help him remember what he ought to. This is his description of one:

AIMS: For Christ-consciousness Throughout the Day

This is what I need all day long. Reminders of massive truth. If my mind is empty or worldly, my faith languishes. My joy in Christ weakens. I need truth. “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).

My mind needs glory: “Set your minds on things that are above” (Colossians 3:2). I need to think on excellent praiseworthy reality: “If there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Philippians 4:8). But my mind drifts into banal and trivial things. And my soul shrivels.

What shall I do? I “will call to mind” amazing things about God (Lamentations 3:21). I will “remember” his all-gracious covenant (1 Chronicles 16:15). I will set my mind on “the things of the Spirit” (Romans 8:5). I will “consider his wondrous works” (Psalm 106:7).

How? Among other ways, with AIMS. Through the day I will pause and ask, What are your AIMS? And I will answer:

A Alive. I will call to mind the stupendous truth that Jesus is alive. (Luke 24:5–6)

“Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.”

I In. I will remember the breathtaking reality that Jesus is in me. (Romans 8:10).

“Christ is in you.”

M Mighty. I will ponder the all-comforting fact that Jesus is mighty. (Matthew 28:18).

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”

S Satisfying. And I will savor the sweetness that Jesus is satisfying. (John 6:35)

“Whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”

(Taken from Desiring God Ministries, found in "Santification in the Every-day life")

I’m imagining what will occur in me if I know and remember not just that Jesus is alive but that He is in me and He is mighty and He is satisfying. What a life I’d live! Definitely devoid of fear because while fear is human, He has not given me a spirit of fear for I have become his adopted daughter. Look at this awesome verse:

"For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father" (Romans 8:15).

His children shouldn’t be afraid of anything. He’s the boss of the Universe and all things! Could it be then, that I am really afraid, not because He’s not in control, but because I question His love for me? I think so. And the rest of the "perfect love" verse tells me so: "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love" (1 John 4:18).

While His love may prune me and send winds and storms to shake me, His love makes me strong. While in His love He may hurt me, like he wounded Aravis’ back in The Horse and His boy, He knows what is best for me and why He does it. He knows what I need to learn, where I need to go, with whom it’d be best that I get there and He doesn’t want me to be afraid. He comes to comfort me!

I just reread The Horse and His boy and if you haven’t read that book of the Chronicles of Narnia, then this might be quite unclear. I’d love for you to read it. If you love Jesus or wonder if God is real and about His dealings with your life, seeing He is God, that book is a beautiful and fun way to help us grasp the fact that God gives and He takes away, God blesses us and gives us hardship. He does both in love.

And so why does joy today save my life?  Because today I remembered, as I prayed through that acronym and my mind could see sunlight, that God doesn’t leave the key to tomorrow’s joy in today. If I’m fretfully looking for it today (which is all I could do, I can’t go to tomorrow yet), I won’t find it. What is in today is today’s key for joy.

So maybe I can be very afraid about the future, about how I’ll fare then, if I’ll be happy with my choices. But I can only know that true Joy is found in Jesus and He only gives tomorrow’s joy key tomorrow. But He has promised to give me today’s joy key today.

All in all, I hope reading this has helped you a little in dealing with fear, finding joy and remembering that He who is in you is alive, mighty and satisfying. Let’s swim in His love, as autumn leaves fall. 

Grace today

I love writing about what Jesus is doing in my life. I just feel I ought to, for my own sake and the sake of my memory and treasuring what He's doing. I feel that writing about it is part of honoring what He's doing. Maybe that's why so many people that know Him keep journals. There's something far too special and rare about living your life with the God of the Universe to take the things that come, the epiphanies, the ideas, the mental pictures, lightly. I think there's a new revelation of Jesus waiting for me in every day. His endlessness brings me joy! Just the thought of it, cause I can always go back for more.
Yesterday was a wonderful day and the reason to remember it more poignantly is because Jesus showed me a misconception I've held on to too tightly in my life. And He just exposed it and blasted it away with His word! I love how He does the work so that I can "be transformed by the renewing of my mind." (Romans 12:2) I just gotta let Him!

