"Mommy, are you done with God?"

This morning as I was trying to catch a few quiet moments with God, my daughter who is two walked in. She asked "Mommy, what are you doing?" I said "I'm talking to God sweetie" she looked around and said ,God isn't here, I told her that he is here and that I was just talking to him for a few minutes. I had my head laid against my bed and she said "but mommy God isn't on your bed." I tried to explain that God is with us everywhere, and asked her to go finish watching her cartoons for a few minutes so I could finish my prayer! I quickly finished my prayer and walked in to the living room where she was sitting. When she saw me she asked if I was done with God. I told her no, I would never be done with God, but she didn't really understand since obviously I had finsihed my talk with God!

In the Beginning...

In the Bible there is a passage that says that HE, God, my Lord, has known me since before I was in my mother's womb. How great is that?! I guess that that is when I started my journey with Jesus. Before I was even born. this brings great joy to my heart. I have always known HIM even when I didn't really know HIM. The first real memories I have of my journey are from when I was about 10. I began attending church with a friend and soon was on the path to following my Lord. I think of my journey as taking a rocky, bumpy path through the woods. Kind of like the nature walks I took as a child. There was a path and as long as you stayed on the path, it was safe and my parents where always in sight. If I stepped off of the path, I could become lost quickly. anyways, back to my church, I soon learned about the Lord and chose to accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I was baptized as a show of my faith. It was a wonderful experience. One I will never forget. I think that when you are young it is easy to believe and to begin your journey with the Lord. As we grow older our wants tend to take over our lives. This happened to me. Somehow as I became a teenager I stepped off of the path. I knew that Jesus was right there on the path and if I stayed on the path he would always be within my sight. Still, I stepped off of the path and became selfish, I stepped back from my faith, because some of the things that I wanted for myself, where not the same things I knew Jesus wanted for me. I chose my wants over his. The thing about God is he already knew that this would be the way for me. I truly believe that this was part of his ultimate plan for my life. I continued this pattern into adulthood. I got pregnant and had my first daughter out of wedlock. Going further and further off the path. I had lost sight of Jesus. Wow, that is a scary reality. When my daughter was about 4 I started dating the man who would become my husband. He was and is my best friend, outside of Jesus that is. We had known each other for about 6 years when we started dating. Back to my story, my husband had taken his own steps off of the path, he to had started to lose sight of Jesus. Like me, he believed, he was saved, but he wasn't really living his life the way God wanted him to live. I know that God chose him for me and me for him. We began to help each other find our way back to the path. We attended church together, only on the holidays that his mom would expect him to attend. Christmas, Easter, Mother's Day. Each time we went to church I felt the pull of the Holy Spirit on my soul. However after we left the church and got back to the day to day, I let that pull I had felt, slip to the back of my mind. It really took 3 years of these once in awhile church visits, those goosebumps I got every time I felt the Holy Spirit, for me to realize that this is where i belonged. that I needed to be in church every Sunday, that I needed Jesus everyday of my life. That my children needed HIM too! (Yes, during this time we had a baby)My husband was feeling the same thing. We decided that we needed to get back on the path. Finally, like a child who had lost sight of her parents, who was frantic, I finally had Jesus back in my sight and felt a rush of relief and happiness. Now that I could see HIM I needed to make up for lost time and catch up with him. You see I don't just want to follow behind Jesus I want my life to be a walk WITH Jesus. For me this is just the beginning of my journey with Jesus. Everyday I try to make up a little ground, become the person HE wants me to be.