Slumps and Resurrected Vision

January is the time where many people celebrate newness. But what if you’re stuck in an old season? The reality is that the challenges of the past calendar year did not just go away at midnight on January 1^st.

While life’s seasons may not automatically be deleted in one minute, we can use the first few days of a new year to reassess, to ponder, to clarify vision or simply to see what is needed to move forward.

We never want to be needlessly stuck in an old rhythm, just because we can’t see what lies in our future.

Without a vision, the people perish.

Last September, I began to have a vision attack. Disappointment and discouragement set in because goals hadn’t been met. I grew blind. My passions were tossed aside because I just don’t like to waste my time if there is no promise of fruitfulness.

So I constantly prayed for God to show me what desires or dreams I had that were not for then or ever because I knew that sometimes childhood’s imagination can build fantastic adventures that have no borders. And while I was and am convinced that God plants seeds of destiny in our hearts while we are young, I knew that we see in part and it takes years of maturing to really discern the God-seed from the parent projected-seed or the fairytale-planted seed or the soulish seed that covets someone else’s destiny.

So my new “year” started way before Jan. 1, 2015 when I began to ask God to dismantle any vision that I had that was a mistake and birth His vision for how I am to spend my time and how much time to give to the passions that I know He put in my heart.

Oh my passions!

Most involve allowing the Creator to create through me: phrases, sounds, gardens, food, and the artistry of the home.
  

Oh my passions!

One book on the shelf: the plot is decided, over 60,000 words, but the falling action and resolution remain in my mind.

Another book just started, Ages and Stages: The Book, inspired by my blog series by that name. This one will be a soul journey as I write.
A series, part fantasy, part historical fiction: The Ages of Laus Perennis, which was started too many years ago…. (sigh)
So many songs lay in a drawer in the music room, done or in need of editing but my skill has maxed out.
The advice of my kids: “Buy a viola and play again!” but really kids, when?
A piano that calls me, but once I sit down, the warfare overcomes me.

Oh my passions!

Six children and a husband, house and yard that need seventeen hours of my day.
My spirit’s need to clutch heaven’s Heart every moment of every day, for this is what maintains my sanity.

I wake up each morning to a world that needs my tongue to pray and my hands to serve in whatever way.

My passionate list goes on...

I long for His presence to be known, experienced, celebrated…His name revered, adored…His heart kissed and understood, our worship of Him as extravagant as His love, and His world redeemed through the people that He calls His own. (selah)

I told my husband that my productive nature was feeling unfulfilled these days. Sometimes fruit takes too much time see. But like I said before, I want to make sure that I don’t waste my time on things that were never meant to be.

So that’s when it’s time to scale back on everything, except the necessities:
my family, household duties, and the God that maintains my sanity.

This is the ground in which He can plant or prune vision in me.

Jeremiah 29:11 

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Author Tina Webb

Visit my Amazon author page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00GDOJJ22

To purchase books: http://beforethebeginningbook.blogspot.com/p/book-info_2.html

The Slow Simmer of Grace

Chris Webb is a 20 year old senior at Virginia Commonwealth University majoring in Criminal Justice. He enjoys leading his Chi Alpha small group, watching movies, and reading books that enrich his faith.  In his recent blog post"The Goodness of the Lord in the Land of the Living" from This Mortal Body Has Grown Weak, I Need Sustenance, he writes: "my academic achievement had done nothing to address my deep-seated insecurities" and how gaining a true understanding of God's grace changed his life. Currently, he is working on his first crime fiction series.


When I started attended my community college four years ago I had one goal: graduate with a 4.0 (and thereby with a better GPA than my older sister, cause I had pride issues like that). I studied day and night, and outside of one classmate and playing a final year of high school basketball (which I was doing for very limited and selfish reasons), I didn’t really have a social life.  

Freshman year ended with a net total of 11 A’s, two new friends, lots of sleep deprivation and stress, as well as a second place finish in the HSPN East Coast championship game that led me to not pick up a basketball for months. I had obtained my academic goal (for a year) with rigorous self-effort but I had no joy.

My sophomore year, I was vice president of the Christian Student Fellowship at my community college (because that’s what extremely successful christian students do) and I continued to collect as many A’s as possible. I succeeded. To the outside, I was the poster child of success but my academic achievement had done nothing to address my deep-seated insecurities. I felt like a hypocrite because I was a Christian that struggled with addiction and couldn’t beat it with willpower (all you perfectionists know how much that sucks). I knew facts about God but I couldn’t have told you who He was to me. All I could do was obtain good grades and even that failed me when I didn’t get a full ride to VCU like I thought I deserved. 

