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I’ve been sleeping weird lately.  I’ve battled issues with insomnia for years and when I do sleep I toss and turn all night.  I rarely get restful sleep.  The past few nights I’ve been sleeping lightly and having weird dreams I can’t remember.

As I was lying in bed last night I just prayed that God would allow me to get some sleep, restful sleep.

He didn’t allow that to happen.

Sometimes when God says no to a prayer request it’s easy to get and understand why God probably said no.  In others like asking for sleep I just don’t get it.

My prayers last night just didn’t consist of me and my sleep.  God brought a continuous flow of people to mind to pray for as I awaited the bliss of dreamland.

Alece – Alece is just going through a lot of crap.  Her Thrive Africa center in South Africa was hit by a tornado.  She’s dealing with the chance of having to let her SA Nationals go that work at Thrive due to lack of funding.  All on top of the personal stuff she’s trying to deal with.

Jenny – Jenny’s come to be a great friend over Twitter & blogging the last month or so.  She and her husband John are leaving for Burundi in a couple weeks.

Anne – Anne is a world traveler extraordinaire and speaking guru.  Since January she’s been to Haiti, Moldova, and Russia serving and ministering and learning.  During her trip to Moldova & Russia she got sick.  Quite sick.  A sick that sent her home early on a jet plane.  Getting home to find out she had a Mono virus.  She has spent the last couple weeks resting at home with her husband & kitties and yesterday boarded a plane to speak at Catalyst West Coast.  This woman is like the Energizer Bunny.

Kelli – Kelli got a new job yesterday.  Which is exciting.  She has two precious (and sometimes precocious) children.  Last year they moved from Michigan to Southern California {can you say culture shock??}.

Crystal – I’ve only started following Crystal on Twitter fairly recently.  She’s seven years sober from a porn addiction.  This week she started tackling another addiction – food.  God just really laid on my heart that she would seek Him and find her sustenance in Him rather than food.

Just because for some reason God didn’t allow my body to get the sleep I would have liked doesn’t mean He didn’t hear my pray or that for the women above.  He hears and answer’s accordingly.  I refuse to lose hope just because I didn’t get an answer to prayer I would have liked.

I’m a lot more like him than I thought I was.  Just a short while ago I caught myself laughing the exact way he laughs.  In some ways I wish I was more like him.

Him……is my brother.  My younger by 22 months, 20 days brother.

I didn’t always like him.  We fought growing up.  A lot.  Oh sure I loved him the way a sister always loves her brother.  You mess with him you mess with me.

There were the times he’d hit me in the back just because he was my brother.  He always called me hucky puck, made fun of me, and spent way to much time in the bathroom (hiding from doing the dishes on his night).

He’s grown up a lot since then.

And so have I.

Now he has a beautiful, sweet wife and three rascally, kind, charming little boys that constantly steal my heart.

He loves his family unabashedly and God even more than that.

At (almost) 33 he’s trying to get into the police academy and become a police officer in their little city.

He makes me proud to be his sister.

For some reason he comes to mind today.  Those kids we were 15-20 years ago are long gone.  Today we are friends.  I like that.

Imagine…

Sometime in the future the US Government – including the majority both sides of the political aisle / including the president, no matter republican/conservative or democrat/liberal all agreeing – decides that the US has an over population problem.  They institute a law that says you can only have one child.  If you already have children by law you cannot have any more.  What would you do?

Now say you or your wife gets pregnant.  You already have children which have been grandfathered into being protected against the consequences of breaking the law.  What do you do?  Do you have the child and hide it like Moses mother hid him?  Taking the risk of being found out and facing huge fines, you & your spouse jail time leaving your children to the care of family or worse government protection and sustainment?  What would you do if your have one child and it’s a girl unable to carry on your family name, unable to provide for you and your spouse later in life?  Do you place them in an orphanage and hope for the best?  Do you go against every moral, righteous cell in your being and have an abortion or place them in a dark corner unfed to slowly die.  Or abandon them in the back alley, drown them in a river/lake?

