Faith over fear

During the past few days, I have been doing some serious soul searching.  I felt the Lord wanted me to blog about something, but I didn't want to do it.  I thought I knew better and didn't act on it.  The time for it came and went and now its too late, for whatever reason, its too late.  Maybe someone out there needed to read about it at that particular time and now that time is past, I don't know.  I only know it's time to move on.  I come to the keypad a more humble and sober me, determined to write about whatever He asks me to, when He asks me to, regardless of the consequences.  The only way I know how to do that is to constantly pray that He take away my fear and replace it with faith.  Its something I've been asking for a lot lately, and He has come through again, big time.  If you don't know me personally, you may not have picked up on the fact that I am a very private person.  So what the heck am I doing blogging, with my thoughts and feelings posted all over the world wide web?  All I know is that it feels like the right thing to do.  The first time I hit the "publish" button to send out a post, my hand was trembling.  And its been that way over and over again.  But I pray and the fear is taken away and faith comes to fill the void, every time.  God loves us and is aware of the details of our lives.  He hears and answers prayers, about the big and the little things.  Here's a post from a few days ago, that I didn't send, because I was busy soul searching.

The girls and I went for an early swim this morning.  I don't like the cold and so in spite of the girls asking me and asking me to come in and swim with them, I usually don't.  Today I was determined to brave the cold, I mean literally, brave the cold.  I said a prayer that I would be able to handle it (yes I know its the tropics and my cold would be considered way warm for some of you, but my cold is my cold and that's just where I'm at).  I waded in before any of the girls and found it wasn't so bad this morning.  Then I noticed I was alone in the water and looked back to shore.  This time it was the girls that were still standing on the sand looking very cold and hesitant about coming in, the opposite of what usually happens on the beach. We stayed in the water for an hour.  About halfway through Mumi (our adopted Finnish grandmother) joined us.  We swapped stories and laughed.  Then we got out and ran home.  Time to hit the books.

 Good morning

 I braved the cold.

 Lovely ironwoods, can't get enough of them.

Mary is ready to go home.