Wednesday Words of Encouragement

"Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that is may benefit those who listen." Ephesians 4:29

I was in the grocery store one day and this gorgeous woman was in front of me.  She looked like something that stepped out of a fashion magazine.  Every hair was in place, her make-up was perfectly applied, she was in great shape, and her clothes were good quality and fashionable.  She was my idea of the perfect looking woman. 

Then she opened her mouth to speak to the cashier.  She was rude and arrogant.  She sighed, rolled her eyes, and was impatient.  Her child asked her something and her conversation was peppered with obscenities. My bubble burst!

As women we spend lots of time focusing on our outward appearance.  We make sure we pick a perfectly matching outfit each day.  We apply our makeup with painstaking care.  We do everything we can to make ourselves look attractive. 

Yet, do we spend as much time working to be attractive on the inside?  Do we think about the words and attitudes that come spewing out of our hearts?  Do we reflect an inner beauty?

The verse in Ephesians says, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths.”  What is unwholesome talk? Colossians 3:8 says, "But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander and filthy language from your lips."

Many of us would say we don't use filthy language but do you say unkind things when your angry? Do you talk about others in order to make yourself feel better? Do you gossip?  Do you complain constantly? Are you a negative person?

This is something we probably all struggle with at times.  However, if we profess to follow the Lord we should practice exercising self-control of our thoughts and words.  Our words are to be an encouragement to those who are listening.  We are to build others up and not tear them down.

Ask the Lord today to help make you a woman who is not only beautiful on the outside, but on the inside as well.

Pigeonholed

Last week, Emily had the painful process of taking a standardized test, which is required by our State each year if you homeschool.  It was stressful, but she did pretty well.  She came out above average in reading, language expression, and social science and average in everything else.  

But I had some thoughts about standardized tests.  I'm not sure who came up with the bright idea of these silly things.  They are designed to tell how a student compares with their peers, but to me they just let you know if your child works well under pressure and can take a test well.  I can tell you what they do NOT measure.

They don't show that my daughter is artistic & musical.  She has a very sweet voice and is developing her art.

They don't show how compassionate and kind she is.  She feels things deeply and it hurts her when she sees others being mistreated.




They don't show her merciful side.



Tests don't mention how persistent she is.  She struggles under pressure and yet, when given time, usually works things out on her own.





They don't measure her humorous side.  She is really quite funny at times.




There is no mention of her reliability, her loving spirit, her loyalty to her friends, her ability to accomplish something when she puts her mind to it.  All things that will make her a wonderful adult.  What it does say is that if you don't do well, you don't measure up.  You aren't good enough.  You didn't make the cut. 

And that is why I despise standardized testing.

I'm so glad that the Lord doesn't do that to us.  Psalm 139:13-14 says, "You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb.  Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it."  God made us each unique, with different personalities, gifts, talents and desires.  He doesn't pigeonhole us.  He doesn't say we have to be cookie cutters of each other.

He made us wonderfully.  He made us well.  He made us unique.

That is wonderfully encouraging to me and I hope it's encouraging to those of you who are feeling not quite good enough or as if you don't fit into the mold.  You don't have to be like Sally or Jane or Sue.  Be yourself.  Be who God made you to be.  

Celebrate you!

Multitude Monday

Yesterday, as I stood on the platform ready to help lead worship, I looked out at the congregation and saw frowning faces, weighed down by concerns, worries, or just not enough sleep.  The discouragement was palpable and those type of moods really do affect the atmosphere of a Sunday morning worship service.  

After breathing a quick prayer, I felt led to have people call out one way they were blessed during the past week.  It was a bit scary at first, because no one spoke!  However, first one person, then another, then many began to list the ways they saw God's hand on their life.  And immediately the mood shifted.  People began to smile.  It was almost as if a depressing spirit had been lifted from the place.  And worship of God began.

