Sky

We have relocated! No longer surrounded by the majestic trees of the forest, I see the big, blue, cloudy sky clearly. I love it! Snow capped mountains are visible in the distance and the city is buzzing around me. It is a wonderful day! 

I have been brainstorming of different things I can make with my sewing machine. I got fabric to make a skirt and a Christmas dress. Today I finished my skirt. It is the first item of clothing I have ever made, and it turned out alright. I did not use a pattern because I could not find one that looked like what I was thinking, but I think next time I should definitely use a pattern. It took me 5 or 6 hours to make it without one. I kept trying it on and pinning and sewing, and the cycle seemed endless! But I did get it done, and am anxious to wear it during my visit with family at Christmas. I will share a picture of it at a later date. :)

Persecuted

I frequently get e-mails from the ACLJ regarding things that are happening that affect our freedom of worship and rights as Americans, etc. The e-mail I received from them this morning broke my heart and opened my eyes. It was a letter from Pastor Saeed Abedini. If you have not heard of him before this, I will summarize what I know of him. He is an American pastor that has been imprisoned in a hostile Iranian prison where he has been beaten by guards and inmates and persecuted for his faith in Christ. His letter touched me, and I hope that it will touch your heart as well. 

Rajai Shahr Prison 2014

Merry Christmas!

These days are very cold here. My small space beside the window is without glass making most nights unbearable to sleep. The treatment by fellow prisoners is also quite cold and at times hostile. Some of my fellow prisoners don’t like me because I am a convert and a pastor. They look at me with shame as someone who has betrayed his former religion. The guards can’t even stand the paper cross that I have made and hung next to me as a sign of my faith and in anticipation of celebrating my Savior’s birth. They have threatened me and forced me to remove it. This is the first Christmas that I am completely without my family; all of my family is presently outside of the country. These conditions have made this upcoming Christmas season very hard, cold and shattering for me. It appears that I am alone with no one left beside me.

These cold and brittle conditions have made me wonder why God chose the hardest time of the year to become flesh and why He came to the earth in the weakest human condition (as a baby). Why did God choose the hardest place to be born in the cold weather? Why did God choose to be born in a manger in a stable, which is very cold, filthy and unsanitary with an unpleasant smell? Why did the birth have to be in such a way that it was not only hard physically, but also socially? It must have brought such shame for Mary and her fiancé that she was pregnant before marriage in the religious society of that time.

Dear sisters and brothers, the fact of the Gospel is that it is not only the story of Jesus, but it is the key of how we are to live and serve like Jesus. Today we like Him should come out of our safe comfort zone in order to proclaim the Word of Life and Salvation though faith in Jesus Christ and the penalty of sin that He paid on the cross and to proclaim His resurrection. We should be able to tolerate the cold, the difficulties and the shame in order to serve God. We should be able to enter into the pain of the cold dark world. Then we are able to give the fiery love of Christ to the cold wintery manger of those who are spiritually dead. It might be necessary to come out of the comfort of our lives and leave the loving embrace of our family to enter the manger of the lives of others, such as it has been for me for the third consecutive Christmas. It may be that we will be called fools and traitors and face many difficulties, but we should crucify our will and wishes even more until the world hears and tastes the true meaning of Christmas.

Christmas means that God came so that He would enter your hearts today and transform your lives and to replace your pain with indescribable joy.

Christmas is the manifestation of the radiant brightness of the Glory of God in the birth of a child named Emmanuel, which means God is with us.

Christmas is the day that the heat of the life-giving fire of God’s love shone in the dark cold wintry frozen hearts and burst forth in this deadly wicked world.

The same way that the heat from the earth’s core melts the hard stones in itself and produces lava, the fiery love of God, Jesus Christ, through the virgin Mary’s womb came to earth on Christmas to melt the hard heart of sin and wickedness of the world and removes them from our life. In the same process, the work of the Holy Spirit is a fiery rain of God’s Holiness and Mercy that flows into our body, soul and spirit and brings the light of Christ into us and through us making this dark, cold, wintry world into radiant burning brightness. He is turning our world into a world full of peace, joy, and love that is so different than the dark, cold, and wintry world that we used to live in. Hallelujah!

So this Christmas let the lava-like love of Christ enter into the depth of your heart and make you fiery, ready to pay any cost in order to bring the same lava love to the cold world around you, transforming them with the true message of Christmas.

Pastor Saeed Abedini

Soaking in the lava love of Christ

Addicted

I am an addict. I am rather severely addicted to coffee. I have come to this realization, and I am now accepting it. For the past 2-3 months, I have refrained from drinking coffee drinks unless it was decaffeinated. I put my coffee pot into storage and have been very disciplined about not drinking anything with caffeine in it. Yesterday I broke. I could take it no longer. I pulled out my coffee pot, and for the first time in 2-3 months, I drank a cup of caffeinated coffee. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to drink another cup. And when that one was gone, I had another cup. I should have thought it out a bit better and started drinking the caffeine again gradually. However, I did not even consider gradually working into it until 3:30 this morning where I found myself lying in bed with eyes wide open without even a hint of sleepiness. 

The good thing about being awake at that time in the morning was the weather. I sincerely enjoy stormy weather. We are supposedly going through the worst storm this area has seen in the last five years. The wind was rushing through the trees with such force that it sounded like a jet flying just feet above us. It is a bit disconcerting being in a trailer in the middle of a forest with wind blowing like that. Thankfully, I did get to sleep, and when I awoke this morning, there were no trees in my living room! 

