"A Broken Kind of Beautiful" by Katie Ganshert

"After Sara's accident, so many well-intentioned people had offered her words of hope---that God would heal her, that she would see again---as if that was a given. It was the same hope people gave Marilyn all those years ago. Story upon story of women who had struggled through infertility and ended up with a child on the other side.

"'God is good. It'll happen,' they had told her.

"As if God's goodness depended on whether or not he answered prayers the way people wanted him to answer. The hard truth was that sometimes he didn't. He hasn't rescued Marilyn from her infertility, and he hadn't rescued Sara from her blindness. But that didn't negate his goodness. It just meant he had different plans."

I just finished "A Broken Kind of Beautiful" by Katie Ganshert. It was a great tale by a local author, and I was surprised by how smoothly it was written. I have found books by local authors often sound like someone trying to write, and it takes you out of the story. This was not like that.

It's the story of Ivy Clark, a New York model who lost her virginity at 14 and has tried to stay in control of life by using her good looks to control men. When she gets older, it doesn't work as well anymore and life gets complicated.

There's a couple of under stories though, one about a woman suffering from infertility and another about a woman suffering from recent blindness. It was the section above that really struck me. These women didn't get the answers they wanted from God, but they both dealt with their pain and looked for the good in life.

So often we assume God will answer our prayers how we want, and if not he has failed us. That's not true though. God knows what is best, whether it's what we want or not.

That doesn't mean we can't pray for what we want, but it does mean we should accept it if we don't get it.

Life doesn't always end up how we expect or want, but if our hearts are tied into God's, we can have faith that it's all for our good.

Honeybees!

At work today, we got honeybees for a new exhibit. It's indoors, and the bees have a tube that allows them to go outside collect pollen and come back to the hive.

It is fascinating! The little creatures are constantly buzzing around, walking from cell to cell in the honeycomb, nothing but work on their minds.

They were only put in the hive today, but already they flew out and would come back in, their little pollen packs filled with beautiful yellow stuff. It looked like each of them were wearing MC Hammer pants, puffy on their thighs and tight around the ankle.

Why do they do it? Because that's what they were created to do. The worker bees only live about six weeks, and their lives are just about collecting pollen. That's what they do. That's how God made them.

When people ask us why we serve God, it's just as simple of an answer. It's what we were created to do. We were all made in the image of God, created to bring him pleasure and to praise him. We've fallen short of our purpose, but it all comes back around to the right track when we simply serve him. It might look like a bunch of crazy buzzing around sometimes, but when we're doing what we're created to do, we're happy --- no matter how it looks.

Time motivation

I have to say that the sermon at church this morning was very convicting for me.

Continuing on with lessons in Ephesians, the pastor talked about how to live a high impact life. One of the ways to do that is to spend our limited amount of time wisely.

He said to have goals, or at least one goal. I thought about how my goal is to honor first God and then my husband. All my decisions and the way I spend time should bring my closer to God or my husband, or at least should not detract from those relationships.

My two biggest time suckers are sleep and TV. Honestly, I am prone to laziness and the Bible says as a door turns on its hinged so does a sluggard in his bed. Sounds a little like me.

I decided I need to focus on sleeping less and need to not watch TV until after dinner so I get what needs to be done done.

I got home and watched TV and took a nap. I have a ways to go...

Raining, pouring

How did I see God today?

In the rain outside.

God has promised that seedtime and harvest will always exist. We will never be stuck in perpetual winter but will always have these seasons.

There's hope that the snow will melt and that winter will end. The weather is warming up and we have hope that a sunnier time is coming.

It's not just literal seasons either. When we go through a time of dark skies and cold in life, we have a hope that sunnier skies will return someday. And though it's cold, God is always with us.

Rain might not seem like the makings of a beautiful day, but it's a promise of what is in store in the future.

God is at work

I was trying to think, what should I focus on to get me back into my blog again? I decided to start focusing on the little ways that I can see God in everyday life. That's what the name of my blog is about anyway, those everyday moments that don't seem to mean anything but in reality are what life is really about.

