Life: Part II

If anyone out there has read the book, "Heaven is for REAL." Wow. It is a little overwhelming and yet I want to read it again. I could read 100 times over. Amazing little book and has truly impacted my life. If anyone has every lost someone they love, please read this book. It will give you some healing, some closure, and some serious peace. Life is amazing after reading this book. I have this new I don't care attitude about things. I just don't care if my checkbook is empty today. GOD has provided us with paychecks and it will be replenished. Bills will be paid and GOD will make sure of that. He has taken care of us in the last five years. He has given Mark the opportunities to work part-time at times when we thought their were no jobs left out there. He has truly gotten us through some really hard times and the money is always there when we need it. I know in all things he has a time and a place. Everything that happens to us in this life is to prepare us for the next one. He truly loves us and wants us to help Him tell everyone about His love for them. In this life we are to live our life with the goal of getting to the next one in Heaven with Jesus. I try each day to lead my life in the direction that GOD would want me to go. However, some days that path feels like a game of Candy Land or Shoots and Ladders. I wake up on the right path moving forward and I pull a card that makes me go backwards on the path. I want to have a life of no worries. I want to live without worry, yet our American life still does not allow us to do that. I have watched several interviews with Katie Davis. She is a missionary in Uganda and at 23 years old she is in the process of adopting 13 girls. The oldest is 16 and the youngest is 3. Does she wonder at any point in time how she will pay to feed and cloth them? No. She gets up each day in Uganda and she home schools them, she feeds the community, she takes care of anyone that needs her in the community, and in her spare time she raises money for her Amazima non-profit organization. She is an amazing young woman that is doing all of this and she is half my age. At 40 I just want GOD to take over. I want Him to run my life. I feel like He could make it work whole lot better than I could. If I come to Him like a child, I will enter Heaven. I want to just loose the control materialism has on me. In the last five years I have discovered that many things no longer matter to me. I used to buy everything new. I now buy most things used. Craigslist and Goodwill are my favorite places to shop. I like to make things myself rather than purchase them. Being an art teacher, I have discovered the fun in the process. I no longer spend all my money on pre-made things. I want to create and learn in the process. It is much more fun. I have also discovered that little things mean more to me than expensive things. On our 10th wedding anniversary I got this beautiful ring from my husband. It was from a pawn shop of course, but an expensive gift even from there. I look at it sometimes and think about how many cleft surgeries it would cover in China or how it is worth two months salary for an adoption guide. I think about how it would feed 30 children for a month or one child for 30 months in Haiti. I think about the money we spent on adoption expenses and what a small price it was to pay for a life filled with so much...hopes, dreams, giggles, laughter, smiles, "I love yous" in the morning and at night. This is truly priceless. I have big dreams in this life and they include touching little children. I just want to hug them and kiss them and let them know that around the world in a 2000 square foot home somebody loves them and knows they need a family. I pray for the orphans of the world everyday and each day I ask the LORD to make their life count to someone. Let them know that they mean something to somebody. I can't imagine living in this world and not count. No one care if you live or die. Sure someone is going through to motions to care for you and 300 others. Going to work and doing a job and being a mother are very different. Can I save the whole world? No. "GOD will take the small, and make it into something HUGE." I got that quote from Katie Davis. In an interview she said that some days there are more starving children in the next village that she can't feed, and there are more medical needs than she can get to in her life time, but in a small village in Uganda she is changing the lives of 13 little girls and her entire little village. Each morning when she wakes does she care if she missed Desperate Housewives, or if she forgot to Tivo the People's Choice Awards? No. She is grateful to GOD for her 13 children and her ability to feed them today and help them with their school work. That is it. Does the Machine Gun Preacher care about his mortgage being late? Nope. He asks GOD to pay it and sends the mortgage payment to His non-profit in Sudan where he feeds 300 children a day. Money is not his focus nor is it Katie Davis'. They live in for real time not our American real. If 'Heaven is for Real", then I need to get my life Real for GOD. He will deal with all of this monetary stuff if we follow Him in all we do each and every day.