Concerning the Torrents of Worries about Tomorrow
I absolutely loved the time I've spent here. "I don't wanna leave this place without feeling totally alive and taking every bit of it back with me." The trip will end in a week. I'm already thinking about it.
"It's not a bad thing for you to want that, Steph, but it's not an accurate depiction of reality", God says.
"Oh gosh, am I crazy?", I think.
"You want your batteries charged and you want that to last you next year or at least the next couple of months."
"Well, such happy days ought to multiply my joy elsewhere too!", I feel like I'm clutching something.
"I give you your daily bread every day, day by day." I know I've been trying to save food like an ant for the winter.
"Bread in this case represents grace for life's burdens, trails", He goes on to explain. "Grace to fight, grace to win, grace to lose, grace to give, grace to be."
"And guess what?", He adds. "You have it today, and you don't have to worry about tomorrow, I'll take care of that."
Isn't it so easy to want to have grace for all of our lives all at once? It'd bring such peace, I wrongly reason. Wrongly because what I need each day is relationship with Jesus, and if I had all that bread in the pantry I wouldn't go to Jesus. I'd lie to myself and believe the lie about my sufficiency. After all, I can live from what's in the pantry. I'd totally forget my complete need of Him (the Person) and die inside. Whereas if I let Him, as He wants, hand me the grace for the day each morning, each moment, I'll have sweet communion with Him. I'll hang out and be with the Person of God and that will be enough.
I love the fact that God has already placed the grace to fight, to win, to lose, to give, to be in every day. All the elements to overcome are in each day. So that is why worrying about tomorrow is futile in the greatest of ways. Through worrying I'm hoping to find a better solution to a possible problem, except that solution to the problem I'll actually encounter, will be solved that day with God's grace for the day! I'm not God. Yet I'm His adopted daughter.
So when worries come, cause they do, I'll hold them out to God, the Creator and Giver of daily Grace and tell Him, "This is not for me to worry about, You'll supply the grace, the tools for any difficulties that could come up. I ask you now to take these fears and tie them to the bottom of the sea and help me to live today like your trusting daughter who lives to know you better every day."
I love what God told me, "As you turn to me for wisdom on how to live today, you'll worry less and less about tomorrow." That's the way I want and need to live. When? Today.

Training

Kevin and I have been enjoying a beautiful vacation so far, funny things have come up, lots of rany days, roars of laughter, long tearful hugs, songs in bed, songs before a birthday-party crowd, and a song in our hearts that draws a great big smile on our faces. But before he came, as I was busying myself with finishing my second year of college, I heared His words clearly:
"All this waiting, isn't waiting, it's training so that you can look into each other's eyes and say 'I love you' in even the hardest of times."
I thought what I've thought many times, but what I had temporarily forgotten: "It IS strengthening our love for each other!" There was silence, the silence of yes, a loving Person's nodding silence. I ran upstairs to write these words while I repeated them in my head as to not forget.
I don't want to forget. I want to embrace it. Every moment! Right now when I'm with him and when I'm not. Because when we're apart, we're both taking care of what God wants us to do at the time, in different places, different things and with different people. And when we're together, nothing is more right and I know that he's the man I want (and will) spend the rest of my life and eternity with.

Exactly what we need

"It's amazing how the Lord always give you exactly what you need and more, and sometimes we don't realize it but, even those problems and battles we go through are his way of telling us he loves us. Because he knows the bigger person we'll become because of them.

Isn't he the best?
He knows us and what we need better than we'll ever know!"

This is a little message that Sandy sent me tonight and the reason I share it with all of you is because maybe you're like me and need to know that the so-called bad is in fact good in disguise sent by a loving God who -and I will repeat- loves us.
We're not dressing up the bad with apparel that makes it look nice, we're not being blind optimists, we're looking at things as they really are. We're looking at a God who loves us, who created the world, charted our lives and knows the course. So the problems -ranging from the annoyance younger siblings cause when they get into your things, to big fears about the future, financial struggles, a loved one who is sick, to have to do something you really don't want to do- well, any problem in the end is Heaven-sent.
Yes, I know. I said it. -Takes a deep breath- Here I go again:

Problems are Heaven-sent.
-smiles-

Sandy is an angel. You can't imagine how much I admire her, you gotta meet her sometime.

She's such a fighter! I love the bold, determined look in her eye when she's set on doing something. I've seen it there when she's about to or is doing something hard that she knows is worth it.
I really love and greatly appreciate the way she says, in more than one way, how everything's alright and will get better all the time!
Her life is a living testimony of loving when you don't feel like it and taking on what life brings knowing that there's a Divine pitcher who's directing every single circumstance that comes into her life and she just has to bat them with all she's got. I'm so proud of her as she runs to base, and of the many homeruns she hits!
That girl is a victor because she doesn't give in to Mr. defeat that says "Oh yes, I want to be part of your life."
She's a victor because she continues to look to Jesus come what may, and you know what? Jesus has never failed her. Why should He fail her now?
I'm so proud of her.