God was distant, my athletic goals had gone up in flames, and when it came to the area of relationships it seemed the universe was conspiring against me. But God had a plan.

Fast forward to today. Getting me to stress about school is like trying to get me to go swing dancing (as in really, really hard). I have the closest group of friends I’ve ever had in my life and God and I talk everyday (I still do 75% of the talking but hey, progress is progress). I still have a 4.0 but I now understanding that it’s a blessing from God that He was generous enough to give me because I asked for it, not something I “earned” because I was smarter than everybody else.  

I’m still single (despite my best efforts) but I’ve had weeks where I truly understood what it means to experience a peace that transcends all understanding.

What caused this radical change, you ask? Grace. Gaining a true understanding of what God’s grace really is and what it means for me. It means that God loves me independent of anything I’ve ever done, am doing, or will do--a revolutionary discovery for me! It means that I have God’s unmerited favor impacting every area of life just because I’m His son and I’ve been adopted into His family. It means I’m greatly blessed, highly favored, and deeply loved. It means that I’m a successful person simply because God is with me. It means I’m holy, just, and good, not because of what I do but because I’m a new creation in Christ.

Now, this change didn’t just happen overnight. As I’ve learned, when God uses his grace to change you, it works really, really, REALLY, slow. But when grace changes you, it’s permanent. It starts with changing how you think waaaaaaay before it changes how you act.

Some of you might be wondering why I decided to share this in a public forum. Well, Proverbs 13:12 says “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life”. Up until recently, I could only relate to the first part of this scripture; I was an expert in heart sickness, because I had it. But now, even though many of my hopes are still deferred, I’ve seen desire come and it truly is a tree of life.

I know far too well, what rock bottom looks like: despair, doubt, fear, anxiety, stress, shame, the whole nine yards. I have been intimately acquainted with them. You might think I can’t relate to what you’re going through or have gone through, and you’re right to some extent. I may not be able to relate to the details of your story because it’s your story. But trust me on this, when it comes to the aforementioned emotions…I get it. I wish I didn’t…but I do. 

I just want everyone to know that hope is out there, and you can always find it in Jesus. I know the change I experienced was not of myself because I tried changing myself for years and it didn’t work. If effort and hard work were the only factors, I would have done it (trust me, I have the Upwards Basketball Program blue stars to prove it). My problems seemed insurmountable, but to God they were like grains of sand. He is SO much bigger than anything we’ll ever come up against! He’s the beginning, middle, and end of my story and without him I am nothing.

Now, to be clear, I don’t act perfectly and I’ve not yet learned the breadth, and length, and depth, and height of God’s love for me (although I know much more than I used to). I don’t expect what I’ve written to change anyone’s life, because honestly, it wouldn’t have changed mine based on where I was four years ago. But here’s my hope: that in reading this, at least one person will come to a sense of peace about where they are in life, warts in all. If even one person reads this and comes away with a sense of relief that they aren’t responsible for changing themselves, it will have been worth it. No, the change won’t be instantaneous and yes, you’ll still struggle with stuff a lot longer than you think you should, but it’s OKAY. God has you and when God has you, EVERYTHING will be okay. As I end, I just want to leave you with this: In regards to Christianity, it’s not about what you do, it’s about "whose" you are. So "whose" are you?

 Philippians 1:6 “I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine making request for you all with joy, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ”.

Psalm 27:13-14

“I would have lost heart, unless I had believed
That I would see the goodness of the Lord
In the land of the living.

¹⁴ Wait on the Lord;
Be of good courage,
And He shall strengthen your heart;
Wait, I say, on the Lord!”

Pause and Think...

Below are new excerpts from the nonfiction devotional, Selah: Daily Quotes for Daily Meditation, co-written with my best friend. The Hebrew word, selah, means "to pause and think about".

The book is meant to give readers a nugget-- a thought that compels them to think deeper about a biblical concept.

I often pick a copy off of my shelf and browse through the months until something catches my eye. My usual reaction is: "I needed to read this today".

I'm casually working on a new edition that will make Selah more of a standard devotional than a book of brief original, yet Biblically-inspired quotable phrases. The new version will hopefully include many of the pins that are found in that tab on this site.

