I've had a wee God moment.

I was with a client who I was having lunch with, and he mentioned that he felt 'sad for me' that I have to look after my daughter AND my mother (who NEVER leaves the house). And I thought to myself... that's funny, coz I FEEL SORRY FOR ME TOO! But if he'd said that a day earlier, I don't know what my reaction would have been because of this:

I was reading Catherine the bible and I happened to notice the Israelites found the water 'bitter' so they named the area "Mara" (which means bitter in hebrew)
And then that night I was reading to myself the book of Ruth where Naomi says "don't call me Naomi, call me "Mara" because the Lord has made my life bitter.
And I thought ' what an odd thing to pick up on. I wonder if that's a God-incidence.... naahhh!'
And then during a boring sermon at church I thought, "I wonder if God has anything just for me?" next thing you know the preacher says "Naomi said call me Mara"... and didn't even explain what the word meant... but I sure knew!!
And then that afternoon I was lying on my bed thinking "I think God's silent at the moment. I don't mind... I'll just wait it out. But if God wants to speak He can do it through a secular station because I'm not in the mood for Radio Rhema. Well about 30 seconds after I stick Kiwi FM on (about as secular as you can get), the ad comes on "If you don't get these tickets, don't cry bitter tears"... and I thought BITTER??? how often does that word come up on the radio?? and so I thought "No way!! is God saying I'm bitter??"
(Which at this point I have to add, I've been bitter as hell, but I know God hates complaining, so I kinda just stopped talking to him, and just thought how much I hate my life and there's no future for me.)
So I jumped up and got the bible dictionary, and thought I'd look up either 'bitter' or "mara' to see what it said... but the book FLOPPED open at 'water"... and I thought "ok... I'll read this"
AND GUESS WHAT IT SAID???
"The Israelites found the water at Mara to be BITTER"

You know what's cool about that? God didn't give me verses on Complaining. And He didn't giving me verses on Selfishness. He told me I was bitter. And it says in the Bible that God knows us better than we know ourselves. It's made me alot happier knowing that God didn't condemn me, he just told me... even though I'd stopped talking to him about it.

(PS. The next three days of Word for Today were also on "bitterness"!)

blog post

For anyone interested, here is a blog post written about me and my daughter!

The internal dialouge

Sometimes when God speaks, He makes a verse from the bible just pop out at you. One that "popped out" after I'd left my partner was "Bad company corrupts good character". And I knew it was a God thing, because although it stood out, it made me feel quite uncomfortable to refer to him that way.
But as time goes on I can tell its true, and I've dediced to be purposeful about reinstating good values into my life. Good values often come as little phrases we say and repeat to ourselves, and so I've started collecting some. Here's what I have so far:

- Be diligent
- Be reliable and faithful
- Have a routine, (I need to be in bed by nine if I'm going to make it through the week)
- Feed your faith, starve your fear
-Look and the mountain-mover, not the mountain
- Get up, dress up, show up
- Do your best and let God do the rest
-Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will not go unnoticed, he will serve before Kings (Proverbs)
-What you feed will grow, what you starve will die
-As a man thinks in his heart, so he is.
- PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT
-If you spend your life waiting for the storm, you'll never enjoy the sunshine
- PERSEVERE
-"The two keys of a wonderful character are altruism, the unselfish concern for others, and empathy, understanding and entering into the feelings of others."
-Commit your life to a cause bigger than yourself.

If you can think of any phrases or purls of wisdom which have helped you through life and made you who you are today, I would LOVE to hear! (Really!!!)

Look what God gave me!

Take alook at this. This is a mug I designed. I scoured Etsy for what I wanted. I saw one off mugs with the colours I wanted. I saw them without handles. I saw them as shot glasses. I saw them in rounded shapes. But nothing exactly what I was after. I was planning to order what I wanted to get a craftsman to make me what I wanted, and was probably going to have to pay $20 a mug. I havn't been looking for a while though... I've been wanting these for about 3 years.

Then I sat down to look at the Trade Me website this morning, and I just thought I'd look up "6 mugs".

Take a look a the FIRST thing that popped up!
For twenty bucks! God is cool sometimes!

Earth quake - Thursday

I havnt much to say about the earthquake. This blog isnt a social commentary. But just to say after shocks are STILL happening.. and people are getting tired of it. Alot of historical buildings are being demolished along with family homes... but at the same time there is story after story like the one where a young girls fish tank smashed against the wall missing her head by inches.
The Goverment is going to subsidising small businesses wages... millions of dollars... and the economy will suffer... but with all the work for tradesmen it should pick up again within a year.
Oh my gosh. I watch the news too much. Who cares about the economy? No one died. We are blessed.

No. 2

Something came back up in mind today. Something from Steven Covey's "7 habbits of highly effective people".

Our time is divided into 4 catagories.

1. Important and urgent

2. Important but not urgent

3. Not importand but urgent

4. Not importand and not urgent.

Try your best to stay within 1 and 2 as best you can. Alot of our time is often spent on no. 3.
.

(By the way... the bird picture is for my friend Myra's birthday. ).

Christchurch Earthquake

We finally

had the 'big one' weve been warned about for years. It was in Christchurch which is midway down the South Island. I live in Auckland, in the North Island, so I wasn't effected. We had a sharing time at church. Some people had relatives but everyone was ok. My pastor with dubious humour laughed as he told us one of his relatives went outside to have a look after the earthquake and broke her hip!

Watching the news theyre were alot of miraculous escapes. I think only 2 people died, and if it had hit during the day, instead of the night the death toll would have been way worse. Also the fault line ran through a lowly populated area.

Typical kiwis, everyone seems to be taking it ok. Although on tonight's news families seem to be bunking together with the scared kids. But only two fatalities... the stink bit seems to be all the beautiful old Christchurch buildings which have been destroyed. Apart from that everyone seems to be pulling together. My friend Julia at church was laughing at the news bulliten trying to dramatise "LOOTING"... which turned out to be, a couple of guys threw a rock through a window.

NOTE: my mistake... turns out no-one died in the earthquake... which is good news indeed!