He goes for the impossible cases

-Clip from "Dreamer" (2006)-

God specializes in making the impossible work.
If you feel like you're the runner with the disadvantages. Maybe a mare, of which none have won the race before. Perhaps you've gotten hurt and don't feel fit for the run. Or very few people or none believe you can make it. Let me tell you that God believes you can and that He'll cause the unbelievers to drop their mouths open! He can turn the disadvantages of whatever situation into victories and cause what others believed to be impossible, become possible.
Think about David and Goliath. Young, inexperienced, inadequately armed David going to face a giant of three meters tall who is a veteran warrior. Talk about odds and risks. Now, remember who won?
I've got an impossible situation, and I know there will always be one or many in my life. But I'm comforted with the fact that Jesus goes for the impossible cases! -And He does because those demonstrate His enormous power.
There's nothing too hard for Jesus. After all, He made the universe out of nothing! And He loves to do the impossible! He loves overwhelming us with His love and power, He loves to awe us and show us how well cared for we are. He loves showing us who is Boss and Who can do all things! All we need to do is believe and keep the faith when everything around us looks dead wrong. That's the hard part, but it's worth it if we wanna see the miracle.

“Faith does not operate in the realm of the possible. There is no glory for God in that which is humanly possible. Faith begins where man’s power ends.” -George Mueller

What truly matters

Today I talked to a man, who has been a friend, a mentor and a former teacher of mine. He told me he had blown it really bad, that all of his long hours at work, doing all he could to reach a higher level of living had been futile cause now in the state he was in, having money didn't matter at all. Possessions meant little to him, he couldn't care less for the material things and it showed. But he grasped on to a little book with Jesus' words and trusted that "This will help me on!"
In the end that's all that will.
In the end, love is what matters most.
His misty eyes told me this is a reality I must keep for life. Yet another reminder, thank you Sweet Love.

In One Blinding Moment

My favorite Christmas stories this season Part 2

I'm sorry this story is a bit long, but it's worth the read! It made me think a lot. It touched my heart, it convicted me and also washed my vision. It made me think about my past, present and future. And it ended up making me cry out of thankfulness for love, and shame. Jesus, forgive me.
I'll let you read now.

