Open Letter

Wow, has it been a week already?  Check out Traded Dreams for the details of the Open Letter Campaign and link up!


Dear Self,

The days are fleeting.  Your children are growing up right before your eyes.  Don't waste your days.  Spend more days like you did today - at the park, enjoying the warm sunshine and clear cold air, laughing with your daughter, watching your boys run and throw rocks and build "sand cackles."

God has blessed you with a wild and beautiful place to live.  A place where the sky is so blue it is almost blinding.  A place where the greens and browns mix with the earthy reds and form a wilderness that is home to all sorts of creatures.  The place where coyotes, javelina, and bobcats roam free right outside your front door.  

You are leading a life that so many dream about.  Just over a year ago, you lived here:

Now, you live here:

Vastly different, yet both declare the glory of the One who created the universe.  Never take your life for granted, there are so many who don't know where their next meal is coming from.  Serve those God has placed in your life.  Work diligently to advocate for the least of these.  Most of all - LOVE - it covers a multitude of sin.  Love is the thing that sets us apart.  It is the most important of all the commandments.  Without it, you are a resounding gong and a clanging symbol.  Nothing you say means anything if you don't have love.

Never allow yourself to be a slave any longer to sin.  You are no longer under the law, but under grace.  (Romans 6:14)  There are no "rules" save one in this life as a follower of Christ.  Love.  If you do that with abandon, all the rest falls into place.  Love must be active, it must have hands and feet.  It is not with your mouth, but with your actions that you demonstrate this most freeing of all actions.  Love - it is what drove Jesus to the cross.  It was what spilled out within His very blood.

Demonstrate it so that the world may know the One whom you love most.  Ooze it from your very pores, so that your family, your friends, and the world may see that this Jesus who you follow can use anyone - anyone.  He delights in using the weak to confound the strong.  He delights in your dependence on Him.

Use His strength to love your husband, your children, and any and every one who crosses your path.  Don't hold back.

Never forget how far you have come.  When the days get long, the laundry piles up, the attitudes are big and the tempers are short - remember that there is One who was willing to die for you.  One to whom you can take all of your hurts, your pains, and your struggles.  One who knows your heart.  He knows how much you desire to serve Him completely, He knows how your heart aches for those orphans that haunt your dreams.  He knows what holds you back.  He knows that inch by inch you are scraping towards Him - fingernails digging in - sometimes torn, bloody and scarred by life.

He knows and He cares.

So, just for today, don't worry about whether you have anything tangible to show for how you spent your time.  Today remember that the laughter, the play, the memories made, the reveling in His creation was enough.  It mattered.  It all matters.  Every day screams of the holiness of God.  Every day can be a testimony to His glory.

Today, live thankful.  Live love.