Amazing Friday...

For those that do not want to read about my belief in Christ enjoy clicking on this link to awesome Peeps pictures.  I love what people think to do with Peeps. 

https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&hl=en&source=hp&biw=1837&bih=1182&q=peeps&gbv=2&oq=Peep&aq=0&aqi=g2g-z1g7&aql=1&gs_l=img.1.0.0l2j0i3j0l7.3299l4974l0l7988l6l6l1l0l0l0l99l474l5l5l0.cgsbsh.1.

Each year on Good Friday I spend much of my day thinking and considering my faith in Christ and how do I feel about my relationship with Him.  Last week I was given an assignment to create a picture of myself before all the abuse happened.  I tend to go overboard on such assignments.  I decided to download the song "Music Box Dancer."  Then using iMovie I put together a 3 minute video of my own pictures featuring baby animals, ducks, lizards, flowers and other things that to me portrayed the innocence that existed before.  After I completed the piece and reviewed it several times I noted that the only reference to Christ was Christmas decoration pictures.  I pondered on how my intense connection to Christ being my Savior did not come during the light, exuberant, innocent days of my life.  Christ became my connection to life during the dark fear filled nights of my abuse.  In high school, my friends that knew me for years decided to 'save' me from my unChristian religion.  I listened to what they had to say.  I attended church with them.  I heard them out as they bashed my religion.  Then they told me that because of the church I belonged to I wasn't a Christian.  I do believe this quote, "The line between the righteous and the unrighteous is always drawn by the self righteous."  I changed my friends.  KavinCoach was surprised by such a drastic decision at 16 years old.   I will agree with anyone that at age 16 I was already a mess.  I didn't know how big of a mess but I knew that something was very wrong with me.  It was in this time of deep despair that I learned that if you have but a mustard seed of faith you can build a relationship with Christ.  By that early age, I connected with Christ as my Savior.  Because I did not want to stand before Him and tell Him that my life was too hard by committing suicide in my teens; I lived to show Him I could.  Here my friends were mocking and making fun of my life line.  I asked one of them why they were doing this.  "Well, you get so serious."  I ended the conversation with, "It is the only thing I am serious about."  When you have just one precious thing in your life, going overboard to protect it is not a surprising outcome.  I was accused of following blindly.  Not so.  By that time, like every teenager in the world, I doubted everything I was told by my parents.  (I later understood that I should have doubted them more.)  A teacher from church encouraged me to study and learn for myself.  I did.  This wasn't some light undertaking for me.  When I became a young mother and struggled like every young mother does trying to raise her precious babies the 'right' way, my connection to Jesus strengthened as I stumbled and failed by my own brutally high standards.  By the time I was 32 years old, I was almost completely bed ridden.  I could barely take care of myself let alone the precious children in my home.  I was devastated.  I pleaded with God to be released from my nightmare called life.  At this time laying in a darkened room I felt in my heart that God said no.  He wanted me to live.  Christ became my constant companion as I struggled to get out of that hell hole.  Medical doctors had no answers for me so I started to study and pray for my own answers.  I learned for myself the power of the Holy Spirit teaching the truth of all things.  I learned through having cancer that there are professionals that can help when the problem is bigger than I know how to handle.  I was led to a therapist that had the expertise to recognize my problem and teach me what I needed to know.  Through all this, the poem "Footsteps in the Sand" stayed on my refrigerator.  I know by my own experience the depth of meaning when I think of the times when Christ carried me.  Artist portrayed through the centuries Christ carrying a lamb on his shoulders.  Always the lamb is a pristine white and Christ is neat and tidy.  Not my image.  Imagine Christ with his arms and legs scratched and dirty, clothes tattered and ripped with a bedraggled lamb limply hanging in his arms.  His triumphant smile as He recognizes the precious life still existing in the damaged lamb.  He tenderly washes and anoints the lamb's wounds and binds up the broken places.  He nurses the lamb back to health.  I am that lamb and Christ is my Savior.