What would you do?

This scenario and these images are graphic.  We can’t imagine the US moving in this direction.  We can’t imagine that a parent would do this to their child (often the mother being the one to commit the act).  However, this very act – abandoning, killing an infant – goes on this very day in our world.

Infanticide is currently practiced in China, India, and Africa. In urban populaces gender-selective abortion is practiced.  Choosing male children, aborting females.

Infanticide and gender-selective abortion are not talked about.  Are not brought to light in the eye of the public.  We may be aware it happens but do we really know?  Do we know that infant girls are drowned in rivers because having a boy is preferred for status within community, because having a daughter means expensive dowries in the future.    Because a son (in rural areas) can work to support you when you are too old to do so yourself.

In a discussion with Shawn on Sunday we talked about this.  I said that the practice of infanticide makes me angry, pisses me off.  He commented that I don’t get this angry about abortion.  And I don’t.  Abortion takes a life that hasn’t been born, while infanticide murders (blatantly) a child that has taken breath – which according to critics for abortion say is when life starts.  Don’t get me wrong I think abortion is wrong, I don’t support it at all.  But I think in this day and age abortion is a tired topic.  People on both sides of the argument have grown tired of the fight while not budging in their stance.  But like I said in the previous paragraph it just isn’t talked about.

Infanticide is often illegal, but still practiced.  There needs to be a voice for these girls, these children.

For your reference here are some links with more information:

Wiki – Infanticide Selective-Sex Abortion

Gendercide.Org

Disciple The Nations Alliance Part 1 /  Part 2

The Economist – The War on Baby Girls:  Gendercide

Update: I was turned onto these posts. Thanks to Elora.

Daily Mail – Gendercide 1 /   Gendercide 2

For the last few weeks I’ve been digging in repeatedly to James.  God is teaching me a lot and I’m trying to be a willing, flexible student.  Getting rid of sin and doing that 180 from where my heart started at isn’t always easy.  One thing I noticed on my last read through James was the repeated word steadfast.  It has also repeatedly come up in the chapters I’ve been reading in Pslams.

The dictionary defines steadfast:

As much as I enjoy the freedom to go on Facebook and Twitter again there was a blessed solitude in not.  Quietness.  Peace.

I feel the need to ease back into them.  Not to immerse myself in the hustle and bustle of people I know and those I don’t.  It’s daunting.  Seeing all those unread tweets and updates.

The truth is I really don’t want to go back there.

To the place I was before, where I allowed these (in reality) stupid things to become ultimate in my life.  I cared more about what others were saying than what Jesus had to tell me.  Jesus doesn’t tweet, I have to go to the Bible to get His “updates”.

So, I’m fearful I’ll go back there.  To her.  I’m afraid at times to even open them up because I really don’t want to get sucked back in.

I don’t feel like I’m supposed to leave Facebook and/or Twitter.  I appreciate being able to connect/reconnect with friends via both.  To glean 140 (or less) characters of wisdom.  To know instantly that someone needs prayer and be able to lift them up at that moment.  I really just don’t want to go back there.

So I’m going at this slowly.  I hope to not be on as much as I used to be.  I plan also to take fasts from both in the future.  Just to make sure my heart is still aligned with where it SHOULD be.  If you don’t see me don’t worry.  DM or email me.  Check in on me.  Keep me accountable.

Hi all.  A short (kinda long) video just sharing about the last month and a half.  I hope you all had a wonderful Easter celebrating Jesus and the salvation His death provided us.

I filmed this last night after we got home from church. After I was done I remembered other things I’d written out in my head days ago that flitted away and didn’t make it in to the video.  Even now after remembering them they are gone.

My heart is always torn when I think about the sacrifice Christ made on the cross.  If I’m going to be honest it can be difficult at times to accept that He loves me and wanted fellowship & reconciliation with me so much that He endured a shameful, excruciating death.  The nails and thorns and bones and rocks and leather that pierced His unmarred, blemish free flesh was done for the sanctification and redemption of you and I.

