Celebrating my Odessa; we've had a wonderful wedding anniversary

How I love you, for trusting that time and God's plan would weave you together with me, hand in hand
How I love you, for waiting the winding moments through, knowing in time I'd be with you
How I love thee, for pushing aside other options, you loved me alone, saw the day of our nuptials
How I love thee, for daring to seize this clergyman's hand, embracing a future precarious, precipitous, others-centered and grand
How I love thee for resonating a joy that's in reach, you happy hurting hearts with your laughter that heals
Your simplicity yet self-belief allow you to spread healing 
On considering other options, you gave alone gave my life meaning
Your kindness and innocence separated you from the crowd
You will to see His face, be a mirror of God
Your life gives a sheer glimpse of joy lightening duty
You do your work with head wit, but heart grace is your story
As a mother you transfer an in-touch picture of God, above yet in reach, He's a God we can hold 
You lighten the lives of those, meeting yours lost in their shadows 
You pour healing oil into their murky mud puddles
You immerse me daily in your radiant, sweet smile, you add luster to my life through the madness of life's miles
You simplify me in my sophistication, ease my frustration
Run me playfully through our house, tickling me till it hurts
You encourage me each moment with your heart that believes 
You trust in our future, you believe God is for me 
Your passion to live true to His change in you is infectious
As others follow, they'll glow as they relish His radiance
A life, aglow and alive, you luminesce His love
Your hearty, rich life is a gift from above.

Un-Complicate through contentment to seize the season

Christmas time is a period of paradoxes. What we thought would happen didn't; what did happen surprised us. God made Christmas a time to reorient us and reaffirm His way, where we live with the needs of other as focal, not our own. It's humorous that many times the costliest gift brings the least pleasure; the most fun toy gets ditched for its packing box; we get greater joy from giving to others than from receiving the very things we relished. I believe God meant Christmas to be a time of contrasts. This time makes us understand what God deems important. In short, Christmas is meant to simplify our lives. By year end, we tend to become more demanding and more complicated. You may notice that with each passing Christmas, things go more and more not the way we planned. God's great concern is that we live our moments with preparation but with simplicity. Because He knows how prone we are to pride and over-sophistication; He ensures things don't go our way again and again to keep us filled with child-like glee and grace over his surprises, wholly content with a life of trust in Him. It's amazing how better we're able to relate with others and rain happiness  into their lives by choosing the causeway of ongoing transparency and simple beauty. God appeared a Babe, a lesson in contrast. A Babe, a little boy-talk about burnt expectations. Through the Babe, the One depending on a 13 year old for His very livelihood, we gain a pixilated picture of the life God intends for us. We need never grow out of walking with God for our existence, joy, fulfillment, and our needs. The moment we start holding our own is when God moves to empty our life fridge, forcing us to trust Him implicitly to provide our need. Un-complicate is God's call; allow the disappointments and surprises of this season to place you in the fetal position, dependent on God, alive only through total trust in Him.

The designated gift wrapper and Gift who made all the difference

In every family, there is one special agent who has the title "designated gift wrapper." In my family, I've achieved this rank through no merit of my own but by God's grace. Seriously, if my wife could she'd buy gift cards only as presents and make me wrap my own, pysch?! An earnest look above through the mirror of The Book displays heaven's designed wrapper Christ, coming wrapped a Babe. He came to experience humanity in its gain and pain. Yes, He came to bear the mockery and reproach of false friends, to shoulder the load of human failure-past, present, and future; but in His heart He had to experience life first as a helpless, blissful baby. Christ was the only designated wrapper and Gift (don't try this at home) worthy to die in our stead and give life eternal. He came on His own-a Baby-knowing apart from His Gift man would stand bare and broken before God. His Gift was accepted by the Father so that our trust in Him, the only worthy Gift, would guarantee our acceptance into a living, transforming relationship with God, let it begin, let it begin... Take time today and tomorrow to thank Him for trading the red carpet treatment of heaven for life as a fugitive for most of His earthly pilgrimage. His miracles may have made for fleeting rock-star status with the masses; but with the "well-churched"  Pharisees He was still enemy One. His time as a baby turned quickly to  the blood, sweat, and tears of forming followers as He  poured Himself into His chosen twelve. His status marginalized Him from the masses, prodding Him to prayerfully minister to His heartbeat, Israel, you, and me in solitary retreat. He contemplated Calvary more than ever as His status made for more alone time with His Father. He truly experienced life in  its highs and lows. He came a willing Gift but experienced life its full fury to rescue a sinner like me. Now, knowing our pain He remains the Gift that keeps giving, empathy-infused and focused on filling our needs. I trust you'll either begin a relationship with Him or continue to know the encouragement which follows our knowing He knows our pain,  lived it, and is capable to carry us merrily to Glory on eagle's wings. Merry Christmas, my glass is raised to your having a dream-drenched, prayer-bolstered new year. 

