Romance

Ah!  How we as women LOVE to be romanced!  Romanced defined in webster is :
1. a love affair, esp an intense and happy but short-lived affair involving young people


2. love, esp romantic love idealized for its purity or beauty


3. a spirit of or inclination for adventure, excitement, or mystery

being romanced can mean different things to everyone, some might like dinner, and a movie, flowers and a massage, phone calls during the day just to say I love you!  for me,phone calls through out the day,  hubby making the dinner plans, and oh how I love it when he cleans up the house and all i need to do is sit down and relax!   It can be different for everyone and we think of romance in regards to our boyfriend/spouse.  I read a book about God romancing us!  
Everytime I see a beautiful sunset, a pretty flower, or feel the wind blowing through my hair, I know that God is showing me HIS beauty that he made for me!  I watch Him work in the lives of others as He reaches out for them and tries to draw them to Him!   How He wants to romance each and every one of us!  I am sitting back and watching how He is reaching for my 16 year old foster daughter.  She has come from a past that needless to say is one of pain and heartache, one noone should have to live through.  BUT I see God using  youth group and learning about God and His love for us, and how He died for her! 
Then we go on vacation, and she is hospitalized for an infection.  She was brokenhearted wondering why everything bad happens to her.  At the end of her hospital stay the doctor, said to her, can I pray for you?  Your story has really touched me! WOW!   for a doctor to pray for a patient these days is unusual! He is calling for my daughter, COME TO ME!!!  
Fast forward a couple of weeks to the first week of school, she is lonely and has no friends, just trying to fit in, hiding in the bathroom at lunch, searching to find a place.  After some mishaps with her locker being broken into she was sitting in the principles office, voicing to him why God is letting all this happening to her.  The principle closes the door and says you want to talk about God?  and then continues to witness to her about Christ and His love for us for the next 40 mins.  WOW!  He tells her he will deny telling her anything about God because he could lose his job.  I told Shannon, God is after you and he is romancing you, He is so reaching for her and wanting to have a relationship with her!   It is amazing to watch this play out, and see how God is working in her life. Our God is so awesome!  
We all go through heartache and we always wonder why it happens to us, it is hard to understand why we experience any of this, but God uses it all for HIS glory!  So through all things we should be content because it isn't about us, it's about HIM and how to live for HIM!   
One of the defintions of romance is "short lived", we often times think of love as the giddy feeling we have when we first meet someone, that is not love.  Love is a choice!   I look at the marriage my hubby and I have 10 years later that giddy feeling has faded and through the hard times you wonder why God?  But we choose to love each other and to make our marriage work. We are both sinful creatures, and need forgiveness, It's about being there for oneanother and having unconditional love for each other like God has for us!  No matter how many times we sin against Him, He still loves us and still died for us.  I pray that I can have a love for mankind like He has for me, to see past the sins of others and see into their hearts, that I might be able to love them with a love that is unconditional and forgiving.

Favorite things

My favorite time of the year is approaching! With each day brings new challenges, and at times that can be completely overwhelming. I have learned that it starts with MY thinking and how I respond to certain things, so if you have positive thoughts sometimes the days are a little more manageable!   SO, HERE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS....a cool crisp morning, the changing of the leaves, when our puppy Lucy runs with her ears flapping, a newly vacuumed room, clean kitchen counters, a hot shower, having a "date" with my hubby, a loud thunderstorm, catching up with friends, the sound of the kids laughing, B holding his muhmy, bonfires, watching the "twins" learn new things, a warm cup of chai, curling up with a warm blanket, watching the older girls laughing and enjoying life!