New Beginnings and Clean Slates

I LOVE New Years...mornings, Mondays, start of school...anything that represents a new beginning and a clean slate! I am such a mess up!  I have such great intentions most days, and fail at most of those intentions most days in this season of life.  But I love that EVERY morning, I have a clean slate, a new start!  I love Lamentations 3:22-23 that promises "because of the Lord's mercy and loving-kindness that we are not consumed, because His tender compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great and abundant are your stability and faithfulness." (emphasis mine)

I see every morning as a new beginning full of possibility and God's compassion and mercy that covers all I didn't accomplish or managed to totally mess up yesterday!  And New Year's kind of represents that on a yearly basis for me.  It is a time to reflect on the past year, mark stones of remembrance of God's faithfulness and provision, times of spiritual stretching that hopefully brought growth, and looking at the times I didn't quite hit the mark.  Then I ask God to speak to me about the upcoming year!  For the past four years, sometime between mid December and January 1, God has dropped either a word or two or a scripture in my mind or drawn it out of one of my studies and said it was for the new year.  It's become one of my favorite parts of December....listening to what God has to say about the upcoming year!

For 2013, God gave me the words Faith and Obedience!   The other fun part about God speaking to me about years like that is looking back over the year in my review mirror and seeing just where the words or scriptures God gave encouraged, sustained, prepared and motivated me.  Well, faith and obedience were definitely a theme in 2013!  The obedience part was that I was to hear his voice, even a small whisper, and do it! No questioning, no reasoning, just pure faith, trust and obedience...from "pick up that marker on the floor" to "take in two more children", I tried to simply obey when I heard His voice.  I didn't succeed in all areas.  My weight battle ensued long after I wanted it to, but there was even victory there when I followed through with my obedience!  But as I look back over the year, I know God prepared me for adding two babies to our home and moving our family 5 hours away from our support system of amazing friends and family.

I honestly hadn't thought much about it this year.  We are still trying to unpack from the move.  And with the move, I had done zero shopping for Christmas...and can I tell you that shopping for 8 kids plus extended family is an ordeal?! We also hosted both families this year for Christmas.  Love doing that, but it has meant there has been little alone time with God really except for the few moments I have carved out here and there.  But one of the things I love about my God is that He knows my heart!  He knows that my heart longs to be with Him!  And so even though I hadn't done the "check list" to hear Him, He spoke anyway!  I was actually getting dressed one morning, and just had my worship music on.  I heard joy and consistency.  Took me a minute to figure out why I heard that.  Then I knew.  They are my words for 2014! I am still studying to see just exactly what they mean and what my part is to make sure they remain themes for the year.  But I am excited to see what God does to bring joy and consistency into our family....really, two things that were definitely missing this year!

So I encourage you to get alone with God sometime today and ask Him what He has for you in the coming year!  He is a God of love and mercy, if you have this feeling that you are on God's "naughty" list and are afraid to hear what He has to say, please know that is the enemy!  Yes, God may have some things to say about what you have done, but He loves you enough to send his Son from heaven's seat to a manger in a stable!  He is longing for you to sit with Him and let Him share the good, perfect and full of hope plans He has for you in the coming year!  And if you don't get to that today, you can do it in the morning because every morning is full of new mercies!

Happy New Year blog world friends! I pray God's faithful provision, tangible presence and sustaining JOY over each and every one of you for 2014!

5K, 40 and what God taught me!

That's me as I crossed the FINISH line!!! I did it!  If you know me, you now that the fact that I put my arms up as I ran by John when he snapped this picture tells you what was going on inside of me!  There were other people watching, and I would never have done that, but what was going on inside came bubbling out as I passed him and Journey and knew that self doubt for the journey of health and wellness were defeated forever!

It was AMAZING!  It will definitely go down as one of the biggies as a stone of remembrance in my spiritual walk.  In fact, literally every part of the 5K was a lesson!  God talked to me the entire time making spiritual comparisons to what was happening physically.  By the end of the race, I was just praying God would help me recall all he told me when I could sit down to write it all out.  Just before my last push to the end, God said to write it all down and be ready to share it! So if you have a women's event coming up and need a speaker, I would love to come share what God showed me about running the race of life through this journey! 

