Boys, Summer Camp, and God

Summer Camp although many months ago still resounds in my heart. We took the kids from Glenwood to Washington, DC for a long weekend.

I joke with a friend of mine that God designed me to hang out with boys instead of the girls. I love each of them but I really like to run around with the boys, not staying long at one thing before we are off to another. It's go go go, I love the adventure! And then they are always ready to go before were done and they get impatient after having to wait on the girls. I think I love being with them because they are so different from me. If I were in a museum I would stop at everything and read it and talk about it and look at all the pictures. When with them I get to see what matters the most to them, what makes them excited. One place we both enjoyed was in the Natural History Museum, they had a huge room of gems and beautiful rocks. We checked out the diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, rubies..... They loved the bling! I felt so special as they wanted me to look at everything with them and talk over what they would do with these rare treasures.

One night we had a Church come to the Bible College we were staying and minister to the kids (see the Pastor in the first pic above). They have a Church in Maryland that ministers to hundreds of youth. They were having such a huge response from the kids in the area that the very weekend we went to visit their Church we found out they had been shut down because they were exceeding capacity (they were in an office park). So they came to us (so like God to make us feel special). We played games, got to know one another and then settled in to hear the message the Pastor brought. It moved the kids and at the end he asked that we gather around the kids and pray for them. A couple of young men from the church surrounded two of our boys who just happened to be sitting by them. When they started to pray and speak life over them the boy's hardness broke. I heard them speaking the most positive things over them about their boyhood and there place in the kingdom of God. I thought these boy's have probably never had someone speak into their life like this. Through the Holy Spirit they were speaking into their lives there position in God's kingdom, that God created them for greatness, that he thinks that they are mighty and fearfully and wonderfully made. I truly felt at that moment that they felt God reach down and say I am proud of you like no other, I love you like no other and I created you like no other. WOW is an understatement!

The Boy's have been on my heart so much lately. I am praying that a male role model takes the time to invest into their lives on a regular basis..... I am burdened because the streets can be hard, it waits to tell them lies.... Please be praying with me!

The Garden of my heart

I have been meaning to blog about this for awhile. I went to a conference recently called "Journey to Wholeness". Here is what I wrote after the conference.

Lord I never want to look back. I went into the conference looking out to everything to fill me. People, situations, my husband, church, the world... What I didn't realize was my lack of looking up to you was effecting everything spiritual in my life. I had an aversion to reading the word of God, I had an aversion to the truth. I wonder how many people there are in ministry that are ministering from that place. Before I could look up you had to show me how unwilling I was to believe that you could love someone like me. In the time we spent reflecting on the "garden of our hearts" God you showed me beautiful rows of flowers in the center of my garden that were various colors. But at the corners of my garden there was blackness and it was threatening to consume the beauty. As you and I walked around the garden all of the flowers yielded to you, they reached up to their full height to reach out to you and bend towards you. Not only did you show me that you created all things to worship you, you showed me that these flowers were my desires, that my desire was to worship you and press into you. But the darkness in the corners was doubt, fear, insecurity and rejection. Because I was trying to solve them with worldly solutions they were threatening to overcome my desires to worship and press into you. You went to stand in each one of my corners and there brought light and life into the darkness. Where there was darkness flowers sprang up and a single sunflower in each corner. But in my corner of rejection you placed an apple tree and invited me to sit with you. It was here that you told me... You spoke to my deepest darkest place. You didn't speak to my mind you spoke directly to my heart with one look. The look told me how adored I was. That in that place you solely had eyes for me and you had always cared and loved me. The rejection was then gone, you see, my deepest fear was that I was never worthy to be loved like that, a deep unconditional love that only God can give.

At the bottom of my journal after I re-read what I wrote there was a scripture written in it, here is what it said.

Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in You. Show me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul. Psalm 143:8

Every day I desire that God would show me his unfailing love, bring me back to the time together under the apple tree. I put my trust in him that he will show me every way to turn and I want my soul to be forever lifted to him. No longer do I want to be filled with anything else.