Five Minutes to Midnight!
It's 10:54 am. Probably be later by the time I finish writing this. Thirty (yes, thirty - I was counting) thirty Peppa Pig episodes later, I carry my finally sleeping (yes, I know, Mr. S, OYANers. Adverbs.) Okay, I'll stop interrupting myself cause it's getting annoying.
Thirty Peppa Pig episodes later, I finally carry my sleeping nephew upstairs to his bed and tuck him in, praying desperately under my breath that he will not waken.
Today's not been a good day from start to finish...woke up late, accomplished little and what I did accomplish wasn't what I'd particularly aimed to do.
People I wanted or hoped to talk to, things either went wrong in the conversation or else, as with tonight because of babysitting, I didn't get online until a few moments before my friend went offline - so we were able to exchange goodbyes.
It's also one of those terrible days when I lose words. When I can't really pry deeply into someone's heart or attempt to reach out because words have simply - gone. Mentally, fingerly and otherly. :D
I made a promise to my siblings that with the family problems going on at present, I would be available at any conceivable point possible to babysit their children for them. However, I didn't anticipate New Year's Eve. It's not much, but I like to be on my own and/or pray for people at midnight. And to make New Year...not resolutions, but...prayers to do better, I guess.
My poor sister-in-law wasn't anticipating it either and didn't want to go out. I'm hoping she's having a better evening than she'd planned for.
As a result, I've been rather down all day...something else I didn't anticipate on New Year's Eve. Don't you just hate it when things never go to plan?
You know what?
I'm not going to be depressed. Not about restarting work in two days, not about an irritative skin disease, and not about turning 20 this coming year and those multiple grey hairs that mean - OH NO! - I could prove the fact right and be grey in my thirties (which is ten years away!!! HELP! :D)
Oh! There was something I've been wanting to post for a while about the eczema. :D I have...a rather bad scar on my leg from six months ago. Nothing's healed it up. But when the eczema reached it - oh, God is AMAZING! - it healed a lot of it back together so there's only a faint red line for most of it now! Isn't that great? And here I've been complaining!
Well, I admit, restarting work is not my life's joy...nor is the fact I'm still in danger of losing the job. But God gave me this job, and this year coming I'm really going to try and do my best for Him. Work means I can support my family, reach out to others for the Lord and also (God willing) go back to the USA. :D (And Ireland. I haven't forgotten. :P)
Twenty has to be a scary age. I remember when I turned ten, skipping through the Cumbria Wild Animal Park, teasing my twin brother (cause of the half hour difference) that I was in double figures and he was still in single. I had no idea of all the changes that would turn my life upside down since then.
My parents' marriage began breaking down three years later. I turned suicidal and then God brought me back to Himself in a way that has never left me since. Two years more and I properly joined the online community after registering with the One Year Adventure Novel curriculum and forum. That has been such a tremendous blessing - to my writing and to my life. I would never be where I am now if God had not brought me to them. God bless the Schwabauers! And all of the people who have so richly blessed me and touched my life. Thank you - for being willing to be used of God. For your eager hearts and love and service and constant pursuit of Him. And thank You, Father, for putting that longing within them. Bless and protect those who are no longer in my life and those that are.
I joined the Air Training Corps in that same year - another life changing move. I end my career with them in this coming year. When I joined, I never saw myself staying out the remaining five and a half years of service. And - God willing - I have.
Ten years ago. A happy little kid in a world of church (and church politics. Pastor's daughter is an interesting occupation), homeschool and family. Ten years later. Moved homes, broken family, broken person, work, traveller, dreaming big dreams, and...brought closer to God in a way I never could have been if I'd stayed where I was.
Yeah...looking at the bigger picture. And to look at the smaller one, George (my nephew) turned into a happy baby as soon as his Mom had left (thank God! I don't think I could've coped with the screaming!) and we spent a happy time laughing and cuddling until he dropped to sleep in my arms.
I'm alone on New Year's after all. As it's approaching 11:30 as I start to wind up, I can begin to pray for those I love and those that are alone (unhappily so) as they enter 2012. Those starved and hungry for love and kindness. Those who are abused and beaten. Those who are so terribly, terribly alone.
God is good. Even in the darkness, there are mercies on Heaven's track to be found. As Michael Card says, "The windy winter wilderness can blow the self away." And, "We search for the beginning, for an exodus to Home; we find that those who follow Him must often walk alone."
Don't flee the trials. Look for God's Hand in them.
Something else I want to mention as I wind up. Often I feel like I'm writing my blog all about me, and I don't want to do that.
But I'm not good at providing Spiritual expositories like Jay or C'rissie or Rebeka, nor at providing food for thought and intellectual stuff like Daniel or Kyle.
I know God's letting me go through stuff though, and things that like that I found bless others. That's what I want to share.
I might seem big headed and proud and arrogant and know-it-all and I know my family thinks me so (and so do I) but I honestly don't want to appear like that. I want my posts to show God shining through my life.