I see God at work in my marriage. It's a wonderful thing, and that's why I know my husband and I are going to make it. We are committed, and it's not just because we haven't been married very long. I can see that we both are making decisions to better the other person and our relationship, and that's only because we know that God has put us together and wants us to stay together.

The other day, I was feeling crabby. It wasn't really for any reason, other than PMS, and I started to ask my husband to do several things. I wasn't saying it in a mean way, but I also had a tone that I was annoyed about these things.

Nate asked if I was grumpy, because he didn't think he had done anything wrong, and I said I was and that I was PMSing.

Instead of him getting annoyed back at me or even ignoring me, he pulled me into a hug.

It just brought tears to my eyes (I know, this time of the month). But it's so special to have someone who loves you so much that they overlook your shortcomings and just love you some more.

God is at work in our marriage, in our lives. I'm so appreciative that he has brought us this far and that we can rely on him to bring us through anything that happens in the future.

Christian swearing

The pastor preached one of those sermons yesterday that will reach just about everybody in the audience, everybody that is listening that is.

He talked about 1. The way we handle sex and money must be notably different than the culture around us; 2. Our speech must be notably different than the culture around us; 3. Failing to take this seriously may have eternal consequences.

The part that hit me most was that our speech should be different than those around us. I grew up very averse to swearing, even asking people not to swear around me. (I know, I sound like a little goody-two-shoes). Then you grow up, and swearing doesn't seem like a big deal.

I don't swear often now, but those words do come out every once in a while.

It wasn't really swearing that the pastor talked about though. It was what he called "Christian swearing." That means when we replace "Oh my God" with "Oh my gosh" or when we say "Fudge" or "Crap" instead of swearing. Everyone knows what we mean. Often, they hear the real word in their head anyway, so it's not saving anyone by us using those fake replacements.

What would be really amazing would be if we didn't need to say those words at all. In moments of trouble, what if we didn't say anything? What if we learned true self-control and didn't have to spout something out? Or what if we really relied on God and the first things out of our mouths was a prayer?

When I thought about how I should clean up my tongue, my first thought was exactly that --- what do I say in those moments of anger, annoyance or pain? I have to say something, so shouldn't it be something that is a little cleaner than swearing?

I think it might be my next challenge to see if I can replace those exclamations with prayers, telling God that I need help instead of relying on some meaningless word to get me through.

I'll let you know how it goes...

Forgive and forget?

The struggle between forgiveness, retribution and vengeance is a confusing lot.

I won't go into details, but someone hurt my husband, and this man was found innocent by a court. I had prayed that this man would be held accountable for his actions, because that only seems fair, right? I was upset at that, but then I remembered the verse that says "vengeance is mine, says the Lord." So I know that this man will be held accountable eventually.

However, forgiveness is another matter. I can pray for this person, and ask that God will use this situation to turn their lives around, but do I want to walk up to him and start a conversation? No. Do I want to act like everything is all right? No. Can I let go and let God? Yes. I'm not sure where the line lies between forgiving and acting like everything is just fine.

I thought, this person deserves to be punished. He doesn't deserve to get off scott free. Then listening to the pastor's sermon yesterday, he pointed out that we don't deserve to get off scott free either.

How many times have I hurt someone? Maybe it hasn't been physically, but I've emotionally injured people by being harsh or criticizing or being downright mean. I don't deserve for them or God to forgive me for those actions, but I have been forgiven. If I have been forgiven, I need to also forgive.

Does that mean I should give up wanting this person to be held accountable? I don't know.

I guess I want to do what's right, but I still want this person to be held accountable. I don't know if this means I'm not completely forgiving or if it's OK to want this person to feel bad about what happened and repent. I mean God asks us to repent, right?

This is one of those blogs where I don't have any answers. I'm just putting it out there that I'm honestly not sure what to do about this issue.

I need to pick back up with my blogging. It's spring, and everything is becoming new again. Why not my blog?