On that dark, gruesome day of Passover as the blood of sheep and goats was spilled over the altar in the temple, Genesis 3:15 was fulfilled.  Victory was tasted as the angels danced for joy in Heaven.

This was a bulletin Shawn did for Easter a few years ago.  It is one of my all time favorite things he’s designed.  Hope your Easter is not only fun and blessed, but also filled with introspect of Christ’s sacrifice for you.

I also recommend reading/checking out this post by Alece over at Grit and Glory.

Today I received news that we’d been waiting to arrive since the beginning of the year.  My Granny (mom’s mom) was diagnosed with a second round of Lymphoma late last year.  She’d been in remission for about three years.  In January her oncologist and my mom decided to stop chemo.  Really over the last month her health has gotten worse.  My mom believes she may have had a small stroke which didn’t help matters.

We’d been praying that God would take her and cease her suffering.  She’d grown delusional and her internal clock was backwards, thinking it was evening in the morning and vice versa.  She’d stopped eating, and was was receiving Morphine & Adivan (anti-anxiety) every two hours.  Yesterday she was transferred to hospice.

Today, she is with Jesus.

She was often insufferable.  She’d call when we were little and lecture us on money and sex.  But she loved.

She was very legalistic in her Christian faith.  She’d ask everyone if they knew Jesus.  Even though she may not have been tactful in witnessing she cared more about the souls of the lost than most Christians.

In the last nine years she gained three great grandsons, a granddaughter-in-law and a grandson-in-law.

Today she saw Jesus face-to-face.  She worships at His feet.

On Sunday as we celebrate the resurrection of our most magnificent Savior she will celebrate with Him.  I can’t think of a better way to celebrate Easter.

Eva (Greenfield) Gonzalez • December 31, 1932 – March 31, 2010

Yesterday was the first day in four months that I wore a normal shoe without arch supports in my left shoe or an orthodic boot.

I’ve learned a few things about walking in the last few months.

Sometimes, it takes patience.
Sometimes, it’s painful.
Sometimes, you need a little help.

Sometimes, taking a step is scary.

In the past week and pretty much the last few months I keep turning over and over in my head not walking in fear.  Conversations with Shawn, blog posts other people have posted.  It keeps coming back like a little bouncy ball.

I’m learning that I’m not as acceptable to change as I thought I was.  Maybe it’s the skeptic that has grown in me since marrying a pessimist.  I obviously don’t want to walk in fear.  We are commanded not to fear.

Fear is not only immobilizing but can be convoluted also.  What we chalk up to “waiting on God” in many cases is fear.  Fear to take a step into the unknown.  Fear of leaving our comfort zone.

When we walk in fear we do not walk in joy or faith.  We are relying on ourselves and our ability to discern a situation.  We cannot grow when we walk in fear.

So what are our next steps?

To walk justly and in mercy.  To trust my steps to be ordained by Him.  Placing my cares, fears, worries, troubles, late night wonderments at His feet.

Learning to not walk in fear is part of our sanctification.  That road is is not always easy, but it must be walked.

One of our neighbors recently acquired a dog.

This dog…likes to bark.

A lot!!!

Last night said dog started barking about 10 PM.  I was able to fall asleep but was woken up at 2 AM to barking – which I could hear through my ear plugs.  The dog continued to bark for the next two hours.  **sigh** Yeah.  We called the police but apparently here in Phoenix Animal Control handles these situations and they apparently have no one on duty at 3 in the morning (imagine that…sleeping at 3 AM.)

In the midst of all this lack of sleep I couldn’t help but think of this bit by comedian Brian Regan, and how at the time it was SO not funny.  Bad words may have been uttered from my lips.

Shawn and I discussed this morning that we think the owner has started working nights, because any considerate, person in their right mind would have yelled at the dog and gotten them to stop barking.  If we can figure out which neighbor I’m considering going over and politely letting him know his dog is barking all night and can he do something about it.  Praying for sleep tonight.