By Max Ellerbusch

It was a busy Friday, six days before Christmas. I was in my instrument repair shop, working feverishly so that I could have all of the Christmas holiday at home with my family. Then the phone rang and a voice was saying that our five-year-old Craig had been hit by a car.
There was a crowd standing around him by the time I got there, but they stepped back for me. Craig was lying in the middle of the road; his curly blond hair was not even rumpled.
He died at Children’s Hospital that afternoon.
There were many witnesses. It had happened at the school crossing. They told us that Craig had waited on the curb until the safety-patrol boy signaled him to cross. Craig, how well you remembered! How often your mother called after you as you started off for kindergarten, “Don’t cross until you get the signal!” You didn’t forget!
The signal came, Craig stepped into the street. The car came so fast no one had seen it. The patrol boy shouted, waved, had to jump for his own life. The car never stopped.
Grace and I drove home from the hospital through the Christmas-lighted streets, not believing what had happened to us. It wasn’t until the night, passing the unused bed, that I knew. Suddenly I was crying, not just for that empty bed but for the emptiness, the seeming senselessness of it. All night long, with Grace awake beside me, I searched what I knew of life for some hint of a loving God at work in it, and found none.
As a child I certainly had been led to expect none. My father used to say that in all his childhood he did not experience one act of charity or Christian kindness. Father was an orphan, growing up in 19th-century Germany, a supposedly Christian land. Orphans were rented out to farmers as machines are rented today, and treated with far less consideration. He grew into a stern, brooding man who looked upon life as an unassisted journey to the grave.
He married another orphan and, as their own children started to come, they decided to emigrate to America. Father got a job aboard a ship; in New York harbor he went ashore and simply kept going. He stopped in Cincinnati where so many Germans were then settling. He took every job he could find, and in a year and a half had saved enough money to send for his family.
On the boat coming over, two of my sisters contracted scarlet fever; they died on Ellis Island. Something in Mother died with them, for from that day on she showed no affection for any living being. I grew up in a silent house, without laughter, without faith.
Later, in my own married life, I was determined not to allow these grim shadows to fall on our own children. Grace and I had four: Diane, Michael, Craig, and Ruth Carol. It was Craig, even more than the others, who seemed to lay low my childhood pessimism, to tell me that the world was a wonderful purposeful place. As a baby he would smile so delightedly at everyone he saw that there was always a little group around his carriage. When we went visiting it was Craig, three years old, who would run to the hostess to say, “You have a lovely house!” If he received a gift he was touched to tears, and then gave it away to the first child who envied it. Sunday morning when Grace dressed to sing in the choir, it was Craig who never forgot to say, “You’re beautiful.”
And if such a child can die, I thought as I struggled, lying in my bed that Friday night, if such a life can be snuffed out in a minute, then life is meaningless and faith in God is self-delusion. By morning my hopelessness and helplessness had found a target, a blinding hatred for the person who had done this to us. That morning police picked him up in Tennessee: George Williams. Fifteen years old.
He came from a broken home, police learned. His mother worked a night shift and slept during the day. Friday he had cut school, taken her car keys while she was asleep, sped down a street. … All my rage at a senseless universe seemed to focus on the name George Williams. I phoned our lawyer and begged him to prosecute Williams to the limit. “Get him tried as an adult. Juvenile court’s not tough enough.”
So this was my frame of mind when the thing occurred which changed my life. I cannot explain it; I can only describe it.
It happened in the space of time that it takes to walk two steps. It was late Saturday night. I was pacing the hall outside our bedroom, my head in my hands. I felt sick and dizzy, and tired, so tired. “Oh God,” I prayed, “show me why!”
Right then, between that step and the next, my life was changed. The breath went out of me in a great sigh—and with it all my sickness. In its place was a feeling of love and joy so strong it was almost pain.
Other men have called it the “the presence of Christ.” I’d known the phrase, of course, but I’d thought it was some abstract, theological idea. I never dreamed it was Someone, an actual Person, filling that narrow hall with love.
It was the suddenness of it that dazed me. It was like a lightning stroke that turned out to be the dawn. I stood blinking in an unfamiliar light. Vengefulness, grief, hate, anger—it was not that I struggled to be rid of them—like goblins imagined in the dark, in the morning’s light they simply were not there.
And all the while I had the extraordinary feeling that I was two people. I had another self, a self that was millions of miles from that hall, learning things men don’t yet have words to express. I have tried so often to remember the things I knew then, but the learning seemed to take place in a mind apart from the one I ordinarily think with, as though the answer to my question was too vast for my small intellect. But, in that mind beyond logic, that question was answered. In that instant I knew why Craig had to leave us. Though I had no visual sensation, I knew afterward that I had met him, and he was wiser than I, so that I was the little boy and he the man. And he was so busy. Craig has so much to do, unimaginably important things into which I must not inquire. My concerns were still on earth.
In the clarity of the moment, it came to me: This life is a simple thing! I remember the very words in which the thought came. “Life is a grade in school. In this grade we must learn only one lesson: We must establish relationships of love.”
Oh, Craig, I thought. Little Craig, in your five short years how fast you learned, how quickly you progressed, how soon you graduated!
I don’t know how long I stood there in the hall. Perhaps it was no time at all as we ordinarily measure things. Grace was sitting up in bed when I reached the door of our room. Not reading, not doing anything, just looking straight ahead of her as she had much of the time since Friday afternoon.
Even my appearance must have changed, because as she turned her eyes slowly to me she gave a little gasp and sat up straighter. I started to talk, words tumbling over each other, laughing, eager, trying to say that the world was not an accident, that life meant something, that earthly tragedy was not the end, that all around our incompleteness was a universe of purpose, that the purpose was good beyond our furthest hopes.
“Tonight,” I told her, “Craig is beyond needing us. Someone else needs us. George Williams. It’s almost Christmas. Maybe, at the Juvenile Detention Home, there’ll be no Christmas gift for him unless we send it.”
Grace listened, silent, unmoving, staring at me. Suddenly she burst into tears.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s right, that’s right. It’s the first thing that’s been right since Craig died.”
And it has been right. George turned out to be an intelligent, confused, desperately lonely boy, needing a father as much as I needed a son. He got his gift, Christmas Day, and his mother got a box of Grace’s good Christmas cookies. We asked for and got his release, a few days later, and this house became his second home. He works with me in the shop after school, joins us for meals around the kitchen table, is a big brother for Diane and Michael and Ruth Carol.
But more was changed, in that moment when I met Christ, than just my feeling about George. That meeting has affected every phase of my life, my approach to business, to friends, to strangers. I don’t mean I’ve been able to sustain the ecstasy of that moment; I doubt that the human body could contain such a joy for very many days.
But I know with the infinite sureness that no matter what life does to us in the future, I will never again touch the rock bottom of despair. No matter how ultimate the blow seems, I glimpsed an even more ultimate joy that blinding moment when the door swung wide.

