Sunday August 25

Why is there a sudden trend of middle aged married couples divorcing after decades of devoted matrimony? It’s like first you lose your children to college, you seem to lose yourself and then you wake up to discover you are losing your husband?

Because major shift happens when we have children. A major life changing world-turning event. Your heart expands 1000 times larger than you ever thought it could and makes room to love your children. But have you ever stopped to think that it expands so you can keep loving your husband with the same passion and intensity? But it doesn’t really happen that way does it?

The to do list when you are three months into dating the perfect guy:

Wake up and thank God you’re not single anymore

Go for a run (Gotta stay size 6 by any means necessary)

Skip that muffin or bagel and make a green smoothie

Shower, shave, tweeze eyebrows and track down any other unwanted hair and destroy it

Pick out that perfect outfit—the mix between classy and sexy with a hint of sultry (you never know you might have lunch or happy hour date with your boo)

Make sure makeup is on fleek

Blow out and perfectly style hair

Text him that perfect good morning selfie

Drive to work (Beaming)

Be the boss that you are

The mid-week to do list when you are xx years married to same guy:

Wake up and beg God for five more minutes of sleep

Crawl into the kitchen and get a 20 oz mug of coffee

Grab a donut to go with said coffee

Get your kids up

Fix their lunches

Finish and find homework, papers, projects etc.

Get them on the bus

Gasp breathless as you walk back from the bus stop

Take a two second lukewarm shower

Look down take a deep breath and consider the crazy idea of…nope no time!

Look in the mirror at all that hair and figure out how to hide it

Put on some spandex to hold in all the lumps bumps and humps

Plaster on as much makeup as possible to cover any other hair that you can’t hide under clothes

Put your unruly hair in a pony tail

Text him his honey do list followed by please get all this done ok followed by kissy face emoji

Drive to work (Dreading)

Wonder how this became your life

So what changed?

Do you see that both you and your self-care and your attention for your man have become low to no priority?

Just like a garden, that what is tended grows and thrives and that which isn’t shrivels and dies.

Don’t be fooled. This doesn’t just happen all of a sudden. This happens slowly and quietly and methodically until one day you wake up and realize your kids have their own lives and you are launching them off into the world and you look over and wonder who that strange guy is in the bed next to you…

The Reality of the Fullness of God--His Unfailing Love

There are so many people seeking. Trying to understand God. Trying to find out the meaning of life and their purpose on this earth; trying to make sense of it all. Lord, you created us in the beginning for the sole purpose of Loving.

All things were created for You to love, for us to love You back, for us to love each other and the earth around us--Your Creation. Somewhere along the way we made a choice. We chose to know more than we needed to know. All we needed was to love You. You were there to supply everything else. There was no need to know good vs. evil. We only knew good--we were perfect; we didn't need to eat from that tree. All we needed to do was love You.

Loving You meant obeying your commands. Trusting in You. Worshiping You. You gave us free will to choose so that the choice to love you, obey you and trust you in itself would be an act of worship. You didn't want robots automatically programmed to act a certain way. There is no love in that. Lucifer failed this test. He wanted to be loved more than he wanted to love. That caused him to want all the love for himself; more love than all the other angels. It caused rebellion and sin. Lucifer thought he was better than the others. He was full of pride. And You oh Lord, were forced to cast him out of Heaven apart from You. Rejection was born. The root of all sin here on Earth.

Since then, Satan has wanted every other creature on earth to feel rejected. The whole premise of this worldly system of things is based on who is wanted. Who is idolized. The goal of this sinful world is to be the one who everyone loves more than anyone else. The goal of Heaven is opposite--to love everyone else more than your own desire to be loved. To lay your own desires down, to nail them to The Cross. It's all about pouring your love out upon others so that God can refill you with more of His love. Deeper and deeper revelations of His love each time. The Knowledge, the true knowledge that Adam should have been concerned with in the garden was the Knowledge of God. Knowing the Creator and Master. To know Him, to truly know God, is to love Him completely. That is all there is to know--His Love is Everything. God is Everything! And His whole being is based upon love.

That is God's whole motivation for everything He has done and continues to do. That is all we need to know. We will not have a complete revelation of God and how much He loves us, or what real true love feels like in its fullness until the Fullness of God is revealed to us when He returns. But until then, we can seek night and day to love Him more, receive more of His love and give more and more love away as we go through life as He originally intended--receiving deeper and deeper revelations of just who this loving God is that we serve.