Italian dinners and snot nosed apple thieves.........

 The following is a post that was written just about one year ago.  I thought it needed some editing so I never published it. Then, true to form for me, I forgot about it.  But! It made for a great discovery today.  So here it is............


We went to a dinner at church tonight. It was called Dinner and Discovery. The food was great, lets get the important stuff out of the way first, but, more importantly, it was a great opportunity to get to know some other people in this new church we now call home. Pastor Awesome took time after we ate some wonderful italian, to give us an overview of what Church Alive believes and how it came to be. It was a time of discovery, but not only about the church, I discovered something about myself as well. I'm still in there! Even after a thousand years of being a mom, a wife, a writer, a singer, a worker, I'm still me, just little old me.

It's so easy in our busy lives, especially as women, to lose ourselves as we nurture, care for, and give out to our families and others. That is one thing God is working on in me with this relocation. I am in a church that is filled with people and a ministry team that is open to me. They have no preconceived notion of who I am or what I have done in the past. I am just me, with all my strengths and weakness, with all my good and bad traits, my intelligence and stupidity, my gifts, my passions, my goofiness and everything else that makes up who I am.

It's so easy when we have been in the same place for a long time, with the same people, to become locked into what others perceive us to be. It becomes comfortable. We cease to become stretched and sometimes, to grow. The word speaks of a prophet having no honor in his home town. I can only imagine it might be difficult to take seriously the message of God coming from the same guy who used to be the snot nosed kid running barefoot through your yard, stealing apples from your tree.

So the challenge is this; be who you are! Be who God created you to be, not everyone else's perception of who God created you to be. You will probably rock a few boats, upset a few apple carts, and blow a few minds, but it's worth it. To live a life short of what God intends, is to not really live life at all. There is great joy in the freedom that comes from breaking out of the rut, the easy life you find yourself in.

So, take a chance and be who you are, not who others think you are! You don't have to have a relocation to set free the real you from the bonds of the expectations of those around you.  Turn a few heads, shake a few worlds, rock a boat or two, step out and embrace the wonderful you that the Lord created you to be!  There's great comfort in relaxing and doing what comes naturally, whatever that may be!

Until next time, I'll still be,

Soaked in His blessings,
Spokenfor