Thanks for Encouragement to Doodle and Not Apologize for It

Thank you, God, for encouraging me through Stephanie to "Live Life to Express, Not to Impress." I've enjoyed doodling the scriptures that Stephanie has sent out weekly so far this year.  Click on photo to enlarge details. 

January 2017

February 2017

March 2017

April 2017

May 2017

June 2017

July 2017

August 2017

I MAY fill in MAY's "Trust" page with doodles and color later. It MAY depend on what the facing glue book page MAY look like. 😁  I just couldn't resist. . .🙄

I water-colored May's scripture page:

May 2017

September 2017

October  2017

November 2017.

December 2017. 

5 Things

FIVE THINGS I'M THANKFUL FOR: 

1. Son! His birthday is Sunday! 👦

2. That wrinkles don't hurt! 👵

3. Happy Mail! 📭

4. The calming effect of water-coloring. 🖌

5. The fender-bender didn't damage the front end of 

our borrowed pickup last Saturday! 🚚

Thank you, God, for the Strong Rope of Promise!

Here's a story I once read or heard somewhere. I've probably got it mangled, 'cause I can't tell a joke for the life of me, but this is what came to mind: A man, lost in thought, was walking along a cliff above a rocky shore one day. He was so lost in his thoughts that he wasn't watching where he was going and stepped into a deep and wide crack that split the cliff into two. Sliding down towards the huge boulders that lay scattered underneath the cliff face, he managed to grab a thick vine growing over the edge, but he couldn't find a place to dig in with his heels and his toes so that he could climb out of the crack as the dirt crumbled under them. Desperate and clinging to that vine with both hands,  he began to cry out for help. Then a voice answered and said to hang on, that he'd be right back after he ran for a rope. 

When the person got back, he began to lower a rope over the cliff telling the man who had fallen into the crack to let go of the vine, grab the rope and he would pull him to safety, but the man hanging there, desperate with fear, couldn't let go of the vine. After a few minutes, the man above rolled up the rope and the man below, cried out, "What are you doing, where are you going, and why are you taking away my rope?" And the man above shouted down to man in the crack, "I can't help you, because you won't let go of the vine." 

I understand that man's fear of letting go of the vine. I have a real fear of heights. There is one particular high curving bridge with low sides that we need to drive over to get to the highway home from a town east of us that gives me the willies every time we go over it. I try not to think about the possibility of sailing over those low sides off into the wild blue yonder and squish that fear as the driver carefully makes his/her way around that curve as quick as they can. Thankfully, last weekend, we didn't have to come home that way, but knowing about the financial cliff we are experiencing at the moment -- no car and medical bills -- God showed me his love last Saturday as I was returning a too small shirt to a store in a borrowed car. Boy, was I excited when I saw that and I had to take a photo to share. Do you see it too? 

Life is really hard at times and it's wonderful when you've got promises to cling to. I was reminded of that yesterday when I was going through my Documented Faith-book of a quote of Stephanie's I had written down a while back. 

"No Matter What: Everything Will Be Okay!" ~ Stephanie Ackerman. 

I have to take my eyes off my troubles and look up at him as I get down on my knees in my prayer closet with this verse in mind --  

"So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen [Jesus and his rope]. For what is seen is temporary [financial cliff], but what is unseen is eternal." ~ 2 Corinthians 4:18. 

God, thank you for a visual reminder of your loving presence in my life!  Thank you for a strong rope I can grab hold of every time I need it! 

Light of a Clear Blue Morning
Dolly Parton

It's been a long dark night
And I've been a waiting for the morning
It's been a long hard fight
But I see a brand new day a dawning
I've been looking for the sunshine
Cause I ain't seen it in so long
But everything's gonna work out just fine
Everything's gonna be alright
That's been all wrong.
Cause I can see the light of a clear blue morning
I can see the light of a brand new day
I can see the light of a clear blue morning
And everything's gonna be all right
It's gonna be okay.
It's been a long, long time
Since I've known the taste of freedom
And those clinging vines
That had me bound, well I don't need 'em
Cause I am strong and I can prove it
And I got my dreams to see me through
It's just a mountain, I can move it
And with FAITH enough there's nothing I can't do
And I can see the light of a clear blue morning
And I can see the light of a brand new day
I can see the light of a clear blue morning
And everything's gonna be all right,
It's gonna be okay.
I can see the light of a clear blue morning
I can see the light of a brand new day
Yes, I can see the light of a clear blue morning
Everything's gonna be all right
It's gonna be okay
Cause I can see the light of a clear blue morning
I can see the light of a brand new day
And I can see the light of a clear blue morning
Everything's gonna be all right
It's gonna be okay.
I can see the light
It's gonna be all right
I can see the light
It's gonna be all right.

It's a Process!

The world has a mistaken notion about us followers of Christ. They think when we say we are Christians, that it's like a cup of dry soup mix -- pour the waters of salvation over us and we become instantly perfect and then when we don't measure up, we're called hypocrites.  I hate to tell the world, that we struggle just like everyone else, however, we have what they don't, a relationship with Christ. Some are better at listening to Him and obeying and others, for whatever reason, find it harder to yield to his sweet whispers.  Thankfully, God isn't finished with me yet, cause I'm an adopted daughter of THE King! 👸

Our testimony leader was speaking to us a couple of weeks ago about the sacrifice of praise. As he was speaking about the Hebrew sacrifice, I began thinking about what I could sacrifice in order to praise and thank God and it clicked into place. I've struggled all this last year with writing my blog posts every week like I set out to, sometimes wanting to quit and deleting this whole blog, but Jesus kept whispering "Persevere," which has become my strong rope to hang onto when I wanted to give up. I realized that I could sacrifice those "I don't want to" feelings and CHOOSE to be thankful instead. 

"Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise -- the fruit of lips that confess his name." ~ Hebrews 13:15. 

I look up words in the dictionary I don't fully have a grasp on -- like mercy, for instance, one of the words in the beatitudes, that we were reading in church a couple of weeks ago. Positive words sometimes seem foreign to me, so when I ran across a possible meaning of mercy, I had to "chew the cud" and think about it. The sentence "It was just a mercy we had our seat belts on when it happened." grabbed my attention, because having just recently been in a car accident, I thought WOW! A heavenly reward for obeying the law! 

As far as Documented Faith goes, I've been working on my twelve dividers for my faith-book all this month. I've recorded my work here on my "Craftin' Bliss" blog and also assembled a couple of glue book pages that I decided I had enough pieces for. I uploaded those here on my "Taking Stock" post as well telling where I found some of the components for them here.  Stephanie showed us what she's been doing in her faith-book and it appears that she has a commentary going. 

I asked my husband what a commentary was and he showed me a book out of his personal library by C. H. Spurgeon called "Spurgeon's Devotional Bible." It looks similar to a study Bible, except that it has Spurgeon's own comments after various Bible verses in italic script instead of down at the bottom or in the middle of the two columns of scripture.  He told me that a commentary explains or illustrates key points; after Stephanie paraphrases what she is reading,  whether it be her Bible or an inspirational book, she uses her own quotes as a prompt to help her remember what she's learned. 

So, in closing, I said a few posts ago that I wanted to show you what Lynn Shokoples inspired me to make with the face of one of my pocket pages, so look below. Click on the image if you need to enlarge it to see details. I used one of Stephanie's images she sent us in a devotional (Thank you, Stephanie, for sharing your lovely talent with us!) and used Lynn's layout (Thank you, Lynn, for yours also!) to apply it to my gelli-printed background. That red heart and flower just pops off the page and draws your eye in, don't you think?