kids are natural lovers of life!!

I just love watching my kids play!! Especially when given freedom and space to do it!! My boys think the world is their playground, and, well it is. I love seeing them discover new things, and being with them when they experience them! Each individual child is so precious and unique, and adds a different zest and spice to our family! I love hearing them verbalize their thoughts and what captivates their minds- gosh, it's makes me wish I could be a kid again! Well, in a sense lately I do feel like a kid again, because I am experiencing fresh revelation of how I am God's precious daughter! I imagine he looks at me with eyes of love and adoration! Not because I ever did one thing to be lovable, just because I am his child! What a comfort to know I am loved with a Heavenly Love, a love that never fails, or ends, or changes because of anything I do! No, I stand secure in the love of  myFather!  So, as I gaze upon the curious and anticipant eyes of my children in moments like this, I think to myself, God you must really love me, cause the love that wells up in me when I see my kids enjoying life is intense, I just want squish 'em up, kiss 'em and love them, and do all I can to care for them!! I guess we can never underestimate the power of Love!

...a chapter complete!!

God took an oath with Noah never again to flood the earth, he made a promise and gave him a rainbow as a sign of that promise! -so whenever I see a rainbow I think of God's faithfulness!!
The day I observed this particular rainbow was the day the folks (who just bought(might I add officially) our house in Corning) walked through for the second time. Now, at the time, we already had an offer on the house(which we had been trying to sell since spirng of '06), a very weak offer I might add. I happened to be there when they walked through the house and was able to answer their many questions, and found out they too were originally from outside of the Philadelphia area! I thought to myself these guys are gonna end up buying the house.
So right after they left, a fast, and furious intense thunder storm passed through, ever so briefly. And right across, from our house in the huge open horse pasture with nothing but grass, (and horses, of course) and sky was a complete 180 degree rainbow, with every color as bold and bright as could be, and right beside it another partial rainbow. Breathtaking!! (I only wish I got a better photo!) I sensed it was an encouragement from God that this couple would buy the house, offering us a better price than the current offer and a quicker settlement date.
Sure enough, that couple just officially settled the purchase of our home this very afternoon!! What a huge answer to prayer- what a journey of faith and trust in the One who does awesome things! Thank you God, for your kindness, favor, and faithfulness to us - we are so grateful, and so relieved!!!
Thanks to all who prayed, please rejoice with us as we begin a new chapter in our lives!!

Are you missing the joy of grace?

I am so grateful today that I am fully, accepted by God and loved, completely, totally, 100%, no matter what I do, have done or will do. No matter how stupid my hair looks, cause I forgot to look in the mirror on my way to the grocery store, or how completely frumpy and unfashionable I look, despite currently living in the "mainline". It's so fun to laugh at myself now and not care what people think of me, cause I know how wonderful God thinks I am!! I guess I spent too much time in the past worried about other people's impression of me, what a waste of time and energy!! Maybe I spent too much time criticizing and evaluating others as well, a pasttime I care not to continue!! The more I dwell on God's love for me and his grace to me the more I want to give all of myself to HIm -this is truly freeing, wonderful and dare I say easy!! After all he says, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light." So, all these years I have been a struggling Christian, striving to practice the Spiritual disciplines and be a good wife, a good mom, take good care of my home, be a good friend, reach out to people, serve in the church, ....and the list goes on. All those things loomed large over me -how can I do all of it and get it right?! Does anyone hear me on this one? Now I just wake up every day, and say "God what do you have for me today?" -surprisingly his list is much simpler, often there is only relax, chill out and enjoy me! (of course feeding the kids and making certain their lives are not at risk is in there too!) Isn't God amazingly kind, he doesn't expect or demand perfection or high performance of us! And all these years I have been a Christian thinking I am just not getting it right!!!! Well, I wasn't, ha, all I had to "do" was understand his love and grace! How totally cool is that, I mean how refreshing, how freeing!! Yahoo, I just want to dance and jump and do flips(although I won't really try to), or run around in a huge meadow, and sing at the top of my lungs!
My desire for anyone who reads this is, that you wouldn't miss the grace of God! Whatever your current life circumstances, or view of yourself, or others view of you, I would want you to grasp the truth of the gospel, not only has God redeemed you(or maybe your not saved yet, but he can, will, and wants to) he loves you totally and accepts you for YOU!!