God created us for praise.  When we take our eyes of our misery and start putting them squarely on His face, hope is birthed.  When we look for His hand in the happenings of our life, we are transformed into people of praise.  When we see Him in the smile of a child, through the small kindness of a stranger, a moment in our busy day, or the beauty of a flower, we overflow with thanksgiving. 

I believe God desires our thanksgiving, not because He basks in our praise but because it is good for us!  It helps us to focus on the positive, the good, the blessed, and the holy.  Thankfulness is good for the heart!

This week I am thanking God for blessings #1645-1657.

♥ Craft items given by generous friends.

♥ A friend who pulled some strings to get me into the doctor's office early after an attack of diverticulitis.

♥ Cheerful singing.

♥ The different tastes & texture of food.  I haven't been able to have anything but liquids since last Tuesday so I'm really looking forward to that (tomorrow I can start) and am thankful for the food we eat.

♥ Talking through issues with my children.

♥ Renewed excitement in our church leadership.

♥ Small miracles that happen all around us. Mama Phoebe laid four more eggs and it's fun watching the various stages.

♥ Beautiful colors.

♥ Health.

♥ The feeling of stretching out in bed at the end of a productive day.

♥ A friend who gave an unexpected gift.

♥ Late afternoon shadows.

And finally...

♥ Praise that brings forth joy!




 

Crafty Things

I managed to get some sewing done this week and realized it's been a while since I've done one of these posts too!

I love the first item I made.  A friend saw my blog post yesterday about the Coach bags and asked me if I could make her a patchwork tote bag.  She sent me the specifications and after playing with it a while, I came up with this.  

LOVE IT!!!!  It is lined in tan vinyl and is very heavy duty.

 

The second item was an unlined apron.  Again, the material is so cute.  One of the hazards of working with hand me down fabric is you get what you're given.  Originally this was supposed to be lined in pale blue.  


The pale blue was donated fabric and when I went to sew it, I noticed a yellow fading of the fabric right on the fold line that I didn't see when cutting it out.  I tried washing it to no avail.  So this became an unlined apron.

The final item is something I made last week and never posted.  I made some tea totes with the same fabric.

What have you been working on lately?

Thrifty Thursday

I haven't done a "Thrifty Thursday" post in a while and with my latest acquisition I thought I should.  A friend contacted me one day recently and asked if I wanted some Coach bag material.  I thought, "Sure!"

When I went to her house to pick it up, it actually turned out to be three 30 gallon garbage bags and 2 small shopping bags full of actual Coach bags!  Apparently, they were purses that customers had bought, and had found a slight defect in them and returned them to the store.  Instead of reselling them at a reduced rate or giving them away to some charitable group, the store had sliced open every single bag and thrown them in a dumpster at the mall..  The price tags were still on and the bags were anywhere from $350-$450 each.  There was about $10,000 worth of merchandise in the bags.

My friend couldn't stand seeing them go to waste and pulled them out of the garbage.  lol  Anyway, she thought I could do something with them.

Unfortunately, the bags were too destroyed to be able to repair them as pocket books.  But I was able to salvage some of the hardware and a bit of the fabric for smaller projects.

All of the handles were intact.

I was able to keep some of the smaller straps and a few zippers.  The outside zippers were all cut in half, but a few bags still had the inside pocket zippers in one piece.

I cut off tons of rings to be used in other projects.
 

I'm keeping some for myself and passing on the rest to a friend who makes handbags.  I am glad that I was able to at least get some things from each bag.  The wastefulness of retailers is sickening.  

She also gave me the equivalent of two boxes full of upholstery fabric samples, including leather samples.

It has been a very thrifty week! :-)

Wednesday Words of Encouragement

Numbers 11:18-20 ~ 

Tell the people: "Consecrate yourselves in preparation for tomorrow, when you will eat meat. The Lord heard you when you wailed, "If only we had meat to eat? We were better off in Egypt!" Now the Lord will give you meat, and you will eat it. You will not eat it for just one day, or two days, or five, ten or twenty days, but for a whole month - until it comes out of your nostrils and you loath it - because you have rejected the Lord, who is among you, and have wailed before him, saying, "Why did we ever leave Egypt?”

