I have mentioned a few different times being very hurt by a group of friends where I used to live.  I felt rejected and left out many times.  I was very hurt by some of their actions and their lack of inviting me at times.  I had a lot of hurt from this town and from this group of people.  It did open my eyes to what many of my students will often experience when they are in both middle and high school.   I understand what it is like when a friend just doesn’t want to be your friend anymore or at least not as close as you had been. 

I didn’t talk to them for months.  Maybe, if anything, the briefest of text message conversations.  I just stopped having the conversations for a while.  I didn’t want to keep putting myself out there to be hurt once again.  I didn’t try to do anything drastic though.  I didn’t post anything bad on social media or send messages that would allude to my hurt feelings.  

Then I received a donation for my big Dressember fundraiser by a friend from this group. I was very grateful for this donation.  She as a friend has given every year, but I didn’t know if she would with the relationship being very different than it once was.  I did gratefully start a texting conversation and sent a small Christmas gift and card to her in my complete gratitude. 

Another friend in the group reached out to see about wedding planning.  She is also planning a wedding and so it can make it very fun to text her and see how her initial planning is going as well. She wanted to get together. We were able to get coffee and spend a long time talking to one another and getting to talk about our wedding planning and our ideas.  I love getting the chance to talk about wedding stuff with someone else who is also doing the same thing.  I’m glad we were able to see each other and bounce off ideas.  Maybe we will get together one more time before all the wedding craziness. 

The point of this journey is that those friends extended an olive branch.  I don’t know if they knew how hurt I was, but they had to know I wasn’t reaching out near as much as I had been before.  I wasn’t sending cards.  I wasn’t texting and asking to get together. They reached out to keep the relationship alive, and I am very grateful and appreciative of this fact. 

I want to highlight Ephesians 4:32 which says, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”  I love this verse because it does highlight the main point of this blog post which is to forgive one another.  However, it also shows that forgiveness is multi-faceted with being kind to one another and being tenderhearted.  Sometimes it does take more than just a simple, “I forgive you,” but an actual trying to rebuild what was once there.

I am not going to say that these particular friendships are going to be the same as it was before.  To start, I am in a whole different city now, so it wouldn’t be the same regardless of whether or not I genuinely wanted it to be the same.  I also don’t know if I trust them as completely as I did before.  However, I can still be someone they can come to, and I can spend some time with them throughout the year.  I can also, of course, make sure to send them either a card or at least a text with a “Happy Birthday,” or “Happy Anniversary,” or “Congratulations.”  

I am nervous about having a challenge for this week.  If I gave any type of challenge, it would be to think about some of the relationships in your life.  Are there any people reaching out to you and hoping to extend an olive branch?  If they would, would you be able to accept this olive branch?  Are there any people who you want to extend the olive branch to?  Is there any way you can offer forgiveness to anyone in your life?  My main challenge would be to spend time in prayer about these relationships and situations. 

It is important to have boundaries with those who have really hurt you to not put you into risk to constantly be taken advantage of.  There has to be a balance between putting oneself at risk for constant hurt and yet still being able to forgive those who have hurt you just as Christ has always forgiven us.  Relationships can be hard but learning to take those olive branches when they are there or to offer them when there is an opportunity can really help build the relationships and the love of the world.

I have been watching a lot of bridal drama recently.  (It is a guilty pleasure. Maybe it’s not the best but it is entertaining).  One video has gotten really popular on social media, and I do believe it can teach us a very big life lesson. 

The video is of a bride, who decided to wipe off all her bridal makeup her makeup artist just completed.  Now, this could just be seen as a loss of money.  She didn’t like it, so she got rid of it, even though she already paid the makeup artist. This was her decision at the end of the day. However, the main problem was she didn’t vocalize anything or any problems when she was in the makeup artist’s chair, and then she makes this video discussing her frustration with the look of her makeup.  Her makeup artist is also tagged or mentioned, so essentially this puts the bride’s makeup artist and her small business in jeopardy. One comment this bride made during the video was “Oh, I can’t wait to make a TikTok about this.”  I do believe this was a bit immature and unkind to do.  