What about Mary?

I was looking at the manger scene and I thought: "What about Mary? Imagine how things must've been for her...My lord! She was just a teen! I remember researchers saying that she could've been from fifteteen to seventeen years old when she got engaged! How did the responsibility of raising Jesus feel for her?" -wide eyes-
That left me with something to think about and to parallel with my own life.
If it were me, I know I'd freak out at all that I'd have to do and be in order to become a good mother and set the right example for Jesus. I'm sure Mary did an amazing job though, imperfect and human as she was. She was picked out from all the women of the Earth for a reason. I can imagine Mary's tears, sweat and smiles; her effort to do the best she could and the love God had placed in her heart so that she would give it out and let it spill on others. She had the Son of God to love, as well as her fellow men.
And I know that as a human, she also must've failed, like any of us. It's also a fact she was young, quite young when she was given the biggest responsibility a woman could ever have.
Then I thought about my struggle with feeling incapable and giving myself reasons of why I can't do things, why I'm not prepared, how my experience and knowledge are insufficient. These things are true though, I am insufficient, I don't know what to do or how to go about doing things. The point is that all of that doesn't matter. Contrary to logic, Jesus can use that to do anything!
Actually there's logic there: when there's less of ourselves, there's more space for Jesus to fill, take over and use to accomplish His purposes.
My mind's favorite excuses are: "I'm too young", "I have no experience", "I won't do it right" and "I'll fail". But that's because my fears are completely afraid of drowning, burning, dying and passing into oblivion as steps forward are made.
This past year I found out I can do things I thought I couldn't, and do them right! I also fail, but I can get up! I can reach my full potential and I can do the things I don't feel prepared to do, simply because if they're in front of me it means God has sent them for a reason and He's been preparing me for them.
I don't know what's ahead. I just don't want to put limitations on what I'll do and what opportunities I'll take on. I don't care if I feel small and incapable and if I must face my fears to conquer them. I don't care if the world seems to be closing in on me when I'm in the middle of a struggle, fighting for success. I'll do the best I can, that's my job. And I'll let Jesus do all that I can't, that's His job.
As far of fear of failure goes, He and I are burning that one down together.
I'd like to tell you that this last year I had the privilege of meeting glowing individuals! I watched them shine, fill the need, lead a crowd, do things they had never done before and were afraid of doing! They rose to meet the challenges in front of them. And let me tell you, it didn't matter their age! Although some were years younger than me -smiles-, you know who you are.
How many excuses we come up with doesn't really matter. We'll always have to fight them to get to where we're meant to. They're just that, "excuses" -even if I like calling them reasons.
We can't let excuses keep our potential locked in, keep us from doing all we could, keep us from meeting the people God wants us to, keep us from helping someone else. Most of all, we can't let excuses keep us from fulfilling our destiny and living a full life!
What can a young boy or girl do?
One thing is for sure, Jesus has always used the foolish things of this world.
With Jesus, we have the possibility of doing anything!

