Soulful Sunday 001

📖"'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,' declares the LORD" Isaiah 55:8📖

I babysat O 👧🏼last night & she wanted her toe nails painted💅🏻She refused to let me paint them because she wanted to do them herself💁🏼

However, the hand of a 3 year old is only so steady for toenail painting & after getting purple glitter nail polish all over her big toe, she looked at me with big eyes & a sheepish grin 😬& asked, "hey...can you paint my nails?? It's kind of tricky."🙈

I couldn't help but laugh😂 before agreeing to take control because it reminded me of my relationship with God💖

How many times have I said, "Nahhh I got this", caused a mess, sheepishly grinned, & finally surrendered to God?? More than I can count. & there God is on His throne. Probably chuckling a little. Just waiting for me to realize I need Him for the specific will He has for my life☝🏽️I need Him for every step I take👣 I need Him because without Him I just make a big mess🙃

Jesus, you are good🙌🏽 #lilyssoulfood

Stages of flowers

Flowers go through 6️⃣ stages. And when they bloom it doesn't last forever because they're getting ready 🌻 for the next stage. 

What I love about flowers is that they're always reproducing, blooming, and changing with the 🍃 seasons.

It's very easy for me to "bloom" 🌺 and then think, "well..it's over..now what??" 🤔 I'm learning 📖 that preconceptions produce misconceptions! While planning for the future and looking 👀 ahead is needed for us to have hope/faith🙏🏾, it's also SO important to be faithful in the little stages. 

Example: how could I ever start singing 🎙in front of thousands of people if I can't sing in front of a group of 14 people? I had to start small - AND even CONTINUE to sing for smaller groups because those groups matter too!! - in order to get to the bigger audiences. 

I know it's spring🌺, but maybe you feel like you're still in a "winter" 🌨 season of your life. Do not worry! Glean from this season 🍃 of your life. Take each moment 👣 step by step. 

I love this quote, "Life must be learned backwards, but lived forward." 👣💖

The oak

We used to know what heaven was like before we came to earth. But one day God placed us inside our mother's womb and said, "I am creating you. Grow." And so we come to this earth and grow from tiny little babies to adults.

Oak trees grow up and grow more seeds and those seeds fall and disperse. Time will tell whether or not the fallen seed will take root, be planted, and bloom or get caught in the thorns and die.

The same is with us. We all have a seed planted inside of us. We're all growing. We all have the same 24 hours in a day. We all have the same God who loves us and wants us to call Him Father. So now the choice is up to you. Will you flourish or be a fruitless tree?

Balance

{balance} yesterday was amazing because I had a balanced day. I went from being in my word, to working on my stuff, having a great conversation with my friend Anna, to voting in the primaries for the first time, to babysitting O, to spending an hour in the park, going to get a cupcake, coming back to the park for an hour, visiting the boys & girls club, and ending my day with dinner (invited by a new group of friends/team I'm working with to do Bible studies for the Southwood kids). It may seem like a lot, and every now and then I had to answer an email, but it was such a beautiful day because I spent time in the word. It was a beautiful day because I was actually so focused on God's glory. And not my circumstances. 

Probably one of my favorite moments yesterday was when I was on a swing and I was looking at the sky and all of a sudden I felt the Holy Spirit warm me up and whisper, "pray". And so I prayed. I prayed for this country, I prayed for the presidential candidates, I prayed for peace & joy over His people. 

There's so much evil going on in politics, but guess what? God is still good! God is still sovereign! God STILL reigns!!! It's a truth that I never want to forget. If He needs to send us quail and manna, oh He WILL! 

Overall, yesterday was a beautiful day. The only times I didn't "enjoy" were probably the times I had to drive because I tend to overthink when I drive and create unrealistic scenarios in my mind, yet yesterday I still did not feel overwhelmed in thought by lies from the enemy. 

Final thoughts, do not compare yourself because comparing yourself is selfish. It's time you're wasting not living in your full potential. 

Be balanced. Eat and drink from the Father. Play outside on nice days. Be a good citizen. Give someone a hug. Text a friend and ask if you can pray for them. 

When you're battling between good things happening while experiencing troubling times

Long title..I know. But you know those moments..or days, or weeks actually, where you're just not feeling it. It seems like everything is bringing you down. You feel sadness, down, etc. YET good things keep happening to you! It's can be SO hard to understand, I know!

To be honest the past couple of weeks have been very cloudy and dull. I asked God to close the doors in certain areas of my life and to please shut the ones that I couldn't see needed to be closed. As soon as I prayed that, I kid you not those prayers were literally answered. God is God and I'm human and while I did mean that prayer, I wasn't expecting it. I wasn't expecting that the doors I that were wide open and the doors that I'd propped open myself (thinking that I was some amazing go-getter) to be slammed shut in my face. I'm tellin ya..I experienced all the feels. 

I've always said that I'm not one for crying, but I've cried way more than I care to admit in the past two weeks. Yet through the pain and desperation, I've felt the sensation of peace and joy. I keep trying to push them down because, well hello, for some reason it's easier to be sad and negative (although apparently it takes more muscles to frown). My soul agrees that these doors needed to be shut, but oh my little beating heart has been confused.

BUT GOD IS STILL GOD! He is so good. While I've been experiencing these troubling times, He has also opened the doors in areas of my life I didn't think needed to be open, in areas where I've doubted, in areas where I feel like I fail. In one day, even though I didn't feel like I was at my best, I still had 3 different doors open. I was blown away by the grace I received that day. 

I was watching a video from Alex Beadon and she was saying how "the more opportunities you take/make/break/fail at/etc, the more you learn and are able to experience success." Life is like this: You have an endless supply of basketballs and if you only give yourself 5 shots to experience "good breaks" or success and you don't make any of those shots, you're going to feel like a failure because you haven't allowed yourself to keep shooting.

Too many times we think we're only meant to be in one place for the rest of our lives. We think that we only have a set number of times to succeed at something. The hard, cold truth is that not everything you try your hand at is going to flourish. By testing things out, you'll discern what is correct.

Babe, keep going. Keep pushing. Keep believing. There are still AMAZING and DIVINE opportunities lined up for your life. Just keep in mind that there will be doors that won't open because they aren't meant to be open. Keep in mind that life changes and moves rapidly, even if we don't want it to.

"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another." Anatole France

xo,
Lily