It was still snowing when we woke up, so that changed my plans a little. We went to church where we had an awesome service. We’ve started a new session called’ Let it be Christmas, a story from Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, George, Paul and Ringo.’ We’re using Beatles songs to get a fresh look at Christmas and maybe see it from a different perspective. So, today we talked about ‘Nothing’s gonna change my world’. About how the Jews had been waiting in captivity and hadn’t heard from God in over 400 years, about how they were scattered, a remnant and were waiting to hear about the Messiah. We talked about how Jesus coming as a baby in a ratty old manger rocked everyone’s world and boy, did it change. I hope our pastor didn’t think I wasn’t taking notes because as I thought about the waiting and the wondering of the Jews so long ago, I wrote a poem. I’ll have to post it later though, it’s in the car and James has the car.

After church and a shopping spree from Grandma at Wal-Mart we went home and played games and watched the snow fall. I had planned to go to the Fort for the farolitos lighting ceremony tonight, but it was still snowing at 4pm when we would have had to leave, so we missed it. I guess we’ll do it next year. We played scrabble and I beat my mom by 1 point, not bad. I made turkey noodle soup for dinner and some fresh bread, then after dinner we made gingerbread cookies.

This is the easiest recipe ever and they are sooooo good.

Easy gingerbread men

18 ½ oz pkg. spice cake mix
1 C flour
2 t. ginger
2 eggs
1/3 C oil
1/2 C molasses

Mix together cake mix, flour and ginger. Mix in remaining ingredients, beat on medium speed for 2 minutes. Cover dough and refrigerate for 2 hours. Place dough on a floured (or powered sugar) surface, roll out to 1/4” thick. Cut out shapes and bake on a greased sheet at 375 degrees for 8-10 minutes (8 minutes for chewy, 10 for crispy.)
Makes 1 ½ dz.

Tomorrow is rehearsal and recital, so wish us luck that we will dance with happy feet, hearts and souls!

That’s what we talked about at church this morning. We started in the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 15:7-11) learning that there will always be poor people. We are commanded to give generously to the poor (because God is generous to us.) We need to do it without a grudging heart, because God isn’t grudging. We need to be open hearted to our brothers and sisters, the poor and the needy. We are promised that God will bless us, but it may not be in ways we think we should be blessed.

In the New Testament we read that Jesus places a high value on the poor and needy, He expects us to act and react to the poor. My actions towards those in need reflect my allegiance to Jesus. Generosity to the needy reflects the hearts of God’s people. (I John 3:17, Matthew 25:31-46)

What does that mean? Next time you see a guy on the street give him a hamburger or some money, knit hats for the homeless, go to a shelter, collect stuffed animals for children in broken homes, fill an operation Christmas child box, give to angel tree. Why? Because God tells us that when we feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty and clothe the naked we are doing it unto Him.

I will be Your hands and feet
To the people that I meet.
To the hungry, homeless and poor
I will show the open door.
To help the broken,
Find their hope in,
You.

Work through me,
So all the world can see,
I can be Your hands and feet
To the people that I meet.
To know the fallen,
Will find their place in,
You.

Communion was also special today; I don’t know why, it’s the same cracker and same juice….

broken bread,
a cup of wine,
the mystery,
of the Divine.

a crust of bread,
a glass of wine,
to remind me,
of the Divine.

-Liese

Before we got started I wrote another poem. Both poems found their way to Laura who wanted me to read them….out loud. I gave her permission to read them for me. Here’s today’s:

Take a step
a leap of faith,
with opens arms
To My embrace.

I’ll change your life
if you believe,
take My hand
new life receive.
-L

Then ladies who had gotten together the night before started filing up onstage with cardboard signs, on one side they wrote who they were, on the other who they are. Signs went by with words like these: Abused and beaten by my husband – rebuilt by God; confused, angry, bitter – loved; broken marriage by my husband’s pornographic addiction and cocaine addiction – marriage restored; I once was blind (and she really is blind)- but now I see; abused as a child – I know my Father now; wondering what is my purpose – Ambassador for Christ; depressed, suicidal – I found joy and life; I had an affair – I am forgiven….it went on and on about 30 women went by. We were bawling of course, to see what people were and then the power of God transforming them was just amazing. To see that no matter what the old was, God can make it new.

After worship we had communion and then talked about how God restores, revives, renews and refreshes us. We spent the last small group just talking abut life and prayer requests. Then it was time to go, James pulled up right as we finished praying. The kids had all made cards for me and told me about their day. Grace was looking better and Bethany had brushed the girls’ hair and put it in braids or a pony tail. When we got home the dishes were done and the carpet was vacuumed. I was excited about my weekend and wanted to tell them everything.

So I hope you can see the infectious renewal I received this weekend and I hope to be spreading it along.

