Occupation?

Many times, I've looked on craigslist and in newpapers and various small circulars as well, looking for employment. I've applied several times. Traveled to places, filled out applications. I've spoken with a few of the employers themselves, but mostly have dealt with filling in the blanks and filling out online kinds of "surveys".
I have to confess, I have often ended up in tears. I've come to realize that somewhere inside, part of me believes my worth is degraded by this. It hurts. I don't even know where this blog is going, but hopefully, it will lead to hope.
I know there are many people who are "unemployed". I am one of them, though I work hard, and actually do so many things. I have been a stay home with the kids mom for over 32 years now. That's a long time. A few times in there I have had various jobs. They never paid enough to take the place of me at home. I was a real estate agent once, during a terrible downturn market in California years ago when real estate tanked. It was more of a hardship on my family to wait it out.
I am educated. I graduated from a Bible college, that though it is an excellent school, does not give degrees.
I read avidly, and am very self educated. I should say I'm an avid learner.
I'm a cheerful, innovative, humorous person, that's in good health and is reasonably attractive.
I am a fairly accomplished violinist, as well as an aspiring artist.
I actually liked being a waitress years ago.
I don't want to work alone.
I don't want to do child care, though I am highly skilled.
I don't want to deliver papers, nor walk someones dog.
I have the sales skills of a stone.
I am empathetic.
I am good at prayer.
I am anointed for counseling and the prophetic.
I am skilled in playing with other musicians.
I've decided it's almost a miracle that I can't get hired for anything, and so I've begun to ask God to bless my husband with at least an $8/hour raise. I am 100% sure he'll get a raise before I ever get a job.
I think God likes my company so much, that He keeps me to Himself. That's fine with me, but my husband would like my financial help. God, please give Duane a raise, and pay him more for me.
thanks.
PS. When that prayer gets answered, I'll let everyone know. It will get answered, somehow I know it for sure.

Like a Pebble in a Pond

I am not quite sure where to begin, I only know I must. God, Your Kingdom is so opposite to how we've lived in this universe. I am sure You are not in reverse, but rather our ways, though we're so accustomed to them, are opposite.

Amazing after all these years, for a revelation to come so strikingly over turning! You turned my life "upside down" again. My upside-down, is Your right side up!

Help me write Father, for even getting the concept out and having it turn the readers upside down, yet right side up, is not only my aim, but Yours. I am going to start with something so essential, so elementary, so simple, LOVE.

But first, a prayer for all of us:

Father, by a touch from You, a word dropped in our lives, like a pebble in a pond, ripples throughout our being. Let this word move into us and set us free and move in thorough grace to over turn our hearts and help us get used to living "right side up."

Prayers, loving prayers, through people whose hearts trust God, avail much. I was driving home the other night from a time of having been prayed for like this.

God was graciously already answering these prayers as I was driving home. I began to remember a time with my mom a couple of years before she died. I was babbling along as I was driving sharing my heart and vision and God thoughts and she began laughing in the back seat. I asked her what was funny and she said God just gave her a picture of Himself. He was walking along behind me, with messy hair looking slightly frazzed with a pencil behind His ear and one in His hand and a long list trailing behind Him, on which He was writing. She giggled and laughed for quite some time.

On the other hand, I thought to myself, How can that be God, He wouldn't be struggling to keep up with me? However, I began to realize the other night (at least 7 years since this happened) that this picture my mom had was a word from Him to her. It was filled with love to the heart of a mom, who had long prayed for her girl. He was showing my mom, in an enjoyably funny way to her, that I was doing well and He was enjoying His life with me. He was humbly, doing this without any care for His dignity, at all. It was for my mom's comfort and joy, God making a joke even about Himself, in order for my mom to really know something He wanted her to know, because He loves her, loves me too.

So, I started thinking about how humble God really is. Of course my life is not really a challenge to Him, but He loves my mom, more than dignity, even His own. He was speaking to her in a language just for her.

The next morning I woke up and was quietly having my coffee time with Him and I began pondering the humility of God, which is SO opposite to us. I was looking out at creation, the yard, air, the universe, everything. God made all these and didn't arrogantly stand up, pointing out how amazing He is to do it. Yet creation cannot hide that it was made by someOne astonishing.

An excerpt from my journal that morning:

"You (God) are so multi-layered with kindness and so utterly Holy Humble. It's a wonder we know You. You created the universe and everything in it so wonderfully, so beautifully unique, so rich in complex, abstract, Holy detail, so perfect really and it reveals a Maker who must be AMAZING! Yet what it speaks, instead of "Look at Me, How amazing I AM!" (which You are) It speaks, "I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!"

You pour out in Love and are revealed in majesty and wonder, but still You are not interested in Yourself being acknowledged. Yet, receiving such love, and knowing the source and being in awe of course, one is overwhelmed with a worship, an adoration of Your Dearest of Self.

Perfect Love from a pure heart doesn't really need recognition. Loving IS loves reward. Loving IS the most pleasurable activity for God.

Oh for me Father, let it be about love and being free.

The joy of love, is in loving.

Why do we, this includes You (God) love being loved?

"It is My pleasure to love."

So there is a pleasure in loving that I want to come to know with You. When we don't love for instance Lord, how does that affect You? Our lack of love for God doesn't impoverish Him. It impoverishes us. Any lack of love, impoverishes the one who is not loving. Our deepest need is not to be loved, but TO LOVE. WE NEED TO LOVE.