With the sun up, I could see the effects of the wind. Some branches had fallen. A lot of leaves and other debris had fallen or been scattered. The tops of the trees bowed with the wind, and from the look of them, I worried that they would fall over. However, looking at the base of the tree, you could see that the wind was not affecting them at all. 

It reminded me of Job. Looking at the tree tops, it seemed that there would be no way they could endure. It seemed they would fall. Yet they were so strongly and so deeply rooted in the earth that the wind was not really even budging them. When Job was tried and had nearly everything he loved taken from him, it would seem that he would have given up. It seemed that there was no way he could go on. He seemed defeated. Yet there was something within Job that held on. His foundation, his faith was rooted deeply in the Lord. Satan probably thought he was winning. He probably thought that at any moment Job would in fact, curse God and die. What Satan did not know, what only God could see was that Job's faith was not budging. It was unwavering. And just as the winds only bring strength to the trees, the trial that Job went through only strengthened him because he was rooted in the Lord.

Valleys

Rainy Days

The past few days here have been super rainy which is a great answer to prayer due to the severe drought going on in this part of the country. I spent my rainy days, unwisely, out in the middle of it trying to get some wonderful pictures. The ones I did get were either blurry or too similar to rainy day pictures I have taken before. So it was all for naught. And on top of my lack of artistic productivity, I have contracted a nasty cold. So I have a cranberry juice, sprite mixture that I have been drinking. I am not sure if it is actually helping or not, but it makes me feel like it is curing me... and it is delicious. 

Last night, I took Nyquil. I never take Nyquil. I usually try to abstain from medication and I especially try to avoid Nyquil. I love to sleep, and I definitely do not need help doing it. The last time I took Nyquil, I think I slept for 18 hours straight. I am not exaggerating. So I took my medicine last night, at the prompting of my loving and concerned husband, at 7:30. We decided to watch a movie afterward, and of course, I passed out on the couch before 8:00. I woke up this morning at 11:00 in my bed feeling like I had gotten run over by a truck. I am not sure how I got in my bed, but from the pain in my head, I am wondering if my husband tried to carry me and dropped me somewhere along the way. Anyway, this is why I hate taking medicine. So, the next time it rains, I think I will observe its beauty from my window. 

"As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving." Colossians 2:6,7

December Air

Sitting in front of my computer, a faux fire blazing (I have an electric fireplace), occasionally sipping my cappuccino, I look out my window and observe the serenity of the forest. A cloudy sky is giving way to the blue and sunshine. Not a flake of snow, Christmas decorations have not yet made their appearance, and yet there is a feeling of warmth and Christmas in my heart. I feel it about this time every year. Some years it is more prominent than others, but nevertheless, it is there. It must be something in the air; something that God gently blows over us each year as we prepare to celebrate the greatest gift ever given- the gift of His only Son. I can never separate this truth from what Christmas is, and I hope that you cannot either. Take a moment to stop and ponder the enormity of that thought. We have a day every year that is dedicated to celebrating God, the creator of the universe, coming to earth. Earth, in essence, is just a microbe in the grand scheme of all that He has created, yet He loves us, the people who inhabit it, so greatly that  He sacrificed himself in order to restore fellowship with us. And He offers us the gift of a relationship with Him for the rest of eternity. 

Patience

One of the things that has had my emotions all in a blunder recently has been my deep heart desire for another baby. It has been over eight months now since we lost our first, and I have been praying that the Lord would bless us with another ever since. He has not chosen to do that yet, and it has honestly been wearing on me a bit. I don't mean to complain, but it is perplexing to me how He works and times things. I know His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts. I know He knows best and that He is probably using this time to teach me some vital lesson. I have a couple ideas of what they may be, too. It could be that He is teaching me that I cannot always have my way, which is a hard one because I have always gotten my way, for the most part. It could be that He is teaching me patience, or He could be teaching me that I do not have to have a child to be complete. I can be complete in Him. It could be all of the above. Or it could be something that I have never even considered. Whatever the reason, I found comfort in a verse that I happened upon today. I was reading in the book of James. James is one of my favorite books. It is like a treasure chest buried in shallow water. It is so easy to get into, and it is so full of so many good principles and teachings. I love it! Anyway, chapter 5, verse 11 about halfway through says, "ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord." Wow.. It was just what I needed to see today. Whether the Lord decides to give us another child or children, or whether He teaches us an invaluable lesson, I believe He will bless us as He blessed Job in the end. I just have to be patient and trust Him. 

O soul are you weary and troubled? No light in the darkness you see? There’s light for a look at the Savior and life more abundant and free.

Through death into life everlasting, he passed and we follow Him there. Over us sin no more hath dominion for more than conquerors we are.

His Word shall not fail you He promised. Believe Him, and all will be well. Then go to a world that is dying, His perfect salvation to tell.

Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face. And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.

- Helen H. Lemmel

I'm Back!!

Well, not too long after my latest post, I went to add to my blog, and my internet decided not to cooperate with me! It has been back up for about a week or so now, but you know how it is trying to get back into a routine once you have gotten out of it. And you probably know how messing up one part of your routine messes up other parts of your routine. So, I have gotten out of my healthy eating routine, and well, mainly just that... But I am blaming it on the internet :) Anyway, during the time that I have not been working on my blog, I realized how therapeutic it is to write about what is going on in my life. I really struggled with my emotions during my absence! It really puts things into perspective when I am writing the events of my life out for anyone in the world to see! So thank you, my unpaid shrinks, my readers. You help my life to be a balanced, blissful haven! (in a dramatic voice)

So, I say all of that to say, I am back! And I have one last piece of chocolate cake to eat, and I will begin eating healthier again. Au revoir!