I post the odd one or two funny posts or "reposts", but the majority is shared stuff from my life.
So if you don't see that in my posts or my blog, and you see me glorifying me and not shining the glory to God, or you find God-honouring material lacking, please point it out. I'd rather close my blog down than be producing a gossip network or a self-promoting agency.
It's 11:40. Not quite "one minute to midnight", but not far to go. :)
Father, I place into Your Hands my past, present and future. You Who know what a fallen, sinful, self-centred human creature is capable of, reach into my life and change and transform me for You. I give You myself - break me, purify me, do with me as You will. I give You my life, my future, my family, my work, my home, my friends, my love, my passions, my dreams, my uncertainties, my worries, my electronical equipment, my sins. May my music, my writing, my every day activities, glorify You and You alone. Teach me where to go!
Touch the lives of those I love. My family. My friends. Bring healing and restoration, gentleness and passion, correction and Love. Show them Your Way incontestably. Let not Your Truth be seen as the opinion of men, as legalism and as nonsensical law, but let Your Truth be Your Truth and those Truths not shown in Scripture but applied individually to our lives as You lead us be shown and shone forth in magnificence.
I pray for the leaders of both church and state in the coming year, that You will reach down, touch and break hearts, mold and make governments and leaders as will most glorify Your Name and purify Your church - bringing Christian liberties back across the land, or bringing persecution - whichever, Father, will drive us into Your arms as Your people. Only give us grace to endure.
I pray You will banish hatred and evil from my life and give me grace to love.
I pray that You will bring Yourself very near into the lives of my family and friends this year. That You will touch and pour Yourself into them with the intense passion that only You can give.
Father God, this is just the beginning of my prayer. You said that anything we asked in Your Name would be granted to us for the sake of the Name of Your Son, Jesus Christ. As I pray that You will guide my prayers tonight, and the prayers of those praying in the New Year across this tiny wonder of a globe, the speck of dust that is so large and so beloved of You, as I pray that Your Holy Spirit would plead before You in words that are mightier than those poor ones that we form, oh Father, hear our prayers. Hear my prayer. Use me. Use them. For Your glory alone. Now and ever.
God bless you - yes, you, you individual special person reading this right now who feels that these words cannot possibly apply to you. God loves YOU. No matter what you've been, where you've been and what you've done. He forgives. Oh, I _know_ He forgives.
God bless YOU. Lean on Him. Turn to Him. Trust in Him.
In Christ,
Now and always,
Mademoiselle Siân Garner-Jones
Thirty Peppa Pig episodes later, I finally carry my sleeping nephew upstairs to his bed and tuck him in, praying desperately under my breath that he will not waken.
Today's not been a good day from start to finish...woke up late, accomplished little and what I did accomplish wasn't what I'd particularly aimed to do.
People I wanted or hoped to talk to, things either went wrong in the conversation or else, as with tonight because of babysitting, I didn't get online until a few moments before my friend went offline - so we were able to exchange goodbyes.
It's also one of those terrible days when I lose words. When I can't really pry deeply into someone's heart or attempt to reach out because words have simply - gone. Mentally, fingerly and otherly. :D
I made a promise to my siblings that with the family problems going on at present, I would be available at any conceivable point possible to babysit their children for them. However, I didn't anticipate New Year's Eve. It's not much, but I like to be on my own and/or pray for people at midnight. And to make New Year...not resolutions, but...prayers to do better, I guess.
My poor sister-in-law wasn't anticipating it either and didn't want to go out. I'm hoping she's having a better evening than she'd planned for.
As a result, I've been rather down all day...something else I didn't anticipate on New Year's Eve. Don't you just hate it when things never go to plan?
You know what?
I'm not going to be depressed. Not about restarting work in two days, not about an irritative skin disease, and not about turning 20 this coming year and those multiple grey hairs that mean - OH NO! - I could prove the fact right and be grey in my thirties (which is ten years away!!! HELP! :D)
Oh! There was something I've been wanting to post for a while about the eczema. :D I have...a rather bad scar on my leg from six months ago. Nothing's healed it up. But when the eczema reached it - oh, God is AMAZING! - it healed a lot of it back together so there's only a faint red line for most of it now! Isn't that great? And here I've been complaining!
Well, I admit, restarting work is not my life's joy...nor is the fact I'm still in danger of losing the job. But God gave me this job, and this year coming I'm really going to try and do my best for Him. Work means I can support my family, reach out to others for the Lord and also (God willing) go back to the USA. :D (And Ireland. I haven't forgotten. :P)
Twenty has to be a scary age. I remember when I turned ten, skipping through the Cumbria Wild Animal Park, teasing my twin brother (cause of the half hour difference) that I was in double figures and he was still in single. I had no idea of all the changes that would turn my life upside down since then.