2 Corinthians 5:17

17 Therefore if any person is [ingrafted] in Christ (the Messiah) he is a new creation (a new creature altogether); the old [previous moral and spiritual condition] has passed away. Behold, the fresh and new has come!

We had morning session with Laura after a breakfast of bacon, eggs and pastries. Yum (and no cleaning up afterwards!) Today we talked about renewal. Our verse was 2 Corinthians 4:16 ‘Therefore we do not become discouraged (utterly spiritless, exhausted, and wearied out through fear). Though our outer man is [progressively] decaying and wasting away, yet our inner self is being [progressively] renewed day after day.’ The word we focused on was ‘renewed’. Renewal is a life long process and an everyday process. Things that can stop the renewal process are: when it hurts, pride, being stuck.

When life gets hard we often stop, when things hurt we tend to not want to do them. Benjamin Franklin said, ‘Things that hurt often instruct.’ Sometimes in life we go through times that hurt in order to instruct us in the end. Sometime we will know why those things happened and other times we won’t. All things work together for the good of those that love God and are called according to His purpose; but just because we are called and even though we know it will work for our good, we may not know now. When we fist lived in Denver in 2003 James worked his butt off trying to find work. He couldn’t, he’d find a job here and there, but times were rough. We got our furniture out of the trash, our clothes from the rescue mission, and our food from the food bank. They were trying times, then he found a job…..but it was back in Houston. Oh I cried, I wanted to stay here, even though it was hard (old things are comfortable, known, holding onto…) so we moved back to Houston and spent 15 months back there before moving back up here. I say all of that to tell you this: I know why we went back. It was not just to learn how to ride the bus and learn how to carry all of our groceries in the back of a trail behind bike; it was so we could spend time with James’ dad before he died. Of course at the time we didn’t know he was going to die, but we do know now. It’s just one time that I can see the ‘good’ that got worked when we went through a hurt and hard time.

Pride. This is the opposite of what we’ve been talking about in dance devotionals. Pride is, ‘I’m superwoman, I can do it all myself, I don’t need you and I’m fine.” Matthew 5:3 says this, ‘3″You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.’ Yep, when you come to the place where there is less of you to contend with, God can come into those empty places and fill you up.

Getting stuck, sometimes we just get stuck and that hampers God’s ability to renew us. We might be stuck in the past and we forget that the Bible says that the old is gone, erased. We hang onto hurts and failures, we think they make us…us. Sometimes we get stuck in the future; we worry about what will happen tomorrow.

All three of these things will interrupt the renewal process. We must get back to God because after all Christ’s love controls us. We had an action word ‘in’ and now we have another action word ‘receive’ He died for everyone so that those who receive His new life will no longer live for themselves. There’s a difference between believe and receive. I can believe that Jesus died for me, but I have to receive by faith the heart knowledge that His death means new life for me. I can’t just believe with my head, I have to receive in my heart.

We broke into small groups again and talked about what season of our lives we’re in right now. I’m in the busy season, the teacher/mommy season. We talked about how we can get stuck in the renewal process and what we have to give up or receive in order to continue the process. We talked about ways to get plugged into God so renewal can happen everyday. I said that devotions with the kids are hard for me. I have 3-13 years old and it’s hard to make something easy for Hannah, but challenging for Joel. I try to do devotions everyday, but sometimes get stuck with excuses (not enough time, too much to do, it’ll take too long) and we end up having a rough day. I also have worship dance devotions now, but that’s just once a week. So my goal to be renewed everyday is to take our devotions more seriously, do more with them and dig deeper with the older kids so they can start the renewal process too.

After the session we had 6 hours of free time to fill. I walked down to the mall and shopped for a bit and then ate a late lunch. I had dolmathes, spinkopita and the best baklava I’ve ever tasted. Think of a cinnamon roll without the roll and with a flaky pastry crust on top of it, yeah it was good. (dolmathes are lamb and rice stuffed grape leaves and spinkopita is cheese and spinach pastry.) Then I walked down to Borders and speed read 3 books and found a Latin book for Joel. I was walking back to the hotel when it started to rain, but the shuttle stopped and picked me up. Back in the chocolate room I worked on spinning the lime green yarn I picked up yesterday. I ran out while making my hat so this time I bought 4 oz. of roving. That’s plenty to make the hat and then I have some purple to spin so I can combine the 2 colors and make a scarf. Soon it was time to go back to the room for the evening session.

The evening session was all about taking flight as a new creation in Christ. We have to look to Christ to reorient us when life throws us off course. We need to realize that we were ‘who I was’ and now we are ‘who I am’. The old creation is who I was and that usually has a lot of baggage. I was molested when I was young, I had parents that were divorced, and I only knew how to cook spaghetti when I got married (well at the time that seemed like a bad thing.) All of that is who I was, but now who I am is different. I am a mom, a wife, a homeschooler, a dancer, an artist, a bad singer (but a fervent singer) a writer of poems, a child of the Most High King. We live as we see ourselves to be, if I see myself as that old creation, I will be it. Change is inside me though, I was a caterpillar, but now I am a butterfly. I am ‘in’, I have ‘received’, and I am ‘changed’. To make the most of renewal I must take action and change, I must live as a new creation.

