Making Room for Growth

My morning walks are not only for exercise purposes, which I desperately need in my life, but also for "mom" time. I usually walk and listen to a podcast, an audio book or catch up on Pastor's latest sermon that I may have missed. But sometimes when my heart is heavy and my mind is racing, I just turn on some praise and worship music and pray as I am walking. This morning my head was all over the place. My thoughts were on racism and injustice, Corona Virus and all the changes in our world because of it, and our sweet adopted girl and her birth mother. Some of these things break my heart and some just make me so angry. Then I think how much more Jesus' heart must be breaking right now. 

I know everyone has an opinion and if you want to find it you can mostly likely look on Facebook. It is okay to be outraged and to stand up for what you believe in, but yelling at the top of your lungs and ranting and raving on Facebook isn't going to make most people listen. In fact, it will turn them off and do just the opposite. It isn't about who is the loudest. Unreasonable, evil people are not going to listen to you yell. I am not a loud person by nature and you will not find me willingly entering into a debate, but when Jesus speaks truth to my heart you better believe I am going to share it one way or another.

So here it is . . . These are are my flowers. I love flowers. I am not super knowledgeable and I can't even tell you what kinds they are sometimes. I choose them because I like how they look and I like their colors. But I do know that they require daily maintenance. They need water everyday or they start to wilt. Even when I water them daily, some petals still wilt and die. I go out everyday and pull off the dead parts. Sometimes I think I am done only to look underneath and find more that need to be plucked out. I do this to make room for new growth.  The same is true in our lives. We need daily maintenance. We need to be in our Word daily and then we need to look for dead, ugly things in our lives that need to be pulled out. We need to do this so we can grow! Sometimes, we have to pull back layers and look underneath to make sure we don't have any wilt in us. 

I certainly don't want to break Jesus' heart and I don't want to be a part of the problem in this world. I choose to trust God for my families' future and I will keep growing despite the world around me.  I will not live in fear, but I will make good choices.

I will continue to stand up for what I believe in and I will teach my children to do the same. . . but sometimes the best way to "stand up" is to kneel. I want my voice to be God's voice, and sometimes the battle is won when we are on our knees and not our soapbox.