While I do have a problem with this bride being this cruel to her makeup artist, I do believe her issue was more than just being immature.  Her problem was her bridesmaids and friends hyping her up. We could hear them in the background. She was being told by the bridesmaids that she should definitely do her own makeup and she does a better job than the makeup artist would.  They were hyping her up to do the wrong thing as opposed to the right and kind thing. 

I understand weddings can be stressful, so this bride may have just been in an anxious state. She might have heard someone say they didn’t love her makeup and therefore felt as though she really needed to redo her makeup all over.  Again, there is no problem if she really did want to waste her money and end up redoing her makeup for her wedding day.  The problem really was her deciding to put all that drama and information about the makeup artist on her social media for anyone to see and hear.  This was only going to be hurting the make-up artist feelings and possibly career.  

What this bride needed was someone to tell her “no, stop.  You can redo your makeup, but since you didn’t speak up and state your problems with the makeup artists, you don’t need to make a TikTok about this situation.  You do not need to be this mean or malicious.  I understand it is your wedding day, but you need to still be thinking about other people.  Let’s redo the makeup quickly if that is what you want, but then we have to get on with the rest of our day.” This is a type of response from friends who are reasonable and who hold you accountable.

The Bible talks a lot about the importance of friendships and how it is important to be wise and loving with your friends.  One verse I really want to highlight is 1 Corinthians 15:33 which says, “Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.” This is a reminder that we need to always be conscious of the decisions we are making or the people we have around us.  They really can impact the decisions we make for the better or for the worse.  

 I am not saying you can’t have some people around you who are supportive. Having “no people” does not necessarily mean they are not supportive, but it is important to have supportive friends who will also make sure you don’t do something terrible or are acting not in the way you usually do.  It is important to have friends, partners, or really any kind of relationship with people who will hold you accountable and want you to be the best person you can possibly be.  This is the kind of friends you should want.   

My challenge for you this week is to spend time thinking about your friendships and the people you have around yourself.  Are you easily persuaded?  Are you around those who could easily persuade you to do the wrong thing? If you are finding your friends are majorly “yes, people,”  It can be a good idea to rethink some of your friendship dynamics for a few more friends who will give you solid advice.  

I also think it is just as important to be the friend who holds other people accountable.  It is important to make sure we are supportive friends, friends who are there for others, but friends who also can tell their friends when they are being ridiculous or are making a wrong choice.  It is good to be the friend who can give good, loving, and Godly advice.  This is the type of friend God wants us to be.  My other challenge for you this week is to be reflective over whether or not you are this type of friend.  Are you the type of friend who will give Godly advice? Are you the type of friend who will tell your other friend to stop when they are making the wrong choice?  Are you willing to say the thing that your friend needs to hear, not just want to hear.   

This will be something I need to work on as well.  I believe I can sometimes be a Godly friend, but I also don’t love conflict or offending others.  I can be fearful, but if my friends know me and love me, they should know I am giving them Godly advice because I care about them and want to hold them accountable.  This is the same thing you should think about if this idea is something you are not quite used to. 

I am continuing to read and study the book of Esther.  To give the whole recap of the book of Esther: This book starts with a king of Persia who is having a banquet and wants his wife to show off her beauty to his friends and workers.  She refuses, and this greatly angers the king.  To handle this situation, he chooses to have a competition to find a new queen.  Esther ends up winning this competition and becoming queen.  Then her cousin and guardian, Mordecai hears of a terrible plot created by Haman, the King’s assistant, to murder all of the Jews.  

The whole book is incredibly interesting, but chapter 5 is when things really start heating up.  In the beginning chapters, the main assistant of the king, Haman,  has just requested to kill off all of the Jews in Persia.  The king agreed.  This made Haman incredibly happy.  He was in one of the highest positions in the kingdom.  Then unbeknownst to him as to why, he was invited by Queen Esther, to go to a banquet where it was only him and the king.  Now, he is even more happy because he got to go to a banquet with the two highest individuals in the kingdom.  Haman is described in the Bible at this time as: “That day Haman left full of joy and in good spirits.” (Esther 5:9)