We must take our new purpose and become the light, the ambassador, the butterfly. We must take flight and spread the glorious word that is this: God loves you, He sent His son to die for you, your scars are beautiful to Him, He will change you from the inside out, but first you must be in, your must receive and then you can change.

After small group we went into the eucalyptus steam room to soak. It got to be 111 degrees in there! It was very minty smelling and I was soaked by the time I got out, but my hair was dry….that was kind of weird. How can my hair be dry when I was soaking wet. I had hoped that the steam would counteract the coke that I’d had earlier. Finally at 1am I fell asleep.

First off, I don’t know how it was humanly possible to go from 5 hours of the doc, go to the GS shop, yarn shop, 2 libraries, Kinko’s, blockbuster, finish the laundry, give the girls a bath, pack and pick up James in 3 hours time. I am amazed that I did it all in such a short time. Anyway, James dropped me off at the Omni hotel for the women’s retreat and booked it over to the GS ceremony. My first stop there after dropping by my room, was the chocolate room. I hadn’t eaten all day and I was hungry. Now at first you call it the ‘CHOCOLATE!’ room, on day 2 you say, ‘CHOCOlate.’ room and by Sunday you say, ‘chocolate?’ room. We had more than just chocolate (like candy corn and caramel dip), but it was good junk food.

We met in the ballroom for out first session which started with 3 worship songs. Over the weekend we had 12 worship songs, that’s just about right (now if we could do that every Sunday and fit it the preaching too!) We played some get to know you games and then sat down to listen to our speaker. Her name is Laura Greiner; she co-wrote a magazine style book for women called Refresh. That was our theme for the weekend. To be physically and spiritually refreshed. So we talked about 2 Corinthians 5:17 which says, ’17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.’ Here are the verses before and after from The Message Bible:

16-20 Because of this decision we don’t evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don’t look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We’re Christ’s representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God’s work of making things right between them. We’re speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he’s already a friend with you.

We focused on the word “in”. To be ‘in’ means that we are actively doing something. To be in with Jesus means that we are accepting the Gospel invitation and acting. Something shifts when we say we are in. We move from a passive to an active, we transform from just being to acting. So great, we accept, we are in; that is our part. It’s God’s part to be the change agent, the forgiver, the settler of the relationship, the one who brings the ‘new’. Another important part of that verse is the word ‘gone’. The old life is ‘gone’, that’s it, it’s gone. But, in order for something new to come, something old has to be left behind. What is it that we are hanging onto that is old and doesn’t help in our relationship with God? Is it past hurt? Anger? Bitterness? Confusion? Old is comfortable, known, new is unknown, even strange sometimes. In order to get the new we must let go of the old, let God take the past and wipe it, erase it, and take action by accepting the new. We need to ask: what is my purpose? If you are now a new creation you have a new purpose. We are now Christ’s ambassadors, His representatives, we’re supposed to be ‘persuading men and women to drop their differences and enter into God’s work, make things right between them.’

Words from our theme were swirling around me so I wrote a poem, it’s not great, but it captured the moment:

Renew my life
let me be,
refreshed in Your
Love for me.

Father, God
Jesus, King,
with a new heart
To you I sing.
-L

Anyway that was Friday’s session, we had small group time where we talked about lies that we believe that are the old and how we can change from that to the new. I think in my life the lie is that I can do it all. I have a problem with delegating work to my kids that they can do, I think it’s just my job to do it. I have a problem with frustration with my kids; sometimes I’m just not a very good teacher because I get frustrated when I’m teaching them. But the truth is I love my job and I can’t imagine not being a homeschooler, mom and a wife.

After another visit to the chocolate room I went back to my room and met my roommates Janet and Luciann. We were supposed to have 1 more lady in the room, but she didn’t show up. I was really tired, but we didn’t get to sleep until midnight or later. Janet was true to her word though and woke us up at 7am (gee, thanks Janet…..)

Vision on the GO!

Vision is a clear and precise picture of a desired future. Vision is tangible to the beholder. Vision mandates change, the status quo must be set aside. Vision is initiated by God. God provides the faith and the strength to serve the vision. God provides blessings through His people for the vision.

These are the notes from church. We were asked to ‘GO!’ last weekend. I started thinking about what we could do for the convention. An opportunity for us to impact thousands of people by our actions. So, we decided that we’d make some sandwiches and take them downtown, not just for the homeless, but for anybody who wanted one. Our vision was to feed the hungry in response to Jesus’ command to go and do. This morning we’ll be heading out. Sometimes during church I have the desire to write poetry in response to the message, so I have this:

Go be the shoulder to cry on
Help them see a new dawn
We all need God.

