Starting up!

 I have had so many thoughts going on in my head for a while now that I thought I would try writing them down to see if that helped sort them out.  I have been thinking about doing this for a while.  

I have been reading a friend's blog as she has journeyed through the women who have influenced her in her life.  As I was reading the posts she made, it made me think of how blessed I have been in my life with the women that God gave me to help me become the woman I am.

It starts with the blessings of my family.  My story is one of simplicity.  I grew up in a Christian home and was in church by the time I was three weeks old! (Granted, it WAS Christmas day, but still...)  I remember spending the night at my grandparents house and my grandma would have her Bible on the table beside her chair.  I remember waking up and finding my mom in the living room with her Bible and notebook.  Those memories showed me what a joy it is to start the day soaking up God's Word. These also gave me the foundation that when a sweet lady in my neighborhood hosted all of the children for a Good News Club each week, I knew what she was talking about when she shared the gospel.  I also knew that I had to go to my parents and pray with them.  I was seven years old.   I went to that club until I was in junior high, when I taught the missionary story for her.  

Then, comes high school.  Now, I don't have any rebellious stories to tell.  I was a goody two shoes.  I hated disappointing my parents.  That is when I met my second mother.  She was the youth pastor's wife.  We would have sleepovers at her house, do a craft, and inevitably, there would be a stuffed animal hanging. Sunday mornings, she would be up in the choir loft, and the youth would sit together.  But Heaven help us if she caught one of us talking.  The hairy eyeball would come out in full force.  I mean dead in your tracks, nothing was going to save you from it.  There was NO hiding from it!  Funny thing is, even today, as a grown woman, I still can be on the end of the hairy eyeball when I go back home to visit!  And it still scares me!!

When I was in second grade, God placed someone in my life that would be my accountability partner, my sister, my life line, my deepest friendship that to this day, I still count her sister.  We have been friends for thirty years (YIKES!!) and I don't think there is anyone who knows me like she does.  We have such a connection that at any given moment, when God brings her to mind, or me to hers, that the majority of the time, the other person is going through something and needs prayer.  We have learned to stop what we are doing, pray immediately, and then when we are off work, call.  It never ceases to amaze me that we are connected through all the miles by our Great God!  

Then, ten years ago, God placed a straight laced, uptight, Northerner in the South.  To say I experienced culture shock, would be putting it mildly.  By Christmas, I was ready to leave this foreign land and go back to the safe and familiar.  God had other plans.  I stayed and became involved in the church that I still attend to this day.  I met some amazing women of whom I am still close to today.  I joined the choir a year or so later, and met even more amazing women.  One of whom, helped break me out of my shell so much, that I don't recognize the woman I was!  She makes me laugh when I need it (especially at myself!)  Through her, I have learned not to take life too seriously :) 

So, yes, my story is simple, but I know that I am beyond blessed with the family that God has placed in, both biologically and spiritually.  The women that have helped shape me, mold me, and guide me are more numerous than what I have written about here, but there will be more!