love...

Ami...I love you more than papa loves chocolate chips!!!  

Okay, thats saying alot...from several perspectives. Number one, it came from the mouth of my incredibly amazing 3 1/2 year old granddaughter (nope still can't believe I am a grandma) and two, she knows how much her papa loves chocolate!!! She has the right priorities, if I do say so myself.

As I type this she is playing in the tub and I can't help but remember a young girl her age, doing the same thing, making the same sounds, doing the same type of things.  Oh my heart is just so torn between loving the now and missing the then....What good times I had with my babies!  What good times I have with my adults!!! Lucy is spending the night with Ami and Papa and what fun we have had! We made a "project" for mommy, we made chocolate chip cookies (yep, we ate a few), we played I Spy, and Hide and Go Seek (when I came back from a short errand Lucy and papa were hiding, it took me a long time to find them!  Then we had dinner and she and I snuggled and watched Arthur (I used to watch that with her mama, I told her) and now, she is in the tub, begging for more time, hair washed and playing swimming pool with her tub toys.   I think we'll snuggle some more and get ready for bed with a few books.

I've been thinking about something lately, learning it actually.  Today John and I went to get a new freezer from Lincoln City and spent a few hours just enjoying some time together. He totally blessed me with just some really great attention and time that I really had been longing for.  On our way back from LC we started talking about the song Jesus Son Of God and the amazing words to the song.  One of the best parts of the song says "the cross was enough"  It is finished....No more need to be done, and yet, how many of us spend so much of our lives DOING in order to feel loved?  This is what I am learning and what my amazing husband, best friend and, well....you know, said,  I don't have to do any more to be saved any more or loved any more than I already am!  Now that seems elementary I know but if you look deep deep down you will see that many times you don't honestly grasp what that MEANS.  Joyce Meyer says it like this...You have to learn to separate your Who from your DO...No matter what I do God loves me, NO MATTER WHAT...thats my WHO!  My do is what He works with me to overcome but it isn't what defines me, what makes me important to Him or special.  I am learning not to look at myself through my own eyes but through His eyes and what a sight I see!!! It makes me want to be even more who He created me to be and not worry about the Do....If I mess up, which I do and I will, I need to take responsibility and repent, ask for forgiveness if I need to and LET IT GO!!!! LET IT GO!!!!!

GOD LOVES ME!!!!!!!  GOD loves ME!!!!!!!!! God LOVES me!!!!!!! No matter how you say it, it sounds the same to my heart and it is renewing my mind.  Yep, yep, yep, I am learning again to engage in the battlefield of my mind even deeper than before and you know what???? More often than not, I am winning.  My husband said to me the other day, "I like this new you!!!"  I knew what he meant and it was due to the new found freedom I am allowing myself to feel in Christ.  No longer held by my DO, I am going to be true to my WHO!!!!

So now I am going to go get my warm and cuddly granddaughter from the tub and love on her some more!

Have a great weekend