Here are a few excerpts from the month of January.

The goodness of God is defined as kind, cordial, benevolent, tenderhearted, and full of good towards mankind. All in all, His unfailing attitude towards all mortal beings is open, friendly, and inclined to give blessings. He takes holy pleasure in the happiness of His children.

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Jeremiah 29:11

How do we reconcile God’s benevolence towards mankind with the calamity, disease, and war so rampant in our time? If God has thoughts of peace towards us, then why do we face times of personal chaos?

Scriptures like Ephesians 6:12, 1 John 3:8, and Romans 8: 1-6 present answers to these questions. The reality of evil, propagated by the devil and his demons, and the condition of sin in mankind are not ignored by God, rather He offers victory to those who believe in the crucifixion and resurrection of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ.  His orientation towards mankind is compassionate, for only a loving God would care enough to take on the flesh of man in order to offer man a way out of earthly darkness and eternal punishment. Certainly, the negatives we face are the consequences of living in a fallen world, where some people are still trapped and destroyed by their spiritual blindness. Blessed are those whose eyes are opened.

-------

We yearn to trust implicitly. We crave the security in knowing that someone loves us enough never to hurt us. That someone is God. (Psalm 143:10)

Romance novels have a huge audience. Our God given yearning for the security of a safe and intimate relationship finds satisfaction within the seductive covers of this genre. Despite the momentary relief that fictional fantasy offers, real life winks at us when the book is finished.

Allusion suppresses the real pain and loneliness that so many people carry. Those that find God and learn how to lean on His invisible bosom find the comfort, safety, and security that no human being or book can truly offer.

-------

Matthew 27:12 says “And while He was being accused by the chief priests and elders, He answered nothing.” Why did Jesus stay silent? Why didn’t he defend himself?

How does a man who has healed, delivered, brought happiness and provided food for multitudes defend himself when his deeds are already known by the accusers and are the very thing they find offensive?

He doesn’t. The blind can’t see or understand anyway. The Bible calls them darkened in their understanding. (Ephesians 4:18)

As far as the redeemed, no matter how often the serpent from the Garden of Eden lies to us about our heavenly Father, we must belief only what He says about himself in Scripture. Our daily experiences, some frustrating and some sorrowful, cannot define God. We must allow our good God to define them.

Fall into Books: Sales

FALLING LEAVES, FALLING PRICES

Clean Indie Reads, the home of Flinch-Free Fiction, is having a Fall Sale
October 5 thru October 10!

Check out each author's sale items below by clicking on their name.

To celebrate, we are having a blog hop where you can learn more about  our authors and their books.

Our bloggers will also be answering the question:

Do the changing seasons influence your writing and/or choice of books to read?

Readers, We'd love you to join this discussion! Feel free to comment on any blog.

From Author Tina Webb:

Hot spiced cider simmers on the stove. I lean against the wall and yawn, still trying to brush off the morning grog. Outside my kitchen window, a few yellow leaves fall to their final resting place on the ground. Autumn is full of color and smells, varying temperatures and delightfully warm desserts. Inspiration comes easily when my senses are fully stimulated. 

While summer is busy with kid activities and DIY projects, autumn provides me a canvas on which my schedule is fixed and therefore time to write comes more easily.

As far as my reading list, it is determined by the books that our home school curriculum has on the syllabus. This year I'm teaching American Literature. The Legend of Sleep Hollow will be followed by short stories by Edgar Allen Poe for this month.

While I love summer - beaches, day trips, and watermelon, there is nothing like snuggling in a fleece blanket while classical or jazz music plays quietly in the background, as the cider simmers and a compelling plot lies at my fingertips.

Thanks for visiting the Clean Indie Reads Blog Hop. Below you will find my featured item as well as links to the other sites on this blog tour. Some authors are offering free giveaways. We appreciate your interest! Book reviews are always very appreciated.
Enjoy your Fall! -Tina

THE FALL INTO BOOK SALE

Readers enter the realm of pre-Adamic Earth -- its unblemished natural splendor, magnificently constructed edifices and its first tenants, celestial beings commissioned by Abba, the Creator to develop this wondrous world. Time is taken to paint such a utopian world. The reader must understand the enormity of what is stolen in order to grieve with the friends that are betrayed and the God who is forsaken. Ironically Daystar’s insecure thoughts are easily empathized with, but when the brutality of sin mutilates the innocent and destroys now-tainted Earth, we solemnly applaud Abba’s fiery anger in the face of evil.
As the book concludes, the evacuation of those who remain loyal to Abba and the brutal destruction of beautiful Earth shouts defeat until Abba announces a plan. http://www.amazon.com/Abbas-Lament-Tina-Webb-ebook/dp/B00EBUKVF4/

“It's a wondrous world you've constructed, w/ the visuals woven in like they are characters” 

 "An excellent book!" "I've not read anything like it before!"