Surprise Ending

My favorite Christmas stories this season Part 1

By Irene B. Harrell

I turned up the fur collar of my coat against a near-freezing wind as I stepped from our warm station wagon into the bare dirt of a front yard on the outskirts of town. Our adult Sunday school class had chosen the address from a Salvation Army list in the evening paper, and my husband and I had driven out to meet the family. The idea was to find out their immediate needs so that we could provide a merry Christmas for them, and then, more importantly, to work with them throughout the year to try to make a real difference, a Christian difference, in their lives.
We had asked God to guide us to the right family, but now it looked as though the house we had chosen was going to be empty. No smoke came from the chimney, and in the front door there was only a hole where a knob and a lock might have been, once. But when we knocked, the rag of curtain at the window moved and a small face peered out. A minute passed and then the door was opened by a boy about eight years old.
“Hello,” I said. “Is your mother home?”
“Mama not home,” he announced gravely. “She workin’.”
“Well, ah—is any grownup here with you?”
He shook his head.
“Let’s step in for a minute,” my husband suggested. “The house’ll get cold with the door standing open.” The boy moved shyly back and we entered the tiny room.
I’ll never forget what we saw. There was a bed, sagging to the floor, the mattress oozing stuffing at every rip and seam. No sheets, no blankets. A small chest of drawers in the corner held a dusty glass punch bowl with cups hanging around the rim. A Bible lay beside it. On the floor a chipped enamel pan held some lumps of corn meal mush the children had been eating in fistfuls. The black wood stove was icy cold.
The boy who had let us in now stood protectively between two smaller children, a boy and a girl. The girl’s oversized slacks were held together by a safety pin. All three youngsters were barefoot.
And there was a baby. He was lying on a pile of straw and rags that had once been an upholstered chair. He was wearing the remnant of an undershirt and a diaper that hadn’t been changed in a long time.
I thought of my own children and my baby in her lovely birch crib with its clean white sheets and I started to cry. I’d never really seen poverty before.
That afternoon we went back with blankets, shoes, diapers, food, and clothes. Again, the mother was not there. But apparently she’d been home long enough to build them a blazing fire, so hot the children had the front door standing wide open. A coalscuttle held scraps of linoleum from a pile of debris in the yard next door.
The next day we finally found the mother at home. Her name was Virginia and the children, in order of age, were Arthur Lee, Violet, Danny, and the baby David Ray. Virginia was a tiny woman in a yellow bouffant organdy dress. She answered our questions quietly and was not offended that we had come to help.
What did she need most? A refrigerator so the baby’s milk wouldn’t sour, and something for a stove that wouldn’t burn as fast as linoleum.
The class found a refrigerator, a bed, a crib, several chairs, sheets, more blankets. On Christmas, there were toys for the children and clothes and food for everyone. The wood stove was replaced by an oil heater that would not go out while the mother was away. The class pledged the money to pay the oil bills for the coming year.
The family’s immediate physical needs had been relatively easy to satisfy. But what about the Christian difference?
Every week or two my husband and I would go to see Virginia and her family. Sometimes we’d carry hand-me-downs, or groceries, or books, sometimes we’d go empty-handed, just to visit. But she always gave us the same warm greeting. I remember the pride with which she invited me to sit down. She hadn’t been able to exercise that kind of courtesy before, when she had no chairs.
Frequently, our four other children went along with us on these visits, and occasionally we took the baby. I had to explain to Virginia about our baby. German measles during my pregnancy had left little Marguerite deaf. When I told Virginia that the doctors said nothing could be done about it, I could see she was deeply affected.
On our next visit she greeted us with shining eyes. “Oh, Mrs. Harrell,” she said, “I believe God is going to make your baby hear! Don’t you feel it too? Can’t she already hear a lot better than she could? I’ve been praying so hard ever since you told me. I know she’s going to hear!”
I just smiled at Virginia. She didn’t know as much about science as I did. I couldn’t expect her to understand that nerve deafness was not curable. Of course, I had prayed for my child; but my prayers had been ones of thankfulness for her, not prayers for healing. I took the doctor’s words as final.
Marguerite was almost a year old when we first noticed the change in her. For a while we couldn’t believe it ourselves, but at last we became convinced that she really was hearing certain loud sounds. When we took her back to the hearing clinic for testing, there was no doubt about it. Our daughter, whose nerve deafness had been pronounced complete and incurable, had begun to hear! In four short months her diagnosis had changed from “profoundly deaf” to “moderately to severely hard of hearing.”
The doctors were amazed, but Virginia wasn’t even surprised. “God did it, Mrs. Harrell. Didn’t I ask Him for an icebox and a good stove, and didn’t He give them to me? There’s nothing He can’t do, if we just ask Him.”
I stared at her, trying to understand faith like this, reaching out my own feeble portion to try to take hold of hers.
