A Special Gift

Today I learned that I made a pretty big mistake at work.  I could not believe that I had overlooked something that I do all the time.  Because of this the result was not very pleasant and I felt horrible.   I gave it all over to the Lord,  "Lord you can take this from me, I don't want it!" was my prayer.  The Lord is definitely faithful. 

However, I was still feeling pretty bad for my mistake.  That is when the Lord reminded me just how good He is.  I was driving home from Rochester thinking about what had happened while quietly lifting up my prayer, "Help me Lord".  I was passing a truck when I looked over and noticed something out of the ordinary in the back of the truck... Goats!!! I love goats! Their gentle, goofy faces make my heart melt.  I don't know exactly what it is, but something about goats fills my heart with joy.  And there they were.  Staring at me out of the window of the truck.  Three goats each as cute as the next, just looking over at me gushing over their cuteness.  I just had to get a picture.  If you look closely you can see their little faces peering out the window:

The goat on the right looked like a baby.  Oh the cuteness!  There they were, looking at me and filling my heart with joy.  Then I realized, this was definitely a gift from my Heavenly Father.  No doubt about it, God was cheering me up with one of my favorite things.  Then I noticed the lyrics to the song playing in my cd player:

"Like a lily among thorns is My love.  Oh, Among the thorns, You bring beauty, You shine beauty to my eyes.  You are my delight. You make me glad." ~worship from IHOP

Among the thorns and bad things in life, He brings beauty.  He is like a beautiful flower in the middle of all the junk and hardships of life.  He brings me joy and peace.  Thank you Lord for this out of the ordinary strange gift today that cheered me up and brought joy to my heart when I needed it.  He is always faithful and always good. Oh, and He gives the best gifts ever!

Just being honest

My emotions are in full swing today. I feel like everyone is against me and doesn't care about me.  And to top it all off, I feel ugly! Even the lady on the phone at REI made me feel bad today. I want to crumple up into a tearful mess and sob, "Why me?!?"

I think this is one of those defining moments where I can disregard everything the Lord has been teaching me lately about managing my emotions and just feel sorry for myself and hide from the world until I "feel" like me again.
Or...
Or I can submit my feelings, reactions, and emotions to the Lord.  I can realize that everyone is not against me, it is just the way I am perceiving it through the "selfish glasses" I have on.  And I can re-focus on the Lord.

I will choose the latter.

Lord, here I am. Mold me, and make me more like You.  Change my emotions and thinking to glorify You.  Give me grace to overcome my emotions and to have victory in this area of my life.  Grace, grace. Oh Jesus help me.

Psalm 40:1-5, 8, 11, 17
I waited patiently for the Lord; and He inclined to me, and heard my cry.  He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my steps.  He has put a new song in my mouth- Praise to our God.  Blessed is that man who makes the Lord his trust, and does not respect the proud, nor such as turn aside to lies.  Many, O Lord, my God, are Your wonderful works which You have done; and Your thoughts toward us cannot be recounted to You in order; if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered.
I delight to do Your will, O my God, and Your law is within my heart.
Do not withhold Your tender mercies from me, O Lord; let Your lovingkindess and Your truth continually preserve me.
But I am poor and needy; yet the Lord thinks upon me.  You are my help and my deliverer.

This is only the beginning

I have been putting off starting this blog now for months because I do not know where to start. Also,  "you don't even have anything interesting to blog about!" has been a reoccurring thought for me.  But, what does it matter since I might only have a handful of sympathetic readers anyway? So my first blog post will be my random blah blah blah'ing about pretty much nothing.  At least it is a place to start. So, we will see if I have anything interesting to blog about or if this will turn out to be something my poor friends will have to put up with until I realize this was not a good idea.  But for now, I think this is a fabulous idea! I first started blogging when I left for Switzerland (how many?) years ago.  It was a way for me to document my time there and a place for friends and family to see what I was up to.  I loved it and it was a great outlet for me during lonely stressful times.  So what about now? I am neither lonely, stressful, or in Switzerland.  The stressful part depends on the day... which by the way today I am not, and I am daily working on that through the grace of God.  But I digress.  I enjoyed blogging while in Switzerland so much that I have often thought about starting again. So, here I am, hopefully with something interesting to say.

Hi! I am Sarah, and this is what I look like most days.  A few random things about me:
~I love my long, red, curly hair (not very visible in this picture).
~I am a princess... because my Father is The King. And coincidentally my name means princess.
~I love wearing fun colors of nail polish. Right now I am wearing a turquoise color.  I once had fun sporting a bright yellow color on my nails and had two responses that made me retire it to "toe" nail polish exclusively. The first was my dad who called it "guy repellent" haha, and a nurse friend of mine who told me she sees terminally ill patients with that color on their nails but it is natural. Yikes!
~I dread somebody asking me the question, "what do you like to do for fun?"
~I think stickers are alright, until they are stuck on something they should not be.  For example: windows, the floor, the wall, windows. Yuck! Especially when they start to peel off and you can see dust and crumbs sticking to the back. Double Yuck!

Purpose of this Blog:

Before I get too off track, let me explain myself.  I want this blog to be a place for my thoughts, ideas and things that I enjoy.  I named the blog I am the Moon after a Sara Groves song that inspired me. More on that later.  But more importantly, I want to stay up to date with people I do not see very much anymore.  I have friends that have married and moved away and some of them have blogs.  I love to read their blogs to see what is going on in their lives.  It makes me feel that even though we are far away, we are still connected. So if you are a friend far away, now you can stay updated on my exciting life. If you are stumbling upon my blog and have never met me before, I hope you enjoy.