Vocation Here and Now

One of my favorite things to talk and think about during Christmas, is Mary, the Mother of Jesus and her complete submission to God and His plan for her. 

I, myself have a really hard time trying to figure out what God's plan for me is. The great thing though, is I do not need to figure it out. God already has it laid out in front of Him since the beginning of time. I would like to share some details about my struggle with Christ's plan for my life. Of course it deals with relationships, so I am sorry for being redundant, but I hope this is something that some of you could relate to.

In the course of about four years, I have very seriously liked 3 guys. Pathetic I know.  Each time, I invested way too much of my emotions and thoughts into them, so in turn my heart was broken and it got worse each time. My biggest desire in life has always been to be a wife and a mom. I want to be able to keep a lovely home for my husband, to love and cherish him, to support him and encourage him in his walk with Christ. Eventually, I would love to do the same with my children and drown them in love and teach them the even stronger love that Christ has for them. But when I look at my history with guys, and how so many of my friends have boyfriends or a plethora of guys talking to them when they are not even interested in marrying for a long time, it really hurts. I wonder if I am ugly or weird in some way, too preachy or to flirty or anything else that is unattractive. After I figured out the last guy I liked clearly didn't feel the same way and after a period of dealing with the heartbreak, I decided that I am now too scared to like anyone for a very long time. I am sick and tired of my heart getting broken and all of the drama and stress that comes with liking someone. It took so much out of me. I know that God has not revealed the right man yet, but I trust He will.

So in the mean time, I am learning how to fully submit to Christ and trust in his plan for me. Just like Mary, His plan might not be what I would like, but I know His plan is more marvelous than I could ever imagine. I need to focus on today and what Christ is calling me to do today and that is to be a student, daughter, sister, aunt, friend and witness for Jesus.


²⁹ Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. ³⁰ But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. ³¹ You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. ³² He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High....³⁴ “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”... ³⁷ For no word from God will ever fail.”
³⁸ “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her."

Luke 1: assorted verses

Joy and blessings this Christmas! 

Mel :) 

Flawless Beauty

Hello beautiful people! Hope this post finds you all doing well, lavishing yourself in the joy and peace our God grants us each day :) 

Earlier this week, my town had it's first big snow. It was so beautiful, coming down continuously and smooth. It definitely was beginning to look a lot like Christmas :) The ugly, dead and brown grass was slowly covered by the pure white of the thick snow. The woods behind my house turned from a creepy, dirty, dead place to a winter wonderland. 

This snow-covered scene is a perfect picture of what Christ has done for us as sinners. He came to a sin corrupted world as an innocent baby. He lived a life of perfectness and took our place on the cross and endured the most excruciating pain that there was. 

By Jesus' death, we are made righteous, (right with) and holy, (set apart) in order that, by the grace of God, we might enjoy eternal life with Him in a perfect paradise. He takes all that is dead and dirty in us and covers it to make us as white as snow. 

“Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. - Isaiah 1:18

Enjoy being clean and free from your sins this day and always! 

Mel :) 

His Presence

Good afternoon! Hope everyone has had a good week so far :) I am so excited to share with you today in hopes that it will give you comfort and peace. 

At my school, we have chapel every Tuesday and Thursday. It is always something I look forward to. It gives me joy to worship and learn with my friends and peers. Well like I touched on yesterday, I had a rough day. My heart was broken and I was having a tug-of-war battle between feeling stupid and being angry towards another. I was mad one minute and the next was balling my eyes out asking myself what I did wrong. 

Sadly, before I turned to the peace and strength of Christ, I relied on myself and ended up inflicting myself with physical pain to numb the mental confusion and pain. Now I have a mark to remind me that I cannot handle life on my own, but only by the grace of God am I going to come out of the storm. Because I relied on my own, failing strength, I didn't feel God presence. I shut Him out and I fell as a result. Later that night I prayed he would enable me to trust in His plan and to give me peace and help me through and to turn to Him as a first option. 

Well today He really spoke to me. Like literally. Chapel today was about restoring relationships and praying for God's guidance in our relationships and trusting in His plan for our lives even if it is not what we had in mind. Once again I started to cry, however this time it was tears of joy! I felt Christ there with me. He knew I was struggling and he cares because He loves me forever. He wanted me to know His presence in my life to never give up on Him. It gave me so much peace and I know I constantly need that reminder because I continually forget. 

Christ is there for all of you and He will never leave you. He cares about every hair on your head and He has you in the palm of His hand until eternity. 

Happy Advent!
Mel :) 

Answers

To start off, I would like to apologize for not posting in forever! To be real, I just didn't have any good content and I didn't want to be repetitive. Finally today, the Lord has placed something in my heart that I think He would like me to share. It stems from something very personal that I have been going through. It is heartbreak. Real joyful and positive I know right? Well, eventually it will turn out joyful. I am sure of it!