However, there will be something that will soon change his mood.  You may rightly assume this would be a death in the family or someone trying to attack him and rob him.  This type of traumatic event would rightly change the mood of anyone.  However, these examples are not what changed Haman’s mood.  What changed Haman’s mood was Mordecai standing in the street.  Mordecai refused to bow and to praise Haman in the city streets.  After this event, Haman was very upset.  He was angry and then instantly had to go to his wife and friends to complain.  He even says this after bragging about all his accolades, “Still, none of this satisfies me since I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the King’s Gate all the time.”  (Esther 5:13)

This is wild.  Haman just had the best day, and yet he was so upset because someone didn’t want to bow down to him.  It is hard to imagine going from such a high to such a low over something so trivial, yet maybe this is something that can easily happen in our lives on a regular basis.  I am going to be completely honest when I say I can easily fluctuate in my feelings and my emotions.  I overall try to be kind and happy on a regular basis throughout the day.  However, there are times when I do become easily frustrated.  I can be in a great mood and I am very happy with all my blessings and a lot of things going well, and then something can go wrong, like I make a mistake, or I have to spend more time on something I hadn’t originally planned and then I am in a bad mood. 

I don’t know how many of us can often forget all of the blessings we each personally have been given.  I don’t know each of your personal blessings, but I know I can say which blessings I have been given and need to make sure I am incredibly grateful for each day.  For example, I have an apartment to live in, food to each and every day, a job I love and enjoy, and family and friends who love me and I love them.  I have been incredibly blessed.  That even when something does not go the way I wished it would, I can still be grateful for what I do have.  This can even be with my car.  I have a car, and it is incredibly helpful for all the different tasks I need to complete in a day, especially within my job and going to visit others.  However, my car often does have low tire pressure in the winter.  I know this is pretty common, but I have to take my car to get tires filled a couple of times a week.  I can easily become frustrated, and while it is an annoyance, I also know I need to be aware of my blessings of even having a vehicle. 

I do always want to remind people to constantly count your blessings.  It is important to daily thank God for your blessings.  Otherwise, we can easily forget them when there is something that does go wrong or we don’t have something we really want.  Psalm 118 verses 1 through 4 says, “Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever! Let Israel say,“His steadfast love endures forever.” Let the house of Aaron say, “His steadfast love endures forever.”Let those who fear the Lord say, “His steadfast love endures forever.”

The challenge for this week is to spend a little bit of time to reflect and pray over your blessings.  This could be anything small or anything big that you often can forget about, but it is something to remember when something starts to go wrong.  Besides my car example, I often need to be very grateful for my job. I absolutely love my job and all that I get to do in the Waterloo community.  Sometimes I may get frustrated by the little things that go wrong, but I need to remember how blessed I am in my job before I really get frustrated.  I hope you have a good week to think about your biggest blessings.

I have recently started studying the book of Esther in a Bible Study.  I love the book of Esther a lot.  It has always been one of my favorites, if not my absolute favorite, book of the Bible.  I have loved the story of bravery in a young girl.  She showed strength and courage, when most people in her position would not dare to.  

Something notable about the book of Esther is there is no mention of God anywhere.  He is not mentioned and seems to not necessarily be in constant contact with his people.  Esther and her cousin Mordecai are living in the country Persia, which is not where God’s people were in control.  It could be assumed, possibly, that Mordecai and Esther, through their Jewish faith, were talking and praying to God, but we never actually read about it in the book. 

However, we see many times that God had complete control over the situation.  He was controlling the small things, the things we don’t necessarily always think about.  For example, God was in control of the King picking Esther to be his wife and to like her the most out of all the other young women he was shown.  God is the one who chose Esther to be the most favorite and to be the most desired.  He also chose her to have Mordecai who would take care of her, and was often around to hear about the big things happening in the city, so he could best warn Esther.  He happened to be around at the best moments, which definitely meant good for both himself, Esther, and all the Jewish people. 

One other thing I enjoyed about re-reading and re-studying the book of Esther is realizing that if we choose not to partake in something God had planned for us, then God will find another way to complete this part of His story.  Sometimes we as people can believe God needs us.  He can’t complete a certain job without us and our saying yes to certain actions.  It can feel nice as people to feel needed, but this gives us, as humans way too much credit.  