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!

And a lie will keep you, upside down and backwards from the Truth, if you believe your deepest need is to be loved. You will be set free when you realize your deepest need actually, to LOVE. WOW!!!

Loving out is loving in, and pouring out, is pouring in." (end of that journal entry)

God has always loved. The Trinity loves endlessly. The Three in One, the Godhead, loves, and in loving receives love, pure, holy perfectly, like a vortex of giving and receiving and giving, spinning in power, pure joy, forever. Out of this perfect relationship, love spun a universe, to love. Jesus dove into human flesh to love, to give. Holy Spirit poured out on this planet, to love.

We are invited into a love bond with Him, that is never ending and full of power, joy, pleasure, full satisfaction in every way. Our polarity needs to be reversed.

The commands of God are distilled down to: a)love God, with all you are and b) love you neighbour as yourself (also with all you are) this includes your enemy.

Why would there be such a command, if the hidden truth of life itself weren't somehow within it? The truth is we are opposite. We need our thinking, being, polarity reversed.

Why would God tell us to not lie? Our fallen-ness made lying seem normal and truth insurmountable and sublime. But lying is the false way that corruption seems to normalize.

Just like needing our love tanks filled before we can love, is not true. If we don't love, we will always have empty "love tanks." God has to show us our identity. He's the only One who knows it. We are created to love, in full communion with the love of the Trinity. Out of the deeps of that powerful loving is where our life-flow comes from. If we don't release love, we will dry up.

I'm not sure how to live this way as all my life habits are opposite, but I sure know this is a deep truth. It's like hitting the mother lode of all time, in a gold mine that never plays out. To LOVE, is to LIVE in the Kingdom.

When you are not the central object in your universe of person, then life aligns, joy flows, you are powered up and pleasure is the result. All our lives we've been living from a different paradigm, which confuses this truth. Because there is always a little loving out and some receiving of love, we have diagnosed our empty tank by saying we are not receiving enough. As in when you need to fill up a car with gas. The truth is, that the tank remains full as long as we are loving. Our emptiness is more a description of our expectation to get filled by others loving us.

By the way, we are endlessly, eternally, unfailingly loved in lavish Holy perfection, by God, we ought to never be empty, therefore we have impoverished our own selves by failing to realize that to fill the bank, is to release to others and everywhere, LOVE.

Loving God, fill us, with an endless, lavish, wealth of love. And, loving everyone else, including ourselves fills this earth around us and it flows in a vortex whose beginning is to give as fast as it's received, forever, a joyful amazing fellowship of bliss.

"We love Him, because He first loved us." 1John 4:19

He started this already in us, and with Him, it has always been so, for just as love never ends, it always has been. The act of loving is perpetual motion.

Selfishness is a slow, miserable form of suicide, like taking a low dose poison of misery day by day until all the lights go out.

Loving on the other hand is like drinking from an eternal fountain of youth, and growing stronger and freer and getting brighter and brighter forever.

This is blowing my mind. For God so loved, that He gave....everything

For the joy set before Him, He endured the suffering, the Cross....

Loving is not only God's joy, it is the wellspring of all joy. (another journal entry)

"Lord, I pray, everyday, that You would live loving through me, together with me. Let us together love, Wildly and as You and I love, lavishly, so let wholeness be a force, a hurricane force. I open a little door today, the door of my heart, an I let the hurricane out, His love and mine mixed, in a blend of joy to us both.

A hurricane changes landscapes. In the natural it wreaks destruction and turmoil. But a Holy Hurricane is utterly destructive to the dark, while life-restoring to the loved ones."

This journey will continue........:)

Still occupying the farm, wondering?......ideas wanted:)

It's February 25th, 2011. In the middle of winter break, already a week of vacation for my daughter Katie, I've declared a "snow day". This day had a full schedule when it began, but after clearing out the driveway, which was just as quickly filling up, driving down the road and stopping three times, before I'd gone a mile to clear the windshield wiper blades of swiftly forming ice, I decided that wisdom was saying, "go home"!

So, it's like being given an unexpected gift, wrapped in white, and chilled. The wind is at times intensely whirling, like a white tornado. It's so bad, both dogs are in the house, and these guys, are NOT inside dogs, (but they are really being very good.)

We are obviously still at the farm. It's not been rented yet. The longer I'm here, occupying, the more I hope for a different sort of solution. Many people have been interested in renting it, but.....for one reason or another, it still isn't.

I am asking for opinions, and perhaps one of you, or more, will be part of the solution. If we didn't have a mortgage on this place, that was still of a good size, we'd simply keep it and have it tended to, and then lend it out for others to use. It is way better than it looks, way sweeter and it is the sort of place that any family, couple, group of friends, etc. would love. I think if there was enough interest in having it as a furnished retreat, monthly, weekly vacation rental, that would be the ideal way of having it enjoyed and utilized to the full. I'm going to advertise and see if a local farmer wants to lease the fields for the next growing season, hoping for one that is interested in organic useage. I'd like it to become good grass pasture, and hay growing.

Please, post ideas and help me with prayers, wisdom, and possibly, some of you may want to rent it for holidays, retreats etc. If there is enough interest, the tide will turn in this direction.

THANK YOU ALL:)