Go feed the hungry
Go clothe the poor
Go give living water
To those who thirst for more.

Go rescue the hurting
Go befriend the lost
Go change the world
As one who counts the cost.

Go make a better place
Go with a vision
Go save the broken
Find and do your mission.

Go lend a helping hand
Make them understand
We all need God.

-Liese

Today at church we talked about the great commission and what we can do as mere mortals to go and take the message. (It’s in Matthew 28:16-20.) Basically it’s this: Go-Make-Baptize-Teach-Obey. We are to go out and make disciples of all nations baptizing then in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit , teach them God’s word and obey it ourselves. Jesus is pretty clear about what He wants, so what can we do in return? We can obey and devote ourselves to the living out of God’s word; we can be consistent and creative in how we get the message across.

I was thinking of the DNC that’s coming to Denver. We are going out next Monday to take the rail downtown to go to the art museum and just be with all the people who are here for the convention. It’s not much, but the kids and I are going to make a bazillion (ok, maybe not that many) PB&J sandwiches and walk around near the capitol with a sign that says ‘free sandwiches’ (from a republican, no just kidding on that part.) We hope to hand out to the usual homeless crowd (unless they’re all enjoying their free passes to the museum and zoo) and maybe even some of those tent state university starving students. Maybe some protesters too. I’m not saying I agree with them, but it’s just a sandwich and a way for us to say ‘Hey, even though you’re a democrat, God loves you’ (well, maybe just;’Hey God loves you.)

Our pastor also said this: when you are feeling burned out, doubting, dry, useless, God can use you. It’s not about you, it’s about Him. He can show up in the midst of your pain when you are trying to help someone else. He can help you when you help others. When you take the opportunity to help others and show them God’s love no matter how you are doing it or how you feel when you do it, He will be there. Jesus’ method of advancing the kingdom of God is through love (that’s why He said ‘and love your neighbor as yourself.’) He can even show up with a PB& J sandwich (you just have to make the sandwich.)

We went to the Aurora beach for a swim co-op today.

We talked and swam and played in the sand. James wonders what we could do there for 5 hours; talk, play, swim, talk, play, swim……

The only problem with the water here is it is sooooo cold. It was 95 outside, but the water was like 55 degrees (they said it was 70, I beg to differ!) I love this reservoir because it has nice shady tables and clear water. At one point a truck backed up to the lake and started spilling fish in. I thought about taking the girls over to see it, but then they’d say, ‘Ahhh, there are fish in here?!’, so the fish got left alone by us. I’m not sure Joel came out of the water in those 5 hours except for the one 15 min. break they gave. Even I got in with Joel dragging me as I screamed ‘It’s cold, ahhh, it’s cold’ with every step. It wasn’t so bad the 2nd time, but the first time it’s a shock. I’m still not sure that your body gets used to that temp., I just think your skin gets numb.

Here is Bethany after VBS tonight. She got covered in pudding.

What does pudding have to do with Jesus? Not much, they just did it to be silly. The story tonight was of the blind man and Jesus healing him. The put oatmeal on their eyes and listened to the story, then they went over to the ‘river’ to wash off the oatmeal so they could see. Yesterday they put stickers all over their body (some of the kids) and were lepers. They had to stay behind caution tape so the other kids wouldn’t get infected. Then they heard the story of Jesus healing the lepers, they all came out and took off their stickers. Grace is so happy she’s old enough to be there this year (she’s on Bethany’s team.)

Sunset.

That’s what we’ve been talking about at church for the past few weeks. Today we went over these points:

-It’s easier to be an admirer of Jesus than a follower. Admirers can watch from a distance and be largely unaffected. Followers are forced to follow the commands that often turn their lives upside down. (Phil. 2:5-11)

-We are called to: Be a blessing, humble ourselves, not count the cost. Not counting the cost means like if your child was in an accident, you wouldn’t go to the ambulance and say, “Hey, how much is this going to cost me, if it’s over $200 I’ll just take her home and slap a band-aid on it.” You would say, “Whatever it takes, make her well.” You aren’t counting the cost at that point, you are just taking life as a gift. So, we are meant to follow Christ without thinking about how much it may cost us (because we can’t see the future anyway.)

-Where do we find happiness? We are assured the ultimate victory in Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:13, Rev. 21:3, 4, 27, Rev. 22:5)
-Trials make us better in the long run (James 1:2-5)
-Ultimately we find happiness in our relationship with Jesus (Romans 15:13)

There’s a difference between seeking God and seeking God’s blessings. Search for Jesus and you will find happiness; search for happiness and it will elude you. They showed a video beforehand that asked ‘Are you happy?’, I wrote a poem to go with the video.

Are you happy now?