On a diet of GRACE

So, lately my husband and I have been listening to Rob Rufus Sermons online daily, together, that in itself is a miraculous thing!(I'll explain why in a later post) He preaches inspiring life giving messages on grace and acceptance and on the promises of God, as well as enjoying God and many other wonderful topics that feed your soul, and spirit. We are getting so saturated in Scripture and the love of God, it makes us giddy! In addition we are loving each other more, and our family is operating more smoothly and we are inspired to live more for God than ever!!
The other night we went to a small group meeting, we hadn't been in months, and Keith led worship -and did a wonderful job, and I really felt the Holy Spirit and was full of joy! After worship we all split up into 2 groups to discuss the book"When Sinners Say I Do" by Dave Harvey. Well, I have not read the book, nor do I care to, I am currently avoiding all "Sin" topics, as I am on a diet of GRACE. Anyway, we were asked a few questions, basically give an example of how your sin affected your marriage relationship. First of all, isn't it obvious we all sin and add conflict to our marriages????? So, people shared their stories, and it semed all we talked about was sin, and how we are the biggest problem in our marriages. I was really struggling the whole time and I wanted to speak against it all, but decided not to. But, everyone seemed so glum and no one offered much hope or joy, or even about the good things God was doing in their marriages. It just seems to me the more you talk about and dwell on your sin, the more you feel bad and are inward focused, rather than upward focused on God and the freedom we have in Christ, he died for ALL of our sins, past, present and future, so we have nothing but hope for our marriages!!!
I was quite grieved when I left -no one in the room shared about the grace of God, no one!! How sad!! Keith and I immediately put on Rob Rufus to shake off the woe and bad feelings -ick. I am so sad that all of my friends in that group aren't experiencing the wonderful, amazing lavish grace of God! (At least not in the full sense of grace that is! And I am not judging anyone nor do I believe there is insincerity amongst these folks in their desire to live for God, just a focus on sin, not on HIm!!)

"Grace....prevents the church from being introverted and preoccupied with rulebook religion(or excessive talk about our sin!) Grace assures you that God has fully accepted you has always loved you and always will.. You are safe and you are free.
God calls you to arise and shine and put on you beautiful garments. Not only that, he calls you to go with good news for the nations, catching the evangelistic passion of Charles Wesley's famous hymn: "Oh, that the world might taste and see -The riches of His Grace! - The arms of love that compass me - Would all mankind embrace. "
Grace should never lead to passivity, but to outrageous adventure, a lifestyle that baffles those who play safe. It threatens the status quo not only of tenative religion, but also of cynical unbelief. It sets the church free to risk all for the praise of him who freely gave all for us." -Terry Virgo, from his book "God's Lavish Grace"

I wanted to add a whole bunch of verses, but my family is all around me now, needing me - oh the joy of being needed!!!