One piece of advice I most appreciated that Mordecai gave to Esther was when he told her that if she was not the one who decides to save God’s people, God will find a different way to save them.  This is said in Esther 4: 14. The text reads, “If you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will come from another place, but you and your family will be destroyed.  Who knows, perhaps you have come to your position for such a time as this.”  I love this verse because it is a good reminder God can use anyone at any time.  He chooses us, and we can either choose to rise to the occasion, or he will make a new path.  God is completely in control.  He doesn’t need to use us, but he chooses us. 

I know I am a person who can sometimes forget God has complete control.  I will often struggle to believe in him completely.  I want to be the one in control of my destiny and of the things happening in my life.   I know I personally have a few bigger events in the near future where I can already feel the stress of control is starting to take over.  For example, this year, I am getting married and moving with my husband to our new house.  Besides this major life event, I also need to finish getting my teacher license renewed within this next year.  I need to make sure I am staying on top of everything with my job and working, my volunteering, mentoring, etc.  There is a lot I want to have control over, but I also know I need to take a step back. 

The challenge for this week is to think of times when you as a person have not believed in God’s complete sovereignty and have tried to take control, when it was not yours to take control over.  What are the things you tend to really stress over because you can’t seem to allow God to do His work? After you decide which things are easy for you to want to control, spend some time in prayer asking for God’s sovereignty to be more known to you.  This way you may be more aware of his control and his love for you.  God has a plan.  He wants us all to have a positive part of his plan, but he doesn’t need us in order to fulfill it.  

I have recently finished studying a Bible devotional book about Malachi.  I have enjoyed doing this devotional book because I didn’t know a lot about the book of Malachi before I started reading and studying this book.  I also love the connections to the world we live in today.  Old Testament books can often be looked at as old fashioned and way too irrelevant for today and therefore don’t provide much input to how we should act in our day to day life.  However, many times when a person really takes the time to read and understand the many interactions the people have with God in the Old Testament, it does provide a lot of insight into how we should be acting.  

This book really discusses the Israelites and their sometimes fickle relationship with the Lord.  They don’t always follow the Word and the laws of the Lord.  In the book, we really see how the priests didn’t follow their particular God-given expectations. This showcases that leaders are such an important piece of the religious organizations, and this is because the religious leaders really impact all of their followers.  God gives them these expectations and parameters for a very good reason.   

One of the questions we were asked throughout the study was “How do you help religious leaders and encourage them?”  This was a good question and this question is one I need to be reflective over.  I don’t know if I always spend time thinking about my religious leaders and how I can be an encouragement to them.  I often think about a few different things I am grateful for when it comes to my religious leaders, but I don’t always take the time to let my religious leaders know my gratitude. I also don’t take a lot of time to think of how the pastors or the religious leaders think or are feeling, and if they even need any encouragement. 

I do often find I am more concerned about what the leaders can do for me.  I think about how the leaders can pray for me, or ask me about any problems or concerns  I may have.  I think about how interesting I want the services to be at church, or how great I want Bible study to run for the week.  It is all about, I want, I want, and I want.  I want to learn a lot from my sermon and from the lessons the pastor brings to me.  However, I want it to also be in a fairly timely manner, so I don’t have to get out too late from church. 

I also can often believe that pastors should be immovable or not hurt by anything.  I believe they are indestructible, and they never experience hurt.  Sometimes it can be very hard to think about pastors being human.  I think this way too often about some of the pastors I see on a regular basis or my Bible Study leaders.  I imagine this is a lot of pressure for them, because ultimately they are human.  

I really want to highlight Acts 20: 28-31 which says, 

“Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears.” 

I love this verse because it is a reminder that there will be leaders who will be tempted with a variety of problems or issues.  This will slowly start to take away the leaders who will then impact the other disciples in the group.  This is why it is so vital to be an encouragement to your church leaders, so they can continue to fight off these emotional attacks.

The challenge for this week is to spend time encouraging a Christian leader you know in your life.  This could be a coworker or a boss.  This could be a Bible study leader or even your pastor.  This could be a friend you have personally, who you know is really taking a lot of time being a Christian leader amongst their own circles.  There is a large array of leaders you may have in life who could be someone you could encourage.  

