I AM...

Today, I awoke feeling blessed.
  

• I am blessed to be married to a man who holds me even in his sleep.
• I am blessed to have three wonderful kids who are healthy and who like spending time with me (for the moment!)
• I am blessed to have grown up in a loving family and have parents who were hard workers and who taught me how to enjoy working hard.
• I am blessed to have a beautiful home to live in...with my own horses right next door.  
• I am blessed to have dreams of mine come to fruition.
• I am blessed to have good health and sleep soundly at night.
• I am blessed to be able to read, type, do arithmetic, and form semi-coherent thoughts on things.
• I am blessed to feel emotions  - joy, sadness, disappointment, you fill in the blank.
• I am blessed to live in the United States of America.
• I am blessed to have the freedom to choose and seek and explore my faith in God.

• And the list goes on and on and on.

"I am..."  -- in the next moment...the feeling of being blessed and thankful could turn into...I am -- hungry. It could turn into...I am -- happy, overwhelmed, discombobulated...it could turn into...anything really.  Recognition of feelings and emotions.  I choose what to put after the statement "I am".  

Then I think about God stating He is the I AM.  I never really thought of it like this before.  I always thought of putting a noun his statement....not adjectives for some reason.  God stating He is the I AM --  could mean there is nothing that He isn't or hasn't been (with a noun afterwards).  But if I put an adjective after his I AM, that means there is no feeling He hasn't experienced.  No emotion unfelt.  So...if by chance my personal "I am" turns negative...He can relate.  When it turns positively positive (like this morning) ...He can relate.  


I am...grateful for that truth.  So...what do you choose to put after your "I am..." today?

Weebles Wobble

  Remember the toy in the 1970's - -the Weebles?  I can hear the commercial slogan in my head "Weebles Wobble but they don't fall down."  It brings back many childhood memories and now makes me think as an adult -- how cool would it be to wobble or come dangerously close to falling and yet spring back upright again and not fall down!

I have been thinking about resilience lately:  what makes some people resilient and others not so much.  I have witnessed in my own life people whom I would label, if I could, a Weeble.  I see them rise above or walk within their struggles in creative ways and continue living.  They are heroes in my opinion.  It's not that they aren't down at times or don't complain about their circumstances at times, but I think the difference is that they don't get stuck in their circumstance.  That is the difference.  They don't get stuck.

I have witnessed these people in my life.  They are people who face adversity in many forms:  chronic physical illness, mental illness, hard times of many sorts, relationship fractures, seasons of darkness or distraction or feeling lost, and the list goes on and on.  I am attributing the difference of the Weebles to their "Wobble Factor".  Some people wobble.  Some people fall.  Some people wobble a little.  Some people wobble a lot.  Some people wobble right to the edge of falling over or even lay almost parallel to the ground at times.  Some people get up after falling once or twice.  Some people never get up again.

I have been reading a book by Dr. Brene Brown called The Gifts of Imperfection.  In her studies she has found that there is a connection between hope and resilience.  She says she has found that hope is NOT a feeling.  That is contrary to what I have always thought.  There are scriptures about hope all through the Bible that I have read my whole life.  What she says adds to my thoughts about hope and makes sense.  In her studies she found that hope is a way of thinking (ch.3 page 73).  "Hope happens when:  we have the ability to set realistic goals, we are able to figure out how to achieve those goals including the ability to stay flexible and develop alternative routes, and we believe in ourselves."

This makes sense to me.

I know that in my life I have experienced things that have made me wobble.  Some things made me wobble a little.  Some things have knocked me to the floor.  Some issues were short lived.  Some issues aren't going away anytime soon and might be there forever.  If I focus on the issue itself, life gets dark and I find I lose hope.  But if I can look around my issue -- over, under, around and make a goal of how to live with it, create a plan, put the plan into action and keep it flexible to change under added circumstances, and believe that I can move forward in my life in some positive manner, then in my thinking that is the "Weeble Factor", i.e. resilience which fosters hope.

Weebles Wobble but they don't fall down.


Lamentations 3:21-26 (NKJV)
This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not.  They are new every morning;  Great is Your faithfulness.  "The Lord is my portion", says my soul, "Therefore I hope in Him!".