God I look to you

On Monday past, while I was thinking of all God has done, I couldn't help but fight the thoughts of what was still left to be done. I felt myself getting a bit twisted (code for stressed), so decided to shift back to my help. my source. [btw: I guess the emotional roller coaster from last week isn't quite done.]

I spoke out loud..."Lord I am looking to you and I will not allow myself to be overwhelmed."

With the declaration of that statement, this song came flooding back to me and I burst into song. For those of you who have NOT had the privilege to hear me sing, count yourself blessed! :) With the singing came the peace. Oh I long to live continuously with that sense of peace. Call me what you like, but I'll take peace over muscle spasms in my mouth (clenching & grinding my teeth) and/or shoulder aches that burn anyday.

Whatever the situation, whatever the calling --no matter how BIG....know that He is our rock (Psalm 91:2), He is our strength (Psalm 28:7/Isaiah 12:2), our peace (Ephesians 2:14/John 14:27), our joy (John 15:11). He is the God most high. We can put our belief, our faith, our trust in Him, knowing that He won't ever leave us nor will He let us down.


Grace peace and love,
Gia

Remaining focused

Last week was interesting. I got some indicators in the past month that my beloved and fairly new laptop was having some problems...one of which was "blue screen of death". After a quick google search last Monday, I realized that I needed to really investigate this matter. What I learned was that my hard drive was corrupted (?) I'm not sure if that was the term used, but regardless, I needed a new one....and fast before this unstable one crashed!

It is funny how, when you are stressed, how the smallest of things become major. Now, in all fairness, as a full time graduate student who is about to propose a dissertation based on research and courses from the past three years, (that are all stored on said computer), I think I legitimately had a reason to have a mini-freak out but I knew that this was so much more than that.

The very cool part of this week though, was the fact that I never once lost it. 

I began a journaling challenge about 3 weeks ago (Girlfriends in God).  Essentially, I record how God has shown up in my life each day [sudden glory moments] and since I began that, I've been more aware to ASK God to show up in specific areas. Then at the beginning of each day, I reflect and carefully review how God responded to each request from the previous day.

It also made me more aware of some moments as they are happening...I was able to smile and nod when I recognized God's hand in it. I was more aware to look for God showing up (remember my post about expectancy).  Those were the coolest...experiencing a "sudden glory moment" and recognizing it for what it is at that point.

This week was no different. As I learned more and more of what I was facing, I presented it to God each morning and asked for clarity.

Can I say, that each step of the way, I got answers. clearly. 

What it also did was minimize my anxiety about the challenge I was facing. I'll be honest and share that although it may have minimized anxiety about the computer situation, I still had other lessons to learn (part two to come)... In any event, the week was THAT much better because each day, I took my cares and requests to God and then looked for Him to show up and/or reveal the answer.

How was your week last week? Any lessons learned? Better yet...what were your glory moments?

Grace peace and love,
Gia

It's Christmas!

Well...so it's about a month and some days away from the actual day we celebrate Christmas but in our apartment this past weekend, it surely seemed like Christmas sans the Christmas tree I guess.

I'm a firm believer in putting my time and my money where my heart is. As you've read...my heart is with the kids of Timothy Project.  A couple weeks ago, I pitched the idea of shoebox Christmas (or did I just develop it).  The point is, I felt very strongly that each child should have something to open on Christmas (since they celebrate Christmas) AND to push the limit, this shouldn't be something that the community supports. It should come from the members of the Timothy Project team.

The catch is, there are currently 26 children apart of Timothy Guyana and maybe about 10 non-Guyanese members...this inevitably meant...some of us were going to have to take more than just one kid. Because the majority of the members are in fact unemployed full-time students, we set a very reasonable cap for this initiative and made the announcement. It was well received and we had some members who took as many as 6 kids!?! 

Awesomeness!

Star giftwrapper, your truly, ended up having to wrap about 70%  of the gifts which was interesting in and of itself because the boxes couldn't be sealed. This occured Friday night after we drove around collecting the gifts (reverse-Santa). Then, the next day, we drove 8 hours (4 hours each leg) to Toronto to drop off the gifts and send them off...

Fun times indeed. Here are some pics from the two days...

boxes all stuffed and wrapped and ready to be loaded in the car

Schantal's back trunk...looking a lot like Christmas!

last minute finishing touches

 we had to get creative with some of the boxes that didn't have a top that came off, so we wrapped the bottom and then tied it all together with a lovely bow.  Those are what you see on the top of the box as we began to pack it...

This process was also interesting. We had planned to purchase a barrell but with all these boxes that was not going to work. However, there was another option...a large cardboard box which worked out to be about the same cost and maybe get there a couple days earlier. The box was the largest they had and we had maybe about 1-2 inches of space left. 

Definitely a God-thing since we just let everyone find their own shoeboxes.

 The ride back was nice. It was a beautiful Fall day. I felt this truck was smiling at us.

And as we got closer home, the sunset was our guide

...just look at the beauty of what our God made!

Grace peace and love,

Gia