I know one person I really want to encourage is named Jean.   She is in charge of the children’s ministry at Trinity where I go to church.  I want to encourage her because I believe she does a great job with the kids and working well with all the volunteers.  I also am always impressed about how little stress she has when there are big problems that may arise.  I am always happy I can be helpful and a volunteer for her.   

This past year has been very exciting, and I have a lot of exciting things in my life.  While 2023 was a year of a lot of change from moving to getting a new job, 2024 was the year of new experiences.  There were many things I hadn’t gotten to do before, and I am very grateful I have had these opportunities. 

One of the big things of this year, of course, was getting to meet Cole, my now fiancé.   I got to meet him in the spring, after a while of talking and texting on the phone.  It has been very good to learn more and more about him and seeing our relationship grow.  I am glad I was patient and waited for God to put a man in my life who really loves me and wants to grow in his relationship with God. 

Another big thing of this year was getting to do something I have dreamed about for years.  I got to finally complete a week of RAGBRAI.  This is the Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa.  I loved the opportunity to bike across the whole state of Iowa. It was so much fun to go up and down the hills and to spend time camping with my team from Des Moines for the whole week.  

I also had another great year getting to fulfill one whole year at the Job Foundation.  This was really good, and I think I have definitely grown stronger in my job, through learning more about financial literacy to then teach the kids, and through doing a better job of staying up to date on all lessons students need to finish.  I have gotten better about reaching out and working with families.  I have fallen more in love with the job, and I want to find ways to continue to get better. 

There were a few pieces of sadness that happened this past year.  No one year can be perfect, so it is important to realize any hardships one has gone through in the year, and how there are many people who have grown from these experiences.  One such sadness for my family is the loss of Doug, my parent’s neighbor and family friend.  This was very sad to experience.  Doug had been such a big light in our life and he was always so encouraging and helpful to my parents and myself.  He was gracious and funny, and he will truly be missed.  

I do have a few goals for this next year.  I really want to be better about learning more about nonprofits and the different parts of the job at the Job Foundation, so I can be better at helping those in the place where I currently work.  I want to make sure I can be a very versatile employee at the Job Foundation, and this way I can learn more about the business of nonprofits if I do ever have the opportunity to be the executive director at one.  

This next year, I also want to make sure to grow on my patience.  I am going to be getting married, and I am incredibly excited and full of anticipation for this next stage in my life.  However, I want to make sure I don’t lose any patience in preparation or in outside opinions.  I want to make sure I am respectful and kind to everyone who I am working with, even when something is not going exactly as I originally planned.  I also hope that I can do everything to be really good about preparing to be a good and loving wife to my future husband. 

Lastly, I want to make sure I spend time worshiping God.  I am not always as good about spending time in worship.  I spend my daily time with God, and I make sure to pray in the morning.  However, then I can very much be done for the rest of the day.  I then spend the rest of the day more focused on what is going on in my life and doing work related things.  I spend time listening to podcasts that are not Christ centered and I spend time listening to music, not Christ centered.  

One verse I really want to follow next year is John 4:24, which says, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”  This is a good reminder to have the Holy Spirit with us all the time, and to have God’s truth in our hearts consistently.  This way I can better worship God daily and throughout the whole day.  

My challenge for you this week is to spend some time in reflection.  It is important to be able to evaluate the year and see the positives of what one was able to fulfill and complete in that year, with the Lord’s help.  There is still time in this year of 2024available to complete this challenge.  At the beginning of the year can also be a great time to be reflective.  This can help each person feel better about where they are in their personal life. 

I was recently at work, and I did not have a good start to my work day.  I walked in and two of my coworkers were really upset.  From conversations, they believed our boss was upset with them and was letting them know in a mass email to all the employees.  Throughout this, they started to break down an email we had received and what they interpreted out of it.  I heard stories about the one crying the night prior because she had believed it was all about her, while the other was convinced it was all about her.  Then I read the email, and I just thought she was disappointed and angry at all of us.  

This was not a situation where we calmed each other down.  This was purely making each other upset and angrier at the situation.  Eventually another staff member came, and he tried to make sure we didn’t read too much into it.  However, we were just way too overly concerned about it all to be fully talked down at the moment.  