During the season of Christmas, a big thing on our minds is gifts. What we should get for our family and friends and what we want from our family and friends. We kind of do the same thing with God sometimes. We ask Him for things. It could be something materialistic, or it could be something like peace, joy or comfort. Those three in particular are things I pray for a lot. Sometimes, though, we receive answers that we don't want. Like "no" or maybe the answers never come at all. 

Recently I received the answer "no". It was extremely hard and I blamed myself for even asking or wishing for what I asked God for. It caused my heart to break and streams of tears to run down my face. I thought to myself " you idiot! why even consider that a possibility!". I didn't thank God that He gave me an answer at all. It was all about me. What I did wrong instead of what God was doing in my life. My mom put it this way " God gives us one of two answers: yes or I have something better. Which, if you are more pessimistic, you can think of that as no, or you can be optimistic and anticipate and trust that God has an amazing plan in store! 

This is also fitting because it is the season of Advent, which means the "coming". So as we wait for the coming of our Savior, Jesus, so we wait on those answers and trust in whatever God has in mind! 

Blessings to you this Advent Season! 
Mel :)

Contentment and Awe

It's hard to be content. That is just a reality that everyone faces. We always want more and what we have is never good enough. For some it might be they need the newest technology, for others it might be achieving that 4.0 grade average, for me it's learning how to be content with out a significant other and waiting for the perfect one God has in store. 

But what are we supposed to to while we wait for that special man or women, or instead of whining that we can't afford the new iPhone 7? Well today I found contentment in the world and people around me. For English we sat outside to write a description of what we saw, felt, heard and smelled. It was so fulfilling! I looked around and ultimately felt God right there beside me. I was in awe of His creation and how beautiful everything was. 

I can be content because I have so much! Why rest on the one thing I don't have when I have a thousand other blessings? I am in complete awe of my Savior when I look at those blessings, big and small. I am not missing out. I can see the evidence of Christ providing for more than my daily bread when I focus on the positive. 

Look around you today and see everything that God has given you! 

Blessings to you all! 
Mel :) 

Emotional Wirlwind

Being a teenage girl is hard enough when I have to deal with the ups and downs and trying to decipher what are real emotions and what are just part of growing up.  

About a week ago I had one of the most insane emotional whirlwinds I have ever had. My mind felt like it was filled with slush and it was sloshing around and I couldn't think straight. I was fighting against my emotions. I felt guilty about some of them and I just wanted to silence my mind. My body ached and I had streams of tears coming down my face in the middle of English class as my friends watched me and wondered what was going on. 

I honestly didn't care at the time that I was crying in front of my class. Now as I think back on that day it is totally embarrassing and I don't know what was going on. One moment I was crying all over my A&P notes and the next I was laughing at a joke my teacher told. 

To be real, I haven't completely gotten over some of those emotions. I don't know when I will get closer to the answers that I want, but I do know that the Lord is leading me where I need to go. It might be a scary ride, but He is holding me in His hand through it all. He won't leave me and He won't leave you. Christ the Lord has a plan for you. You might have to go through some pretty intense storms, but it's going to be worth it! 

Blessings to you this week!

In His peace, Mel :) 

Pursued

Gosh it has been a hot minute since I last posted and today I am just going to run away with my thoughts. I'm sorry if some or any of this does not make sense, but I hope I can get my thoughts across to you all.

As some of you might already know, I have a passion for learning and teaching the purpose of dating, how to do it in a God-pleasing way and how to enable it to fit to each individual. I hope I can not only sympathize with some of you but also empathize with you too.

I know from personal experience that it can be hard to let someone pursue you and by someone I mean letting a guy pursue a girl ( if you are a guy and you are reading this, do not leave! You can learn from this too). I have been taught my whole life that I should never chase after a boy but instead let him chase after me. Well let me tell you, that's a lot easier said than done. As soon as I felt a guy reaching out to me in a "more-than-friend kinda way ( or so I thought), I would go right after that. It was exhausting and frustrating and it usually ended up in me scaring the poor guy away.

What could I expect from approaching the situation that way? Of course guys wouldn't like us girls coming right after them. God created men and women to be very different from each other. Part of how He created men was to desire have to "catch the girl", not to have her run right up to him with her eyelashes fluttering.
That is not the way to go about things. Instead we, as young women need let ourselves be pursued. If a guys really likes us and wants us he will go out of his way to make us feel special or to pay attention to us. 

It's the same when it comes to us and God. We don't need to do anything to be wanted by Him. He already does love us and He gave up His Son to make His love known to us.  I love the passage in Ephesians 5 that shows husbands and wives how to love like Christ and His church love. ²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her ²⁶ to make her holy, cleansing^[b] her by the washing with water through the word, ²⁷ and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. ²⁸ In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 

Hope this passage spoke to you and blessed you. 

In His love, Melody