The gift of relationship

You know, I cannot remember a time in my life where I did not believe that Jesus was my best friend. As a little girl, I remember playing in the forest and talking away because I just assumed Jesus was with me all the time. In grade five, we had to bring an item that was most meaningful to us for show and tell and I brought a statue of Jesus (which I'd accidentally scrapped his nose off from carrying Him around in a plastic bag). I just couldn't imagine NOT knowing He was there.

However, there was a phase in my life where I felt I was making all the wrong choices and it's amazing how we pull away from light when we believe we are causing darkness... how could Jesus be WITH me anymore when I was no longer talking to Him about the good I saw in others or the unconditional love I felt Him compelling me to offer others? How could Jesus be WITH me anymore when all I had time for anymore was MYSELF?

My own faith walk has left me INSPIRED by others... how many of us walk each and every moment of our lives on this unseen path? How incredible EACH and EVERY life must be that it contains every fragment of a person's LIFE moments!

So when my thirteen year old says to me "I don't know whether I believe God is real or not... I just don't know WHAT to believe." how do I GIFT her with my own LIFE moments so that she can add them to her own and SEE for herself what is real?

I feel like I have been spoiled! I have been witness to miracles through Isabel and various other experiences. I have FELT the incredible POWER of prayer... it truly is a feeling! I tried describing it once in one of my Isabel updates... it is like a thousand whispers breathing LOVE into an outreach like a safety net in the midst of a great fall. It is BEAUTIFUL.

How can I help EVERYONE feel that? I will sit here and type out to you all of my love and all of my faith that you may feel that "filling" as you read this... an "uplifting" as though God's hands were picking you up off the ground! I will send to you the richest blessings I can imagine that you may feel the fullness of this TRUTH I have always believed. Even if only for a moment... may it be YOUR moment to KNOW.

And for my darling Melina? When I try to share with her from the very core of my heart, she rolls her eyes and calls me cheesy... but why do things that come from the heart have to be cheesy? And besides, I've never heard anyone complain about a cheesy pizza! Have you ever heard "oh, this pizza has too much cheese."? So let me be an extra large (again, no comment!) ooey gooey extra-cheesy pizza of love for anyone who reads this right now. (Man, I am missing pizza now... darn this gluten-free diet!)

I suppose it is similar to me trying to tell a stranger how incredible my husband, Duane, is. I can tell them ALL the things that make him incredible in my eyes... but it won't mean anything to them until they themselves experience some form of relationship with him... and I suppose even then, it would be different from the relationship I have with him. At least, it better be! Hmmmm, maybe I should use another analogy...

Well, I am sure you get my point! I pray that my dear daughter KNOWS God and Jesus from her own experience with Him. Her journey WILL be different from mine, and I will look to be inspired by the ways she gets to know Him differently than I have.

Wherever you are in your own journey, whether two steps in or two steps back, I am grateful that you are journeying AT ALL! May every storm be followed by a glorious rainbow and may every winter be blessed by the new life of spring. May you feel His nearness in all things, always.

From the bottom of my heart (and with extra cheese), God bless you!