When our boss came, we asked if we could have a staff meeting, so we could talk about a few things to start.  We could talk over all of our questions and concerns, and we could talk about what her full meaning of the email meant.  She was upset because we had been so upset.  She did feel a bit slighted since we had jumped to the conclusion that she was really angry with us and wanted us to change a lot of what we were doing.  She genuinely just wanted to have something in writing for the handbook and she wanted us to be aware of the addition.  It was already the actions we were currently following.  

There are definitely a few things I can take away from this.  First, I shouldn’t just listen to other people and their experiences.  The first thing that happened was I walked into work, and I heard the thoughts from my co-workers about the email and their general reactions to it.  I am not saying that my coworkers are malicious, but it is just that they didn’t have all the information, and they were anxious about the email as well.  Then their misinformation or anxiety affected me and my thought process.

Then the second thing was I got really angry from my anxious thoughts without even getting the chance to hear my boss’s side of the story or her opinions.  It turns out we had all read the email wrong.  She wasn’t upset with us, and she didn’t believe we had done a bad job.  She didn’t think we were bad employees.  She was just adding the practices we were already doing in regard to lunch, our flexibility in our hours, etc. into the handbook officially.  She wanted to make sure this information was in writing as opposed to just being passed down verbally from one person to the next, if we ever have new employees.    

A verse I want to highlight is Proverbs 18: 15 which says, “The heart of the discerning acquires knowledge,for the ears of the wise seek it out.”  This is a reminder that when a heart really wants to make sure to make wise decisions, they will make sure to get all the knowledge available to them.  This can be getting all the perspectives from the world, and this can also be getting all the information from God through reading of the Bible and through prayer.  

Sometimes all the answers won’t be available to us.  We may not be able to ask people questions or get to really understand their intentions.  However, we always have the opportunity to seek advice through prayer and through spending time in the Bible and understanding God and His Word.  There are lots of answers found in the Bible and through spending time in prayer.  There are lots of stories of people who made good decisions and then there are others who made very poor choices and needed to learn a new lesson.  There are also many parables told by Jesus to help his followers learn much more. Prayer is also a great way to seek advice because this is an opportunity to talk to God directly. Then once we are with Christ, we have the Holy Spirit to help us better interpret what Jesus is saying through his Word and Prayers.  

I am so glad I was able to learn this lesson for myself, and that I was able to reflect on this experience and can hopefully take this learning opportunity to grow more in the future.  The challenge for this week is to think through an experience when you have jumped to conclusions and gotten angry or sad even when you shouldn’t.   If there is an opportunity to apologize to someone this may have affected, pursue this action.  I was able to apologize to my boss, and I know she really appreciated it.  Otherwise, make a promise for future situations to not jump to this conclusion.  

I have recently finished a book called, “Permission to Dream,” by Christine Caine.  I love Christine Caine, and all the work she has done with A21, an anti-human trafficking organization.  She also empowers women to be the best Christian leaders they can possibly be through her organization, Propel Women.  She is an inspiring woman to follow, and I highly recommend reading one or all of her books. 

I love the idea of permitting ourselves to dream.  It is great to have dreams and to believe God has great plans for us.  I realized I have had many dreams in the past I have given up on after I have been discouraged.  For one example, I had great dreams of being a professional singer. I was going to study music and singing.  However, I never really continued on with following these dreams after I struggled to get into the Iowa All-state choir.  No matter how much I seemed to practice, I started to have more feeling I would never actually be chosen for this prestigious choir.  I still did sing in choir in college and I have also joined a community choir group in the past few years as an adult, so I have kept my passion of singing alive, but it was never to the extent of where I thought it would be.

Some dreams I have learned to fall back in love with and learned to pursue again.  For example, I dreamed of being a published author when I was a very young child.  These last few years, I have really developed more skills when it comes to writing.  I love writing for this blog and getting to better process all the thoughts I have swirling around my head.  I have also written a small devotional book and had it published.  There are still many things I want to accomplish when it comes to writing, and I dream of writing more books and continuing to be a better writer continuously.   