On Sale only on these sites:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/433838

http://www.amazon.com/Abbas-Lament-Tina-Webb-ebook/dp/B00EBUKVF4/

Paperback only $6.99 on Amazon

Clean Indie Reads Blog Hop Schedule
(please note: not all bloggers will be offering giveaways):

Schedule

October 5:

Linda Covella

Mary Ellen Bramwell

Tina Webb

Logan Crowe

October 6:

Tara Fairfield

Barbara A. Martin

Christina Lorenzen

Shanna Hatfield

October 7:

Sally Sue Fleischmann Ember

Chrystal Lynn Miles Gauthier

Zelda Benjamin

October 8:

Kelley Crandall

Jennifer Pitkin

Mari Barnes

October 9:

Sharon Skretting

James DiBenedetto

Melanie Snitker

October 10:

Felicia Rogers

Ruth O’Neil

Debbie Brown

October 11:

Faith Blum

Kristin Wallace

Elizabeth Kaiser

http://lindacovella.com/events-news/clean-indie-reads-fall-sale/

Disclaimer: Comment by 11:59:59 PM Central time on October 10, 2014 for your chance to win. Please leave your email address with your comment. Winners will be contacted by the blog owner by October 13, 2014. Only one entry per ISP address. The contest is open to international readers unless stated by the blog owner. No purchase necessary to enter. Odds of winning depend on number of entries received. The giveaway is the sole responsibility of the blogger. Clean Indie Reads is in no way responsible for providing prizes during this blog hop. Void where prohibited

Blog Posts on GraceNFaith4U

I have had the privilege of writing a few blog posts for http://graceandfaith4u.com/.  I’d like to share these posts with you.

In My Tear Stained Shoulder, I share my faith journey supporting my unmarried best friend who had waiting for “the one” for many years.

“Not long ago I sat on her couch, my arm around her shoulder, as she wept. The longing for marriage never left her. It only succumbed to temporary band-aids of divine longsuffering. My shoulder had been drenched with her tears many, many times. This time was no different. I sat and comforted her with my presence, my arm and my silence.”

A month before this post, she met a guy and I’m happy to say that the wedding was Sept 5, 2014. http://graceandfaith4u.com/posts/my-tear-stained-shoulder-by-tina-webb-2/

My guest post, Light The Way, discusses our internal cry when life puts new situations and challenges before us and our fears beg us to retreat into our comfort zones.

“Although our fears beckon us to stay put in places or seasons of comfort and security, we have a divine mandate for progress. We must not sit idly allowing our souls to stagnate with the familiar. We are made to venture into the unknown”. 

http://graceandfaith4u.com/posts/light-the-way-by-tina-webb/

The post features the single “Light The Way” by Calie Garrett and City Church Worship. Available on ITunes:    

My third post, Reflection: Would God Endorse My Books? highlights the challenge of Christian writers to allow the content of their work to be culturally relevant without compromising their God-centered conscience. In reality, when looking at the whole canon of Scripture, a writer realizes that:

 “The Bible has all sorts of stories with all sorts of ratings. However, they all have one thing in common- they reflect the opinion of God on a subject. Consider the Song of Solomon in the Old Testament. Paragraphs in this poetic book would make some of you blush. There are underlying meanings to certain passages that would be given an R rating according to our standards today.”

http://graceandfaith4u.com/posts/reflections-would-god-endorse-my-books-by-tina-webb/

Survival: A Literary Theme and Present Day Reality presented the timely subject of survival in a global environment of war, pandemics, and economic instability. As a child and teenager I was always attracted to books whose characters struggled to either stay alive or not have their sense of purpose and identity stolen by a community that stressed conformity. Whether the setting is Europe during the Holocaust, the volatile Jim Crow South, or an island in the Caribbean, these books speak to “our human need for death to be overcome by life, struggle to be overcome by victory, and weakness to be overcome by strength.”

