A letter to my much younger self…
In the course of life, we learn so many valuable lessons. Wisdom seems to come from living and learning for yourself – not by telling your mom, I’ve got it. Had I known then what I know now, I would have learned these life-changing lessons many years earlier:
Eat lean, green and clean
Keep running 3 miles per day (jogging in reality…)
Maintain a 3 times per week stretching & strength training routine
Guard my innocence
Read the Bible every day
Welcome the Campus Crusade for Christ into my dorm room
instead of shutting the door on them
and telling them my story was between God and me
(how clueless was I???)
Give Bibles for Christmas and Easter as gifts from my heart
Honor my husband as head of our household
Raise my sons with mutually agreed upon, shared values with my husband
Eat meals together
Pray together as a family
Speak words of L I F E andB L E S S I N G over my family
Pray words of life and blessing over my family
Praise God for being good…all the time
Read the Bible to my babies every day
Read the Bible to my toddlers every day (same boys)
Read the Bible to my young sons every day (same boys)
Read the Bible to my teenage sons every day (same boys)
Teach the boys our values versus assuming they will “catch” them
Reinforce our values daily based on a Biblical foundation
Guard the boys innocence diligently from:
TV shows that differed from my values
violent video games
pornographic websites, magazines, etc.
drugs
alcohol
I see a theme…
I grew up in a home where we were in church whenever the doors opened – YET…
For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. ~ Jeremiah 29:11
To guide me, to guard me, to give me hope and a future, to grow me, to groom me into what His son came for – to live the life I should have lived and die the death I should have died so I have ETERNAL LIFE with Jesus Christ.
To change me from my own ignorant, know it-all-self into a woman who’s covered by God’s graceful presence and no longer full of it (myself!) but full of His grace.
Do you know how God controls the clouds and makes his lightning flash?
~ Job 37:15
No, I don’t know how, yet I know He does! And that is good. And God is good all the time.
Even when I am ignorant, He is in control.
Or in denial, He is in control.
Or clueless about how He controls stuff, God is still in control.
Or … whatever the situation may be, God is in control.
I have chosen the way of faithfulness;
I have set my heart on your laws. ~
Psalm 119:30 NIV
Faithful. I like that word…