Grandparenting With Grace: Protecting the mind

As 2014 rolls over and offers up a new beginning, I am thankful for God's grace and merciful forgiveness. You see, I am working on the sin of selfishness. In Nov. of 2010 our not yet 2 year-old grand-daughter came to live with my husband and me. I had plans. I had gone back to college. I was going to. . . Today there are still struggles within, giving it all over to Him- MY. Plans. In exchange for His better plan. However, I am extremely grateful that I am able; that I have been chosen, to love this child for Him. I do not know what the entirety of His plan holds for me, for us. I only know He holds all my days and that is enough.


I am protecting my mind in my old age with scripture memorization.

Psalm 37:1-10 (NIV) I have found a site that will recite it to me so I can check my accuracy in memorization.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm%2037&version=NIV 

Psalm 37 (NIV)

Of David

Do not fret because of those who are evil,
or be envious of those who do wrong.
For like the grass they will soon wither,
like the green plants they will soon die away.

Trust in the Lord and do good,
dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
Take delight in the Lord,
and He will give you the desires of your heart.

Commit your way to the Lord,
trust in Him and He will do this:
He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn,
and your vindication like the noon day sun.

Be still before the Lord,
and wait patiently for Him;
Do not fret when people succeed in their ways,
when they carry out their wicked schemes.

Refrain from anger and turn away from wrath;
do not fret- it leads only to evil
For those who are evil will be destroyed,
but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land.

Fret, Fret, Fret. All. Day. Long.

I am done with this fretting. It steals my joy. Robs me of peace. Holds me back from being content with what I have.

Envy. Envy. Envy. Who me? Yes, me. Not because I want to do as they do, but rather, I want to do. . . I want the time to do. To carry out MY plans. I never thought I was an envious sort of person. Yet, I envy the freedom to do. To shower. To sleep. To just go where, and when I want. To finish what I started and put on hold for my children.  I am GREEN with envy.

God says, the evil will not prosper. They will wither and die. Yet, I envy their freedom-but know a better way. It is my choice. I can choose the here and now --or for all eternity. I will choose Eternity.

Trust, Can I trust? (I don’t know.)

Do I trust? (Definitely not.)

I need to work on this. If I trust, if I do what GOD has set before me, I am promised safety in Him. And, I am promised the desires of my heart if my delight is in HIM.

I am giving my life away to the Lord. I WILL trust in HIM. Why? Because only then will my life be a light, only then will it give glory to HIM.

I will be rewarded,and my desire is to hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful ” (Mathew 25:21).

Be still. How difficult this is for me. My time is not His time. I long for this whole situation to be resolved. I long to be content, happy, finished. I am tired of not being who He wants me to be. Yet I know I am in progress. Awaiting completion, for, “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:1-6, NIV).

Do not Fret. There it is again, Fret. Fret. Fret. This is meant for me. I Fret. Oh, do I Fret. 

Anger? I have been/am angry. 

Wrath?

The Random House Dictionary defines wrath as:  fiercely resentful anger; vengeance motivated by anger. 

Yup, that’s me.

 Anger, Wrath, and Fretting leads to evil. . . the evil will be destroyed.   

Am I evil?

 My heart is evil. The things I have thought. Desired. Hoped for. I am evil.                         

 My only Hope? 

Is definitely only found in the Lord.  

Grandparenting with Grace:The Ripple Effect (How our actions affect Others)

Life doesn’t work out as planned for us. Without a faith in God, that assures me He is at work for my best and that of those I love, many times I would have given up. The older I get, the more my life does not flow as I have perceived it would.

We make life-altering decisions that affect the lives of others; as the proverbial saying goes, “Like a pebble tossed in a pond sends out ripples, our lives touch others with its ripples and theirs, ours.” Although at some points, such as now, in this my final few decades of life, as the last chapters of my life story are being written and the pages of the past begin to yellow and take on that musty smell common to old and neglectfully forgotten books, it has felt as if I am standing on the opposite shore of all other lives that touch mine, and rocks are being thrown. I am losing my shoreline to the erosion of the choices (chaos) of others.

As for me, I pray I choose to toss pebbles of encouragement and affirmation. Life is hard; the last thing I want to be doing is throwing rocks at the fragility of others.

I could stem the damage being done to me, but at what cost to an innocent? I refuse to throw the huge boulders needed to stem the raging waves that are eating away at what should be my peaceful sandy shores. Yet, I like to think that the rocks will enhance my foundation of faith and trust, and one day I will realize that a shore of peaceful sand held a misconception of importance.

Unfortunately, knowing these things does not remove, or even diminish, the pain that holds me captive behind the growing wall of rocks amassing my life’s shoreline. I believe, one day I too will put on the harness of a rock climber and scale that imposing wall of rock and all will be chaos free. Then, as I stand atop what was meant to bury me and defeat my spirit beneath its crushing weight, I will see the entire vast array of what my life was purposed to be.

My prayer is that I will have chosen to toss out into life the proper pebbles. Pebbles causing truthful ripples in the waters that caressed the lives of others more often than having chosen, inadvertently or selfishly, those that caused demolition and destruction. My biggest fear is that I would have callously caused another life to withdraw from riding on the sparkling waters of life because my pebble’s ripples caused too much pain. I pray I will never force another to retreat from rippling the hopeful and promising waters of their life because of  my choices.

We often are not sure how our ripples will interact with those of another life until the pebble has left our hand, hit the water, and the ripples actually subside, leaving what looks like calm waters, but we all know water moves beneath its still smooth surface. My hope and prayer for those I love is that the ripples that rise and fall from the present pebbles that they have tossed are ones that cause well-being toward others. I pray that as God orchestrates the lives of those I love, the swell from their pebbles continue to touch others for years to come in a kind and gentle way.