The Father’s Heart

Have you ever stopped to think about just how much you are loved?

For me, I grew up knowing the love of a Mom and Dad and Grandparents and Aunties and Uncles and Sisters and Brother; well, I had better stop there because if I keep going and I sure could, there is a strong probability that I will leave someone out and I do not intend this to be an exclusive statement.

However, I know that there are so many who do not have this experience and I am not going to start to develop a list of examples - we all know of someone and the purpose of my writing today is not to bring more pain; goodness knows there is enough of that in the world.

Wow - I just had a flashback to the 80’s and a couple of Sandi Patty songs; Shepherd of My Heart and In Heaven’s Eyes.  Yeah, I was a huge fan and still am but let me remind you of some of the lyrics from Heaven’s Eyes.

In heaven's eyes, there are no losers, in heaven's eyes no hopeless cause

There's only people like you, with feelings like me; amazed by the grace we can find

In heaven's eyes.

Beautiful song and even more powerful message - the message of grace.  God’s grace.

You see life happens and sometimes even those who love us the most will withhold that love from us because they get angry at us or are unable to forgive us for something that may have happened a long time ago.  Perhaps we are the ones who struggle to give the love to someone close to us because of hurtful things that have been spoken to us or we have been wounded by actions towards us or even the action of exclusion.

Personally, this has been my experience on both sides of the fence and because we are people who have been given free-will, we try to do our best but do not always get our choices right the first time and this is when I am reminded of the power of grace.

That is the Father’s Heart for us, His Kids - His Grace, His Love.

The past couple of days my emotions have been very close to the surface for different reasons.  We all handle our feelings differently, but for me, I am a crier.  Sometimes I try to work out my feelings another way (even journalling), but inevitably, the tears come.  Yesterday they came while I was standing over our kitchen sink washing dishes and I just let them fall and I talked and prayed to God in the process.  My heart has felt a bit beaten up recently over different things and I talked to God about them.  No, I do not have all the answers, but I let God hold my aching heart.  Aching for my friend who lost her little boy too early, aching to talk to Mom just one more time, aching for broken relationships, aching for precious little Indy who just turned 3 and lost her Mom almost a year ago to Cancer, aching for injustice and a whole lot more and then it occurred to me.  God has gifted me with an incredible gift.  God has given me the capacity to love just a little like He does and what a privilege that is.  I am blessed with the opportunity of a tiny glimpse into how much our Abba Daddy hurts for us, His kids and loves us so much.  He wants to carry the weight of our burdens on His shoulders and He offers us Grace.

Whilst I can only begin to imagine on a very small scale the capacity of love that our Heavenly Father has for us, His Kids, I am so thankful to also experience His love and I hope you do, too.

Elephants....Any In Your Room?

I recorded this video last week but due to technical difficulties, I could not upload to YouTube; well, initially anyways.  Perseverance pays off.  Not actually sure what the issue was, but I have made notes for future reference in case it happens again.

We are bombarded with so much information these days I try to keep good notes for training, learning and reflection purposes.  How about you?  Is this something you find useful for your personal growth?

I am getting off topic a wee bit from my video blog below, but suffice it to say, there are many methods to record our notes and I am experimenting a bit with the video way.  Personally I have different methods of note taking or journalling - I sometimes type (I am a trained typist so I can get my thoughts down via keystrokes faster than long hand), writing is also a favourite and I have a few different journals on the go at the moment, recording voice memos is another helpful means for me to record thoughts resulting from conversations, and reflection and as I already mentioned videoing, although this is still relatively new for me.  Of course there are other forms of record keeping of your thoughts, feelings and discoveries like poetry, lyrics, music, sketching, doodling, painting and I could go on but hopefully you get the idea.

When I awoke on Monday morning, the 23rd of January 2017 I had thoughts that I wanted to journal about in my mind, but probably more accurately, I wanted to write a blog article about, so without too much too'ing and fro'ing and no make-up or fuss, I sat down in my recliner and picked up my iPhone and voila.

Next detail was the name of my video and blog post.  I am doing some serious investigating to upscale to a self-hosted blog and considering my branding, marketing, name and audience, just a few thing that need to be factored in before taking the next step.

Ideally, I hope my blog appeals to a wide audience, from young to old because we all have a story and along our journeys we need people around us to encourage us and we learn from other people's experiences.  Ultimately I want to be able to help people along the way and to start off, let me ask you a question.

.....Elephants...Any In Your Room?