My favorite part of reading the first chapter was looking at the good metaphor about running our Christian race.  One quote I loved from this book was:

“As we progress in running our race, we naturally go through times of receiving, releasing, multiplying, and growing.  And the whole time, as the Enemy sees us faithfully and consistently moving through these God-ordained times; he knows his territory is threatened.  Therefore, he plots and schemes to thwart us in our run, to trip us up, to stop us in our tracks. For this reason, we must be alert and throw off any weights that would slow us down or give him a weapon to use against us.” (13-14)

I love the alliteration of running a race related to running in our Christian Walk. I love it because it really does show a lot about our Christian journey and how we can grow closer to God through many ups and downs, with the necessary nutrition and conditions, as well as milestones.  

There are many weights we can tend to carry with us.  Besides the fears and doubts we often carry, we can also carry shame.  We can carry around the bad things people have said to us or the shame of bad decisions we have made in the past.  It is important to learn to grow from past mistakes and decisions.  The shame we have will actually hold us back from learning more and growing closer to Christ.  It is important to ask for forgiveness and then accept that forgiveness and then let the shame stay in the past. 

Other weights we carry could be the thoughts of others or the feeling of comparison.  Sometimes when I am running, I can often compare myself to others.  I can feel insecure when I am slower than others.  When I was a cross-country coach this last season, I would often compare myself to the other woman coach who was faster than me.  I would feel insecure and bad about myself for not being able to run as fast or as well.  I also can compare myself when I do better than others.  I can start to become too confident in my abilities when I do have an excellent race, or I am able to run a lot farther than others.  Either way, this feeling of expectations and comparisons is a weight I am caring around while I am running.  I can do the same thing when I am living my Christian life.  I can often compare myself and my Christian journey to others.  However, this only holds me back in how well I am living my Christian life.  We all know the best way to run is to run forward and to look straight ahead, so it should be the same thing to do when running our Christian race. 

One other verse I wanted to highlight from the Bible that speaks of this is Philippians 4:13 and this says, “I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”  This is a very popular verse and for good reason.  However, it is important to remember it is only through God’s plans where we are able to accomplish everything through his strength.  However, at times when we have been given these dreams, we can see God’s plans and advice.   

The challenge for you this week is to spend time reflecting on your dreams for your future.  What are some of the dreams you have given up on?  What are some dreams you still have deep in our hearts that we have been too afraid to go farther in?  What are some of the ways we have stopped pursuing our dreams? Then after reflection, spend some time praying to God for advice on pursuing more dreams in the future.  

I was continuing to read the book, “Permission to Dream,” by Christine Caine.  I have really been enjoying this book and learning about how our dreams can be a part of God’s plan for our lives and how we best reach these dreams. This book goes through the many highs and lows that we can often feel when it comes to unfulfilled or unfinished dreams.  It is easy to want to continue on, but we can eventually get very discouraged.  

One thing Christine reminded me in a recent chapter is how God tends to work little by little.  We can start to follow our dreams and become closer to God little by little.  This is how God works.  One quote I noticed from this chapter was, “Consider just a few other areas of life where we see this principle very clearly.  Little by little, we: Lose weight and gain muscle, get debt-free by discipline and delayed gratification, acquire our education and qualifications, build trust in relationships, and write books.”  (Caine, pg.148). 

I loved thinking about going little by little because I am a person who struggles working little by little.  I have tried to get better about this as I have grown older and wiser, but my tendency is to want to get as much done as quickly as possible.  My grandma would often talk to me about this tendency of mine when she would see me working on projects. I would start a project and seek to accomplish it that day, or possibly the day after.  I didn’t like putting a project away and only worked on it periodically over a stretch of time.  However, as I have gotten older, I have gotten better at working on major projects for a little bit each day, so it could be done with better quality.  

I think we as people can often get discouraged when we are working on things slowly or only little by little. It can be really hard to look at a final project or something we are dreaming about, and it seems far away.  However, there are so many things the Lord has done that do take time, especially when he was working with people.  He didn’t often do a big thing in one day.  For a few examples, there is the falling of the wall of Jericho. The Israelites had to go around, walking, the wall around Jericho for at least a week.  The people were getting up every day and just walking around the wall.  That must have felt monotonous and boring.  It must have been discouraging to just walk around feeling aimless for a few days.  However, just as God promised, the wall came down right after the walking and the blowing of the horn. 

