On Saturday, I went to Walmart, which is one of my all-time favorite stores, in search of four t-shirts with a superhero on it. Needless to say, as usual, I ended up coming out of the store with more than what I went in for. One of those items was a Crockpot, a.k.a. “Slow-cooker”. Lately, I have tried to become a lot more open to things that I wouldn’t normally try out of fear. You’ll have to stick around for the blog about my fears to understand why. Since I bought it, on sale I might add, I have searched for different recipes to try. Today, I cooked barbeque ribs. The recipe called for the ribs to cook on low for 8-10 hours or on high for 4-6 hours. Of course, I put it on high because I was home sick and didn’t need it to take all day to cook. Being that I knew the time frame it was going to take, it didn’t stop me from checking it, which felt like, to me, every five minutes. When I’m cooking, I’m used to a certain aroma filling the house. While these ribs were in process, I wasn’t smelling that sweet fragrance of the honey barbecue sauce I put on top. Because I knew that the ribs were going to take a long time, I cooked something else in the oven, at the same time I put the ribs on, that I knew would only take an hour to cook, just in case the kids or I became hungry before the ribs were ready. This process helped me today because a lot of times, I find myself doing this in my life.

I am not ashamed to say that I am apart of the “microwave era” or “microwave generation”. We want everything done right away, sometimes without having to wait or work hard for it. And, I can speak for myself, I will try to find something to “help me out while I wait”, which sometimes just becomes a temporary fix and, most of the time, unfulfilling. Where I see this analogy most, is in relationships. I don’t have a long list of qualities that I believe my ideal guy would have, but I do have a list. At times, I will bypass some things that I am not all the way comfortable with for the fact of me not wanting to be alone or, even, passing up who might really be for me. It doesn’t have to only be in dating, but in friendships as well. Another example would be in choosing where to live. My children’s father and I moved in with my mom when our youngest son was born in May of 2013. We tried everything in our power to move out because we knew we needed our own. We took all kinds of risks where it left us broke and, even, got us caught up in a scam. We were willing to make whatever sacrifice needed in order to move out of my mother’s house, even if we could not afford it. We didn’t even have to like the area or the appearance. It was just a place to stay.

I know from my own life’s lessons, you have to be very careful and specific in what you ask God for.  From experience, I have come to the conclusion that if I ask God to help me with my patience, I’m going to end up learning how to wait for something that I so deeply desire. Now, I am learning to wait on God myself. What I do ask for is His guidance and direction, so I won’t be lead astray. God knows my heart and my desires. He knows what I want, and He’s the only one who knows what I need. I’m learning more and more daily to totally depend and trust in Him and His plans for me. My next question would be, what do I do while I wait? I praise and thank Him for what I already have. Be blessed.

Happy October Everyone! It’s amazing how in just three months, 2015 will be over. As the year is coming to a close, I have no choice, but to reflect on the events that have happened this year and ways to have an AWESOME 2016. Last night was the first class of my church’s 30-week 3D Expository Class. The first lesson was about studying and how to do it properly and effectively. My pastor gave GREAT information in a very understanding way. So, my question, at the end of the class, was how do you choose what to study? Growing up, I was told that if you wake up in the middle of the night, God trying to talk to you. I’m not going to lie. I would start out praying and usually would fall asleep, not knowing what else to do or say. Because I did not want it to be to where I was falling asleep on God, I would try to read my BIBLE, but I never knew what to read. The Word Of God has so much information in it that I never knew where to start. It’s funny, now, but I used to say wherever I open that’s what God wants me to read for that day, but I still had no understanding of anything. My pastor told me, in studying, start with your weaknesses and go from there. And it makes all the sense in the world to start off finding what God says about areas that you are weak in.

Last night, I had a dream. Normally, I can’t remember the life-changing dreams ever to tell anybody. Thankfully, I started typing with it still fresh on my mind. In this dream, I, and someone else very close to me, was placed in an old house that was, literally, in the middle of nowhere and was told that we had to find our way back. Normally, in my mind, I would think that whoever placed us here would cover our faces to where we could not see the route, but I saw us being pushed to this old house. After getting our instructions, we tried to walk down the street, going back the same way we got there, and the further we got, the darker it became. We could not see anything but trees. I could not even see my hands and no longer see the house behind us. We stopped realizing that we were getting nowhere fast. By that time, FEAR starts to settle in. In my sleep, I started to feel uncomfortable and afraid, but the dream continued. I started to cry uncontrollably. I realize, now as I type this, that I didn’t scream not one time. The person I was with, screamed the entire time, calling on everyone else, but God. I start to recognize that we were not going to make it out of that place by doing the things that we were so accustomed to doing when feeling like there was no way out of a situation. I, finally, started to pray and asked God to guide us out of this place. Immediately, there was a white light that appeared at the end of the road. We walked toward it. In my sleep, I could feel this PEACE come over my body like no other. The crazy part is, it took not even a minute of walking to get back to where we started out at; where we were pushed. Letting me know, that if we would have just kept walking, instead of stopping, we would have made there. When we arrived, the person that placed us there said, “It took you a shorter time than most people.”

I know as time goes on, I am going to get so many different revelations of this dream. Right now, I’m still in amazement at the PEACE that I felt as I walked toward the LIGHT. It was the most amazing feeling. Having this dream right after going to a BIBLE class that, ultimately, changed my life perspective, made me think more about what my weaknesses are. Most people would, unhesitatingly, think about areas that you sin in on a day-to-day basis. But, for me, some of my weaknesses are: breaking down when I should be believing and trusting, being afraid to make mistakes, and allowing my emotions to take over decisions that I make. Needless to say, these are just a few things that I need to work on in my walk with God. But I feel as I walk closer and closer to and with the LIGHT of the World, I can’t lose. Be Blessed!