Can I just tell you that I would have quit so many times if not for making a big deal about it here and on my Facebook page?!  By the time the race got here that morning, I was scared to death!  I know it sounds silly and totally illogical, but aren't most of our fears and strongholds the enemy has us trapped in?!  I pushed through those only because I had accountability to those who had spoken words of confidence over me, and I was not going to let them or my family down by not going through with it.  They said go, I start jogging and about 10 yards in, I start feeling like my legs are lead, I need to go to the bathroom, and I think I will puke any second!  I am not even .10 miles into this thing!!  How will I ever finish and finish strong?!  But I keep going.  After that initial panic was over, I realized it is just like the enemy to give one last ditch effort to keep us from victory! I had ran almost .70 miles in training, but .1 into the race that would defeat the devil, he plays mind games with me to make me stop the race!  Wow! How many victories have I missed because the last leg of the journey was harder than I expected or the enemy simply psyched me out and I quit?!

I didn't run the whole thing..in fact, I didn't ever run as far at one time as I had in training.  But my goal was to finish, and not be last.  I met that goal..and actually had my best personal time!  I finished in 46 minutes and 30 something seconds!  But way more important than the time was finishing with freedom!  Seriously, for anyone who has not been in spiritual warfare or been on a journey to break a generational stronghold, this will sound crazy.  It won't be the first...and I am sure not the last..time I am called crazy!  I knew since deciding to do the 5K that when I crossed the finish line I would be doing something in the natural that would release the spiritual freedom I needed to finally walk in health and wellness.  The self-doubt and whatever else you call what kept me eating poorly and "settling" for this life would be done!  I was a weeping mess even before I got to the starting line!  Part of that was fear too! I had a friend encouraging me.  I laughed because she said, you have fought African governments for children, this race has nothing to scare you!  Funny isn't it, the things we let fear get a grip of in our life?! I knew I wanted to run (ok jog....as my FB friends know I don't really run!  Someone posted something that said my running looks like a herd of turtles running through peanut buttern and that's me!) across the finish line! I had a plan.  I had never taken the time to get good running music, so the night before I had downloaded Mandisa's knew album.  GREAT running music!  Maybe not the fastest tempo, but the words to two of her songs could not have been more appropriate! There was one song, Pres On, that I knew would push me over the finish line strong.  So I had a plan to switch my music to that song right as I start my sprint (ok, really fast walk/jog, but I can dream, can't I?!) to the end.  I turned the corner...I set my music, and I picked up the pace! And then, my phone does crazy stuff and switches songs every second or two! Ugh! NO!!!! So I go back to a walk, put it on Press On, and pick it up again.  Same thing! Ugh!!!!  Really, God?!  Now?!  I need this to get past that line up there!  I try one more time....same thing! Forget it!  I take off letting the crazy phone do it's thing! About 10 seconds later, I am smiling from ear to ear because it lands on Dance, Dance, Dance!  I knew it wasn' t a coincidence!  God had just given me the biggest hug possible!  You see, when that album came out YEARS ago, I would sing that song dreaming of being free from the bondage of weight and food addiction.  Mandisa wrote it on her journey through the same thing.  I would sing it as a prayer more than a celebration because I wasn't there yet!  But here, when I was walking out in the physical what I knew God was doing in the spiritual, my phone switches to this:
Maybe you don't understand why I gotta dance
There was something had me down but it's over now
I'm a throw my hands up
Wave 'em all in the air
'Cause all I wanna do is dance, dance, dance

They told me you ain't good enough
Don't look good enough
Don't sing good enough
Maybe you should give it up
And if I would've then I never could've received
None of the things that He planned for me
So I waited a little longer
Grew a little stronger and then
I realized something was happening
It's so incredible, it's unexplainable
You oughta try Him for yourself and see because

[Chorus]

Sometimes I think about
How it used to be, and can't help but
Remembering how it was never easy for me, no, no
But the way God works, it's so amazing
He never forgot me, I can't forget Him
That's enough for me to lift my hands and
I'm sorry if you don't understand

[Chorus]

All my tears (it's over now)
And all my pain (it's over now)
All my doubts (it's over now)
They went away (it's over now)
No more fear (it's over now)
And I'm glad (it's over now)
Yes, so glad
'Cause all I wanna do is dance

Wow! If I could have breathed enough, I would've literally danced across the finish line!  It was just confirmation of what I already knew!  I was now walking in freedom and VICTORY!!!!!  Friends, to borrow the words of Mandisa, you really oughta try him for yourself and see!!! If you don't know Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior, please e-mail (hollyann@addyshope.com) me! I would love to talk to you more about the freedom you can have!

Oh...and 40, well it's looking FABULOUS!