Winning World War Me starts with me and continues only through the support of others

Life is designed to help us lose confidence in our power to live it on our own. At the saddle of our lives is Christ's rightful place, where He leads and moves us into the more He has for us. At Massah and Meribah, God allowed the parched throats of the children of Israel to help move them past their quarreling unbelief into quiet confidence in His care. Later, when fronted by the children of Amalek; they would come to terms with their primary struggle in life, overcoming their own sinful flesh, a lesson pictured in the battle which ensued.
It turned out that whenever Moses raised his hands, Israel was winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, Amalek was winning. Exodus 17:11 (The Message) 
We're powerless to win World War Me, without our hands and hearts raised to God in prayer, heart expectation that God will move to meet our needs. Israel pummeled Amalek when Moses' hands were raised to God in trust. Interestingly, Moses was unable to keep His arms raised to heaven for help by himself. He needed the support of those near him, because prayer is not mere preparation for the battle, it is where the battle is won. Winning World War You begins with our prayerful trust in God's power but continues only with the prayerful support of others woven into our journey as our trust wanes weekly. Scripture teaches that our daily victory is a team effort, we need others believing God with us for what God alone can do. How imperative it is then that we live with hand and heart raised to God, believing Him for grace to live above our sinful inclinations. But of greater importance is our need to surround ourselves weekly with a core of Christ followers, who rally  us to remain confident in God's power to live the daily victory in His plan for us.

It's all in your perspective

The challenge of living oft times is keeping the right perspective; as perspective is ultra-important to a painter, it is essential as we seek to live life in the equilibrium God's ever-present Spirit provides. Israel's journey into freedom from Eqyptian captivity was nothing short of a roller coaster ride as is our lives. Leaving Egypt, Egypt knew exhilaration as they left with much loot; their new iPads, Kindles, and XBoxes reminded them God cared enough to provide their needs and wants. But without warning, in the shadows were 600 of Pharoah's elite warriors huffing and puffing and ready to return Israel to slave labor. Quick to complain, they decried Moses for robbing them a better burial place, saying Egypt had enough fair-sized cemeteries. Why did he have to play with their emotions, giving them false hope of freedom as two million strong they neared the moving waters of the Red Sea. Their move from renewed faith  to primal fear was spawned by their failure to remember the One behind the different seasons of their  lives. God would mercifully move them beyond the boundary of the Red Sea, burying Pharoah's faithful behind them. Again, they knew exhilaration; but a lesson unlearned is a lesson to be relearned. Soon they neared Marah and felt the parched dry of life in the wilderness. When they reached for water they found it bitter. In God's plan they experienced the flip side of exhilaration-exhaustion. Marah waters were bitter; soon the thirsty turned angry, blaming Moses, the religious way to blame God. At Marah, they'd learn a timely lesson, for the stream that was bitter was made better by a tree, when the tree was placed into it. Calvary's tree is where we find renewal, for there our perspective is enlightened and we view life for what it is a beautiful roller coaster ride with highs and lows designed to make us a people of Spirit-infused equilibrium. God is behind your journey. With this perspective even your failings will make sense as you feel what they've made you. I hope this encounter with God takes you from wandering and worry to wistful trust in a God, who hand-crafted your destiny before you were a thought. To make you all you can be, He has to invade your life with blessings and burdens to better you. Know that Marah is just part of the dessert road to Elim. After Marah's lesson, Israel would know rest and renewal at Elim where water was bountiful and jacuzzis plenty. Bear your Marah today; find glee as you ride life's roller coaster, through exhilaration, exhaustion, and all in between. God is at the engine of our life, engineering you through your experiences. Your perspective of your life means everything; it'll determine your disposition through plenty, through pain. 
And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. Romans 8:28 NLT