“Mrs. Harrell,” she said, “I’m going to keep on praying for that baby.”
“Yes!” I whispered, “Please keep praying. Don’t ever stop.”
It worked, you see, our Christmas project; it even accomplished the “Christian difference.” Of course, the difference was in our lives, not just in Virginia’s. But then, we’d asked God to guide us to the poor, and He generally knows where they are.

~~~
Even though I cry to think of the state they were in,
I think: "What a rich woman having that kind of faith!"

Winners

"Winners work at doing things the rest of the population won’t even consider trying."

"When you've paid the price, you expect the gold"
By Denis Waitley, Sept. 21, 2010

One of the most inspirational moments in my years serving as Chairman of Psychology on The U.S. Olympic Committee’s Sports Medicine Council was witnessing the first perfect 10 ever scored by an American gymnast in the summer games, by Mary Lou Retton in the Los Angeles Summer Games in 1984. (Steph's note: this girl was 16 when she won!)
Mary Lou wasn’t born a classic gymnast. She didn’t have the movements of a ballet dancer. She was just 4 feet 9 inches tall, with a compact, muscular body. She said, “I knew I wouldn’t look graceful in floor exercises, or doing those ballerina moves. But I was a good sprinter and I had a lot of power and explosiveness. So I could do some things some of the other girls couldn’t do.”
By the age of 14 she was West Virginia State Champion, and winning gymnastic meets throughout the world. But as young as she was, she was mature enough to realize she needed to do much more. “I needed someone pushing me,” she said. “I needed some other girls around me who were shooting for the same goal I was.”
So, at a time when most teenagers are thinking about anything but commitment, Mary Lou Retton made an enormous sacrifice. She left the comfort of her home in Fairmont, West Virginia, and moved to Houston, into the home of a family she didn’t know, just for the opportunity to train under one of the world’s greatest, but most demanding, gymnastic coaches, Bela Karolyi.
While other kids were watching TV, going to a movie, hanging out with friends, and going on trips, she was practicing four hours a day, seven days a week. Karolyi changed everything she had been doing for eight years, from the way she tumbled to the way she ate. As the Olympic Games drew nearer, she described her day this way, “An eight o’clock workout, then to school, back to the gym for four more hours of work, then homework, then bed.”
A grind? To be sure. Fun? Not much. Then why? Because winners work at doing things the rest of the population won’t even consider trying. She may not have enjoyed the routine, but she loved the sport, the challenge, and the dream. Then, just a few weeks before the summer games, her right knee suddenly locked. Fragments of torn cartilage had broken loose and had become wedged in the knee joint. Less than 10 days after arthroscopic surgery, she was back in the gym for a full workout. There was no time to lose, only time to get ready to win.
In her final event, the vault, Mary Lou needed a 9.95, a near-perfect performance, to tie the Romanian favorite for the gold medal. One writer described her effort this way: “She raced down the line, sprang off the vault, twisted at high altitude, and landed as still as a dropped bar of lead, yet as soft as a springtime butterfly.”
She scored a perfect 10, the ultimate. But to the surprise and awe of spectators, officials and myself, she went ahead and executed the optional, second vault. Incredibly, the result was the same again: a perfect 10.
The only two individuals not surprised were Mary Lou Retton and her coach, Bela Karolyi. He had told her just before her performance: “You’re my little American gold medal winner!”
In an interview, I heard her remark that her self-talk leading up to those two perfect vaults went something like this: “Relax. Concentrate. Thanks for all the car pools, Mom. This vault’s for you. Speed. Explode. Extend. Nail the landing. This is your moment in history. Need a 10, got a 10. Just like practice. Let’s go!”

***

Besides the powerful and obvious reminder: "Winners work at doing things the rest of the population won’t even consider trying" -which I love!-, this article made me think about something else as well. After reading it I looked up Mary Lou Retton on Google and came across an article titled: "Living beyond the illusion of disability".
It stated how many of us are captives, prisoners within the limitations of our own abilities or disabilities. It wasn't just talking about natural or physical disability, like not being able to move the left side of our body, or being very short or having just undergone a surgery, like Mary Lou. It was also talking about the limitations we put on ourselves -mental ones-. It caught my eye, since just today I thought while sitting in Economy class: "How on Earth am I supposed to understand this shit about Economy and how screwed up it is when I don't know much about it firsthand? This teacher is going too fast, argh, besides(prepare for pathetic), I'm just sixteen."
Taaran! I found a self-imposed limitation. It shouldn't be there. But there it is many times so I need to eradicate it.
I think accomplishment has a lot to do with:
1. Working hard
2.Faith. What we believe ourselves to be capable of.
And though it may not be much at times, or nothing at all, Jesus doesn't think so. When we say: "I'm crap." He says: "I love you". And when we say "I can't do it" He says "I can and I'll do it with you"
I'm going to comprehend and learn what my economy teacher talks about without my mind getting lost amongst the facts, terms and examples -determined lil grin-.