My parents' marriage began breaking down three years later. I turned suicidal and then God brought me back to Himself in a way that has never left me since. Two years more and I properly joined the online community after registering with the One Year Adventure Novel curriculum and forum. That has been such a tremendous blessing - to my writing and to my life. I would never be where I am now if God had not brought me to them. God bless the Schwabauers! And all of the people who have so richly blessed me and touched my life. Thank you - for being willing to be used of God. For your eager hearts and love and service and constant pursuit of Him. And thank You, Father, for putting that longing within them. Bless and protect those who are no longer in my life and those that are.
I joined the Air Training Corps in that same year - another life changing move. I end my career with them in this coming year. When I joined, I never saw myself staying out the remaining five and a half years of service. And - God willing - I have.
Ten years ago. A happy little kid in a world of church (and church politics. Pastor's daughter is an interesting occupation), homeschool and family. Ten years later. Moved homes, broken family, broken person, work, traveller, dreaming big dreams, and...brought closer to God in a way I never could have been if I'd stayed where I was.
Yeah...looking at the bigger picture. And to look at the smaller one, George (my nephew) turned into a happy baby as soon as his Mom had left (thank God! I don't think I could've coped with the screaming!) and we spent a happy time laughing and cuddling until he dropped to sleep in my arms.
I'm alone on New Year's after all. As it's approaching 11:30 as I start to wind up, I can begin to pray for those I love and those that are alone (unhappily so) as they enter 2012. Those starved and hungry for love and kindness. Those who are abused and beaten. Those who are so terribly, terribly alone.
God is good. Even in the darkness, there are mercies on Heaven's track to be found. As Michael Card says, "The windy winter wilderness can blow the self away." And, "We search for the beginning, for an exodus to Home; we find that those who follow Him must often walk alone."
Don't flee the trials. Look for God's Hand in them.
Something else I want to mention as I wind up. Often I feel like I'm writing my blog all about me, and I don't want to do that.
But I'm not good at providing Spiritual expositories like Jay or C'rissie or Rebeka, nor at providing food for thought and intellectual stuff like Daniel or Kyle.
I know God's letting me go through stuff though, and things that like that I found bless others. That's what I want to share.
I might seem big headed and proud and arrogant and know-it-all and I know my family thinks me so (and so do I) but I honestly don't want to appear like that. I want my posts to show God shining through my life.
I post the odd one or two funny posts or "reposts", but the majority is shared stuff from my life.
So if you don't see that in my posts or my blog, and you see me glorifying me and not shining the glory to God, or you find God-honouring material lacking, please point it out. I'd rather close my blog down than be producing a gossip network or a self-promoting agency.
It's 11:40. Not quite "one minute to midnight", but not far to go. :)
Father, I place into Your Hands my past, present and future. You Who know what a fallen, sinful, self-centred human creature is capable of, reach into my life and change and transform me for You. I give You myself - break me, purify me, do with me as You will. I give You my life, my future, my family, my work, my home, my friends, my love, my passions, my dreams, my uncertainties, my worries, my electronical equipment, my sins. May my music, my writing, my every day activities, glorify You and You alone. Teach me where to go!
Touch the lives of those I love. My family. My friends. Bring healing and restoration, gentleness and passion, correction and Love. Show them Your Way incontestably. Let not Your Truth be seen as the opinion of men, as legalism and as nonsensical law, but let Your Truth be Your Truth and those Truths not shown in Scripture but applied individually to our lives as You lead us be shown and shone forth in magnificence.
I pray for the leaders of both church and state in the coming year, that You will reach down, touch and break hearts, mold and make governments and leaders as will most glorify Your Name and purify Your church - bringing Christian liberties back across the land, or bringing persecution - whichever, Father, will drive us into Your arms as Your people. Only give us grace to endure.
I pray You will banish hatred and evil from my life and give me grace to love.
I pray that You will bring Yourself very near into the lives of my family and friends this year. That You will touch and pour Yourself into them with the intense passion that only You can give.
Father God, this is just the beginning of my prayer. You said that anything we asked in Your Name would be granted to us for the sake of the Name of Your Son, Jesus Christ. As I pray that You will guide my prayers tonight, and the prayers of those praying in the New Year across this tiny wonder of a globe, the speck of dust that is so large and so beloved of You, as I pray that Your Holy Spirit would plead before You in words that are mightier than those poor ones that we form, oh Father, hear our prayers. Hear my prayer. Use me. Use them. For Your glory alone. Now and ever.
God bless you - yes, you, you individual special person reading this right now who feels that these words cannot possibly apply to you. God loves YOU. No matter what you've been, where you've been and what you've done. He forgives. Oh, I _know_ He forgives.
God bless YOU. Lean on Him. Turn to Him. Trust in Him.
In Christ,
Now and always,
Mademoiselle Siân Garner-Jones
Thank you for that, Jane. Thank you SO much. I've been struggling a lot and that has... encouraged me. A great deal. Thank you for being a dear friend and OYAN sister. I love you. <3
ReplyDelete