Turn Your Head

It is easy to focus on issues that are negative. They sometimes seem like they loom, when they may really be a brief part of our lives. 

Take for instance, losing sleep when you have a newborn. A mom (and sometimes a father) can become exhausted when there are several nights that a child doesn’t sleep well or maybe the child has a condition in which the parents “cannot sleep” due to anxiousness.

That is just one of millions of possibilities in which a person may have a difficult time seeing the bright side or blessed side of life because they are focused on the dark side of life. That brings us to this week’s quote…

Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.  ~ Maori proverb

A couple of weekends ago, I was mentally struggling with something and I was concerned it would affect my delivery. I was fortunate to not only give this to God in a prayer, but I didn’t hold on to it secretively – like we all have probably done before with our problems.

It was such a relief! It caused me to concentrate on what I needed to concentrate on and enjoy it, rather than be a bit miserable by thinking about something I really couldn’t control.
This situation was a recent example in which I enjoyed turning my face toward the sun and letting the shadow(s) remain behind me!

E-mail Encouragement: Strength

I hope you've had a good week, thus far. With last week being so busy, it has nice to have a "less busy" week.

We've all had our share of struggles. From the smallest to the biggest, the least frustrating to the most, struggles are struggles. However, most struggles help us learn lessons, which help us cope with life. Think about this as you read this week's quote...

Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger

You simply cannot be strong all the time. You might be able to appear strong, but you will wear yourself out trying to be strong. In order to become strong in muscular strength you must perform some type of exercise which exerts tension on muscles. This causes the muscle to actually tear, but is replaced by more muscle cells. When we go through hardships and don't give up we may "tear" but it is replaced by more "cells" to enable us to get through the situation and/or learn from it for the next time.

Our hope is not hardship, but not surrendering to the inevitable will develop strength.

Having a hardship this week? May God bless you as you seek Him through it all and become "stronger" in the end!

Blessed by Him ~