I live in West Tennessee with my husband of nearly 30 years and our two boys, ages 20 and 17. My loves are education, specifically Christian education, and writing. For the past twenty years, I have served as a teacher and also principal. Now, however, I find myself in a new season…a quieter season…a difficult season. What I have done full throttle for the past two decades, I am no longer doing. As I adapt to this adjustment and seek the path God is clearing for me, I find myself waiting upon the Lord with my ears attentive, my heart receptive, and my pen accessible. While the words He speaks to me are salve for my soul, I know God’s healing messages are beneficial to others, too; our God is quite the Multi-Tasker!
And so, I have decided to share these lessons with you…the unknown, God-seeking believer who may also be straining to hear God’s still small voice. Perhaps you will learn along with me; perhaps He will make both of our paths straight…and wide, and well-marked, and absolutely unmistakable! (I need the, “You can’t miss it,” directions which, on second thought, are the ones I usually miss. So, Lord, can You program me with Your Holy Spirit GPS, too? There may be some recalculating, but I will follow!)
Since I am in the Profile section, let me add these personal clues to the mix so that you may have a better understanding of who I am:
- married at 20…been married for 30 years; you do the math to determine my age
- born a sinner, growing as a saint because of redemption and through grace, assembling with fellow believers through the local church, awaiting my last breath or Christ’s return (whichever comes first) that I may finally be at rest because I am finally at home!
- enjoy reading, yard work, cooking, collecting and refinishing antiques
- wrestle with the compulsive urge to have things orderly; in the house, in the yard, in the woods, in my neighbor’s yard…why can’t they just prune those shrubs? If I thought I could sneak in under the cover of darkness and just clean up those flower beds, I would. (I would worry about actually admitting this, but since you don’t know who I am, “there is no condemnation”…or personal identification. And, if you do know me because you are my neighbor…I’m not talking about you…it’s the other neighbor…the one who doesn’t know this blog exists.)
- fourth child in a family of five children; neither the oldest, nor the youngest, nor the middle child which means if I am to bear a positional title it would be “the middle child once removed”. I don’t know what birth order characteristics can be attributed to this placement other than the need to create positional titles. On second thought, I guess I could also be labeled “the youngest child once advanced”…that works too.
- verbal…I am very verbal, which also spills out through my fingertips as well as across my speaking lips; be thankful this is written…you can scan my profuse ramblings and not be faced with the conundrum of having to gracefully exit from a conversation I’m having with or without your participation.
I’ll stop with that. I’d like to write more, but you probably checked out after bullet number four. The whole infiltrating the neighbor’s flowerbeds probably left you contemplating my sanity as well as yours if you continue reading this blog.
I do hope you enjoy reading the lessons God is speaking to me. I will do my best to suppress my own voice so that what you hear (or rather read) is what God has spoken to me and not what I have spoken on behalf of God. Big difference…big blunder…more detrimental than, say, going into a neighbor’s yard.