“…there is also a foreboding in my soul as I watch the news about Iraqi Christians, African children abandoned by mothers dying of Aids or taken by rampaging militants. Sometimes I quickly turn my ears when I hear people talk about food storage and emergency preparedness. Yet I remember 9-11 and the plots of my youth.”

Click here to read post: http://graceandfaith4u.com/posts/survival-a-literary-theme-and-present-day-reality-by-tina-webb/

I hope you enjoy these articles. Please take time to read the other posts on http://graceandfaith4u.com/ by other wonderful writers.

Ages and Stages, Full Series

I appreciate all of you who took the time to read various posts in the Ages and Stages Series. Here are the links to each post:

Part 1 Ages and Stages 
http://beforethebeginningbook.blogspot.com/2014/05/ages-and-stages-part-1.html

Part 2 Who Holds the Trump Card: God or me? 
http://beforethebeginningbook.blogspot.com/2014/05/part-2-ages-and-stages.html

Part 3 Potty or Parent Training 
http://beforethebeginningbook.blogspot.com/2014/06/potty-or-parent-training-part-3-of-ages.html
Part 4 Mommy or Me: Who is first? 
http://beforethebeginningbook.blogspot.com/2014/07/ages-and-stages-part-4-mommy-or-me-who.html

Part 5 Perfect Parent? Not! 
http://beforethebeginningbook.blogspot.com/2014/08/ages-and-stages-part-5-perfect-parent.html

Enjoy and pass along!

Ages and Stages Part 5 Perfect Parent? Not!

Perfect Parent? Not!

It’s great to see the reception that this blog series, “Ages and Stages” has received.  The 4000+ views tell me that we, as parents, desire a sense of camaraderie and affirmation. We will never be perfect parents, but we can always be perfecting our parenting.

I wasn’t sure what to write for this last post, but sure enough a few conversations with my adult children brought to light a subject that all parents need to face at some time: wounds of the past.

Once my children became young adults I hoped that opportunities would become available for them to reconcile anything in their past that caused them struggle. I didn’t want them to carry baggage of childhood rejection or adolescent confusion into their adulthood. While we don’t have to do anything to guarantee our children’s physical maturity--nature does that—we do need to do a few things to guarantee our children’s emotional maturity.

Conversations this past week with my adult children were hard. To hear the stories of fear and loneliness; rejection and unclear teaching about relating to the opposite sex; and self-imposed isolation and emotional suppression shocked and saddened me. I never knew. This may seem hard to believe since I am a home educator who is pretty much around her kids all of the time.  How can a child be lonely in a house full of people?

Physical proximity does not mean emotional intimacy. In our culture we bond via internet and texting. Those on the other side cannot look into our eyes and see the reality of our souls. Another cultural challenge is our frenetic lifestyles. We can be so busy! I’ve learned that more often than not, we must take the time to knock on our child's or teen’s door, and enter their world.  We need to talk - no, listen to them, expecting at first to be met with the phrase, ‘I’m fine’. But we must keep knocking and making ourselves available; not just to be cheerleaders at sporting events or ballet recitals, but to be shoulders to cry on and hands to pray with.

Unfortunately, most of us did not get this as children and teens. We entered parenthood with handicaps and didn’t even realize it.

Long ago, I heard someone say that we can only do the best we can and we must trust God to fill in the rest. This is the truth. We are not perfect. Hopefully we will tell our kids that when they are young! Aging as a parent has to do less with our numerical ages and more with our emotional health. Do we react or do we respond? Do we admit when we are wrong or do we play the blame game? Do we suppress our own emotions and deny our own weaknesses, or do we present ourselves as clueless and thankful grace-recipients on a journey to learn how to love well.

Blessings to you and your family! Thanks for reading some snapshots of my life as a parent who is learning as she goes.

Psalm 27:10 When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take care of me.

Psalm 147:3 He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.

Malachi 4:2 But to you who fear My name the Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings; and you shall go out and grow fat like stall-fed calves.

Lord, You are Jehovah-Rapha, God our Healer. Heal the minds and emotions of our children so that they can move forward into the next stages of their lives without hindrance. Comfort our aching hearts as we acknowledge our failures and mistakes over the years. Remind us of Your promise that healing, restoration and satisfying life come to those who humble themselves before You. We love You God and we are thankful for Your tender mercies.