Complaints, grumblings, rumblings, and murmurings were things the Israelites did very well.  After years of captivity, beatings, imprisonment, death, and starvation, they were out from under the yoke of Pharaoh.  They had seen terrible plagues fall upon the Egyptians while they remained unscathed.  They had followed Moses through the pushed back walls of water of the Red Sea.  God miraculously saved them.

Then He fed them.  He rained manna from heaven, the life giving bread which He produced just for them.  He gave them water to drink.  They saw water gush from the rock that previously had been dry.  By now the Israelites should have trusted God and known he would take care of them.  But they still hadn’t learned this lesson.

They began to complain once again.  This time it was about meat.  They were tired of manna, and they started to reminisce about “the good old days” in Egypt when they had all kinds of meat and vegetables.  Their memories were faulty as they started to believe that life was so good in captivity.  

So God told them, "You want meat?" "I'll give you so much meat, you'll choke on it!"  “I’ll give you so much that it will make you sick.”

I can laugh at this story, but at times, I can be just like the Israelites.  I pray and ask God for something and in His goodness, He gives it to me.  But as time goes by, I want more, or even worse, I express dissatisfaction with the very thing I asked Him for originally.  “Why do I have to eat manna day after day?”  “Why can’t you give me meat, Lord?” 

My caution to you and to me today is to be grateful for what the Lord has given you.  Stop expressing dissatisfaction with the gifts you have received.  Stop looking at others and comparing and saying, “If only God had given me a husband like that.” or “If I had this spiritual gift or personality, then I could really live my life for the Lord.”  

Keep sight of the miracle God has done for you and thank Him for it.  Be careful, lest you get more meat than you can eat!

Truth Is....

There is an activity floating around facebook that is popular among my young teen friends.  The person posts something like this..."Like for truth is."  Basically, you click the like button under their status and then they are supposed to post some true statement about you. 

It makes me smile because it always seems to be the same teens doing it and their statements are always the same.  "Truth is your my best friend."  "Truth is we don't talk that much anymore."  "Truth is you're really pretty." and on and on.   

There seems to be an entire generation coming up who cannot communicate outside of technology.  They text what they want to say or send a tweet or update their facebook status on a regular basis.  I was trying to have a conversation with someone the other day who had their face buried in their phone the entire time, and this was an adult!

Today I thought I'd give some of my own "Truth is..." statements.

► Truth is I wish my young friends could find activities to do that don't involve taking photos of themselves in the bathroom mirror via instagram and then posting it all over the internet. 

► Truth is I'd love to have a conversation with someone who isn't being interrupted by a ringing cell phone every five minutes.

► Truth is I'm worried about an entire generation that can only write using abbreviations.."i no u luv me!"

► Truth is I don't think that someone who is texting while you are trying to talk to them realizes how incredibly rude it is!

► Truth is there are an awful lot of bored teens and young adults around.

► Truth is our society is turning into an instant gratification, all about me, I want it now group of people.

► Truth is I hate to see how technology is turning us into a bunch of mindless people who can only talk about the latest television show, instead of the latest book they are reading.

And before I sound like an old lady...

► Truth is I LOVE technology when it is a person's slave and not their master.  

I use facebook to stay in touch with friends and family and it does provide a social outlet for me.  I blog almost every day which provides an outlet for my thoughts and writing.  I belong to an online message board where I exchange ideas, recipes, and housekeeping tips.  I google almost anything I need to know quickly.

But, I never want to it to take the place of real relationships, face to face conversation, and flesh and blood people.  I want to fellowship with friends over a cup of coffee.  I want to hug my friends and family in real life.  I want to read a hand written letter once in a while.  I want to talk to someone over the phone or in my living room where I can see their expressions and read their body language.

And that is my "Truth is..." for the day! :-)