Another good example is the life of Jesus Christ.  Jesus is the Savior of the world and the only way we as people can have a relationship with God.  However, if God wanted things to be quick, he could have just sent Jesus down, saved the world, and then sent him back to heaven.  However, God chose to send Jesus down for at least thirty years.  He was in his thirties when he died on the cross.  He had thirty some years of being born, growing up, leading, and ministering.  It was a really long and extended process.  However, he did it that way, so we as people could really learn a lot from his life.  

Galatians 6:9 brings up great wisdom and this says, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”  This is a good reminder that sometimes things are going to take time and patience. Some things may even make us weary and drained.  However, when this is a part of God’s Will, then there are going to be good things reaped and harvested.  

The challenge for this week is to remember some of the times you like to rush through to get to your dreams quicker.  What is something you have been very impatient about when it comes to chasing your dreams?  What is something you had hoped to have reached a long time before and just have not yet? Then after you identify where those areas of rushing and impatience in your life is, the best choice is to spend time praying for grace and for patience.  We can pursue our dreams in God’s plan little by little.

I just officially finished the cross country season as a coach.  I love being a cross country coach.  I love getting to help young people be stronger runners and stronger people as a whole.  Being a coach at a Christian high school where I was able to read some devotionals and help the students learn how to be better and stronger Christians was also an inspiring and exciting time for me.  I also love getting the chance to run with the students in a small little community. 

To officially end the season, we had our fall sports banquet to honor our athletes from the season.  We as coaches had the opportunity to pick three awards for both the boys and girls from the team who are awarded in the following categories: Leadership, Most Valuable Player, and Most Improved. The plaques have the students name and they get the chance to be recognized in front of their peers. 

I did have a realization while I was hearing the students be honored.  I think it can be very easy to want to receive the reward of Most Valuable Player.  It can be easy to want to be hailed as the best on the team and the ones the coaches most needed during the season.  Leadership is great too.  It is good to know others are looking to you for guidance or you are leading the team to do good things.  However, I think the award deserving high praise is the most improved player.  The most improved is a great award to win and one that I want to continue to win in my everyday life. 

I love being able to see improvement.  For example, when I am running I strive to see improvement in my race times. I always enjoy when I can improve on my time from every run that I do.  I can often get discouraged and to be quite honest, I can be a bit too hard on myself during the times when I am not improving, the times I don’t have the best time or a time that seems as good as previous ones.  I would feel honored to be the most improved, so I can be acknowledged for making better choices and better strides toward being the best I can be.  

I think it is important to focus on growth in all areas of life.  This obviously does not only apply to running or to athletics.  I think it would be great to be the most improved in the workplace. For my particular work at the Job Foundation, I have really tried to improve on my financial literacy lessons for my students.   I have tried to bring in more speakers for experts and more ways to engage the students with the content, especially as our nonprofit has grown.  

There is also, of course, needs to be growth when it comes to our Christian walk or faith.  There are many verses about growing in the knowledge and the love of Christ.  One example is 1 Timothy 4:15-16 which says, “Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress. Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by doing so you will save both yourself and your hearers.”  The verses prior remind Timothy to practice the qualities such as in speech, in love, in faith and in purity.  In order to do this, Paul reminds Timothy to immerse himself in the public reading of Scripture, and to the teaching of those wise people among you.  It is a reminder for us to practice spending time learning from the scriptures.  

I do want to make something very clear though.  We are not going to grow and become more wise through our own work, however.  It is only through Christ that we are ever going to grow with more love, more peace, more faith, etc.  Don’t necessarily think through my challenge of wanting to find something to improve on that you need to do this solely through your own abilities.  It is still good to have desires to improve oneself, but again, this can only be through prayer and through constant dedication to God.

Your challenge for the week is to find one area where you want to grow.  What is one thing you think you could better develop, whether this be more patience, more gentleness, more humility, more dedication to certain Godly disciplines such as reading the Bible or daily time in prayer.  Spend time in prayer over these desires to improve and then wait for God to slowly work in you to improve you for the better.