Time

I do not usually get a chance to blog about what God has been telling me, but today K is taking a nice afternoon nap, so here goes...

"Such a TIME as this..."

Some Sunday School teachers of our use to always say this phrase and it always made such an impression on my heart and life.

Well... let me tell you a little about our summer... it all started back in April, and it goes a little like this... baby shower, wedding shower, cousin's graduation (College Station), sister-in-law's graduation (Dallas), baby shower (down South), friends staying with us and visiting from the UK (we loved this!), baby shower (in Lubbock), Couple's shower, Vacation Bible School, weddings, 4th of July in SA with a wedding the same day, we were both in a wedding, another wedding shower the next day, trip to Scotland for 10 days, trip to Lubbock for 7 days, Engagement Party, Jeremy's 30th Birthday Party... and that does not include the fact that we hosted or helped to host most if not all of these showers... plus we missed several graduations, weddings and showers because our weekend was already taken up with another one. OH! Did I mention that in the middle of all this I decided our house needed a little sprucing up. So we painted our game room, added curtains or blinds to several rooms, painted our master bathroom, rehung lots of pictures and things, bought other things to add to our home to make it more "homey" (all thanks to a sweet, dear friend who has an eye for decorating) and well, we are still not done, but I simply just got tired...

Our summer was literally NONSTOP! J&I have commented several times to one another and to others that we do not want or like living our lives in such a way because we easy forget to stop and watch all the blessings that God places in our lives. We tend to feel to "busy" to enjoy life, one another, or other around us. We also tend to just be going, going, going that we "forget" and I do not like using that word, but I will just be honest, we forget to say, God is that what you want for us to do or is this something that I want to do? No doubt God calls us to love, encourage and be there for friends and family, but if you are not first taking that time with Him and your family, then how can you be there for everyone else and not be frantic and stressed and overwhelmed. Sometimes we (J&I) forget there is a word called "no" and it can be an action... like NO we are making time for ourselves and our little family... or NO more importantly we are making time for God right now.

Anyway, this past weekend, was more than a weekend away from Houston. It was a refreshing time for J&I. A time for us to take a look back at our summer and to see what we accomplished or did not accomplish. Yes, we loved on and encouraged friends (or at least we hope we did) because that was our intentions. Yes, we enjoyed all the events and things we were apart of; but in the end we both have to sit back and say was God always at our fore thoughts. Was He the reason why we did these things or was it because we simply wanted to... were we being selfish and thinking of ourselves and what others thought first? J&I both want to loose ourselves in Christ first and foremost. We want for Him to guide us. We want for Him to not surprise us because we had forgotten to ask Him first, but we want to say of course God can and will do that if it is His will, and watch for it to happen.

J&I needed this past weekend to put things back in perspective for us. We want to volunteer for things, be apart of friends lives, be apart of our families lives, but most importantly we want to be apart of God's plan and His life and purpose for us. We do not want to get too "busy" that we forget to ask Him.

We know we will continually fail, because we do tend to be creatures of habit, but maybe next time it will not take us 5 months to sit down and figure it out.

Back to what our Sunday School teachers said... "Such a TIME as this..." I do not believe God called for us to be so "busy" and miss so much because we forget to sit and watch his wonderful works all around us. We live and are here in such a time to be His hands and His feet, when else are we going to have "such a TIME as this" to do HIS work and not our own?