Enjoying God

Today, I woke up with fresh vigor for life, or maybe I was just enjoying God's new mercies he promises for every day. Fresh mercy, yes!! You see I am on a journey from a christian life of performance and condemnation, to knowing God as not a harsh taskmaster, but a loving Father! I guess I would never actually say I thought God was a harsh taskmaster, but ultimately that is how I viewed him based on believing I needed to do things and get things right and not sin in so many ways and when I just couldn't get it right, I would feel guilt and condemnation and think God must not be pleased with me and feel like I couldn't be in his Presence until I had been "good enough" for awhile. Sad isn't it! Well, thankfully God has been revealing himself to me more and more over this past year of many trials, confusion and angst, he is not only good, powerful, faithful, Sovereign, but he accepts me fully for who I am, just as I am, not because of anything I do. Now, I know this seems to be a basic truth of Christianity, however, I never understood that he accepts me fullly and looks at me as he sees Christ, he has imputed to me the perfect righteousness of Christ. So, that means God was satisfied through Christ's death, that sin was punished, his wrath for all sin, all, past present and future sin was poured out on Jesus, so that I can go free from punishment. All God's wrath was laid on Jesus, he has no wrath for me, now that I am in Christ I will only experience God's acceptance love and kindness!!! Despite my failures and shortcomings and foolish decisions, he accepts me and loves me......I never fully understood that! His amazing grace to me for forgiving me freely and accepting me fully!!
Anyway, I have been encouraged by a few pastors and friends to bask in God's glory, and to really pursue understanding his acceptance grace and be so awed by his love and his character and not to worry about pursuing holiness or doing anything, just enjoy Him, continue to be amazed by Him, and live in the joy of discovering the wonder of HIs grace.
This gift of righteousness is so amazing and has caused me to be filled with so much joy that I wanted to share it with my friends and family and whoever else. That is why I am able to title my blog "A joy to be me"!! And to my parents -you named me appropriately, and may joy truly characterise my life more and more over the years. May I continue to revel and marvel in this wonderful God who created the Heavens and the Earth, who said "let there be light" and it was so, who flung the stars into the sky and created the depths of the sea and the heights of space, who knit me perfectly together in my mother's womb, who knows how many hairs are on my head, and how many grains of sand on the beach that we just enjoyed for 2 weeks. Not only all of that but may I continue to grasp all the more fully His Amazing Grace!!

John 8:32 says "You will know the truth and the Truth shall set you free"

Anyway, this is just my current understanding and words, as feeble as they are, I hope it encourages someone. I would highly recommend reading "'God Lavish Grace" by Terry Virgo.

"Enjoying God first leads to enjoying all of life" (Rob Rufus)

promised pics

christian (3 months)









clark (2 years)










caleb (8)










colby (4)

...so beautiful to me!

So, today I was listening to a message by Rob Rufus, on the parable of the prodigal son (if you have never checked out Rob Rufus preaching ,you should you will get addicted!) anyway, before he began a guy shared a bit of a testimony with the church on how he is experiencing so much joy in God's presence for the first time in all his years of being a christian, he then proceeded to sing "you are so beautiful to me, you are so beautiful to me, can't you see, you're everything I hoped for, you're everything I need, you are so beautiful to me......." He was singing this to and about God, and I just thought it was so cool!! I felt happy for this man, in his experience of how wonderful God is to him, and I just wanted to share it!

Keith said, "not to burst your bubble, but people now sing that song as a worship song at churches all over". well I had no idea -but I think it's a good idea!!

When I figure out how to add links, I will put the link to Rob's sermons, but until then you can go to city church international's website and check it out for yourself.

Have a glorious Sunday!!

finally, I am blogging!!!

Today, I am convinced my favorite season is just about here.
My family and I just left Ocean City, NJ -you see we just had a house there for the last 2 weeks. It has been a dream of both my husbands' and mine that we go to the shore in September. And this year we finally got the chance! It's especially wonderful there this time of year, not many other people are there, so we get the beach mostly to ourselves. It's absolutely gorgeous and not hot!!
We thoroughly enjoyed watching our 3 older sons expressing their individuality on the beach. Caleb, our 8 year old, was almost constantly in the waves on his boogie board or learning how to use his new skimmer board. Colby, our 4 year old, would slowly work his way rolling and playing in the shallowest waves down the beach and far away from our base camp(although never too far that we couldn't see him!!). And Clark, our 2 year old, ran to and fro, from us, to his sand toys to sitting at the waters edge splashing and laughing and talking away(to himself, of course). Every now and then he would drift far away( the opposite direction of Colby, of course!) Baby Christian, spent his time, well, sleeping mostly, either on my lap or in the jogger( he is 3 months old). Keith and I would sit in our beach chairs and just repeatedly marvel at how amazing it was to be at the beach in all it's glory and splendor, and gaze at our children, then smile at each other and say "Look at our boys, they are so great, isn't it so fun to see them all having the time of their lives, so carefree...."
What a joy to have had this privilege as a family!! and, as soon as I learn how I will post some pics of the boys