Take My Hand, Lord

He existed before anything else,

and he holds all creation together. 

Colossians 1:17

Today my heart is full. It's an ordinary day where nothing extraordinary has happened. But my heart is so full of Jesus. Do you ever have days where you just feel Him beside you? You may be sitting outside enjoying the sunshine and you feel Him there? Or maybe you've curled up with a good book on this Sunday afternoon and you can feel Him laughing at the funny parts with you. Maybe you feel Him sitting with you as you watch your children play. Maybe you just feel a little lighter today and you're not sure why. It's Him. He's there. This is how I feel today. I feel Him with me. Oh, I know He's always with me because He tells us in His word that he never leaves us or forsakes us. But today, I feel like I could reach out and feel His touch.

I've written the last couple of times on worry and anxiety. I shared with you last time about Alan needing extra hours at work and how God provided those for us. Well, He provided them again this weekend, too. Thank you, Jesus. I was talking with someone at church today about how hard it is to stay up, even when God showed up right on time a week ago. How easy it is to slide back down into the worry pit. I ran across this scripture this week. Psalm 34:4 says, "I sought the Lord and he answered me; He delivered me from all my fears." I love this verse! His promise is that if we seek Him, pray to Him, ask for His help, He will deliver us from our fears. Now, we may need to do this often, but I believe the more we do it, the easier it becomes to release those fears. And then we end up with more days like today...sitting...walking...talking...reading, and we feel Him beside us, and we are freer, lighter, happier. Our hearts are full.

I will share with you that for the last few months I have been asking God to show me what He wants me to do, how He wants me to serve. I have such a passion for people, to make sure everyone hears the gospel. I want so desperately for everyone to experience the blessings and the riches that Jesus has to offer each and every one of us. Sometimes I feel like running outside and asking everybody I see if they know Him. I want to make sure no one misses all the beauty He has to offer us here, on earth, as well as for eternity. I have such a passion in my heart for us to communicate and talk about the things that bother us, the fears and the anxieties, the loneliness, the heartache, the broken relationships, the sadness on days when we see no reason to be sad but we are, the joys, the triumphs, the victories, and I could go on and on. But we need to talk about these things. We need to be there for each other. We need to be the person that says, "I'm here and I care about you". Sometimes we see the outward smile, but on the inside someone is hurting or scared or lonely. 

There have been so many ways God has touched my life - too many to put into words here today. But I want to share them all, because if I do, maybe others will want Him to touch them, too. This is how we spread the good news! Psalm 98:4 says, "Shout to the Lord, all the earth; break out in praise and sing for joy!" Yes! Sing for JOY! 

So today, my heart is full. It's up to us to spread His love and His forgiveness and His salvation. In my devotion one day this week, one sentence jumped out at me more than any other. It's from Jesus Calling and it says, "abandon yourself to Me - My hand is the only thing you can grasp without damaging your soul". 

The verse at the top of this blog is wonderful. God was here before anything else existed and He holds all of creation together. He reaches down to take our hand and we're given the gift of being able to feel His presence. "For I am the Lord, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you." Isaiah 41:13 

Go ahead and take hold of His hand so your fears can vanish. And while you're grabbing onto Him, give your other hand to someone else. They're waiting on you. 

I love you all,

Kacey

Right on Time!

She is clothed in strength and dignity,

and she laughs without fear of the future.

Proverbs 31:25

I have a confession to make. This verse is a favorite, but I must confess that I have not been laughing without fear of the future. I have struggled so much over these last couple of months with what I know to do versus what I'm doing. I know that God tells me not to fear, that He does everything for my good, that He is in control, that I should never worry, that I should cast all my burdens on Him. I know these things and I believe with my whole heart that this is exactly what we should do. But what have I been doing? Worrying, fearing, questioning, asking why and what if, and on and on.

I do struggle with fear and anxiety. Part of me thinks it's just the momma and wife in me....fearing for my boys and my husband, their safety, their health, making good and right choices. But I know in my heart that they are not truly mine. They are God's and I just have the privilege of being their momma and Alan's wife. So I am constantly praying over them while I'm praying over releasing my fear and anxiety. It can be quite the vicious cycle. Part of me thinks it's a result of my cancer journey. My doctor tells me that it's very common after cancer to experience an increase in fear and anxiety, almost like PTSD symptoms. Maybe. There was so much good that came, and still comes, from my walk through cancer, and I want the good to outweigh the bad and scary parts. Part of me thinks it's the enemy. The enemy doesn't want me to have so much trust in the Lord that I can honestly laugh without fear of the future. But it's what I want so desperately. I'm a work in progress.

Here's what God did this week to show me He's got it. He has everything under control. I need not worry.

These past couple of months have been a trying time. My parents, along with Alan, the boys and me, share the home we currently live in. There are lots of stairs and lots of shared spaces. We have purchased some land and are building a new house with no stairs and separate living spaces. We all fully can see God's hand in moving us where we are, as well as where we are going. Looking back, you can literally trace His hand over us. I'm so thankful for this confirmation. Well, a few weeks ago, Alan's job stopped overtime hours completely. These are hours he worked to get some extra money in order to pay for the construction of the new home, as well as the home we're in. We didn't think much of it at first because it's happened before. But after a month, they let all employees know that overtime would not be available for a while, if ever. We still did not worry because we were going to approach this differently...we were going to not worry about the future. Then nothing happened. No extra work came, but the bills kept coming. We started getting antsy and worried and distracted. Alan began looking for other work to fill in the gaps, as did I. Just when we were on the brink of being behind, God stepped in! Alan got a job working on Saturday mornings. This is significant because the one prayer we had was that God would not let extra work interfere with Sundays and us going to church. He did it. Then, God opened overtime hours back up for him last week for two days. That may not seem like much, but those two days were right on time. They were perfect. 

I will say that the hours at Alan's job have again been closed. But what did we learn? God opened something up that man said would be closed. We learned that God has us in His hands. He sees our tears and He hears our prayers and He will never, ever let us fall. It might not look the way we want it to, and it might not seem like enough, but for us, it was enough. It was enough to know that God didn't leave us stranded. It was enough, though, to keep us dependent solely upon Him. He's our refuge. He's our help. He's our solace. He's our everything. I was so moved by this lesson He taught us. It's allowed me to rid myself of other anxiety because He has that, too. Well, I'm able to do that today. I'm still a work in progress. We all are. I'm thankful for His patience. I'm thankful for His love. I'm thankful for His provision. I don't know where the next set of hours are coming from. I don't know how we're going to get from this place to the next one...but God does. He only wants me to know that He has a plan for our good. We need only to trust. But for today, and we're supposed to live only one day at a time...so today, this moment, this minute, I can laugh without fear of the future. As for the minutes, hours and days after this one...I'm working on it. 

I love you all,

Kacey

He Amazes Me!

The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.

Exodus 14:14

I'm not sure why it takes me so long to write. I ask the Lord all the time to give me the words, and I guess sometimes I feel like I need to have something big to write about before I can actually write. What I've come to realize is that the Lord gives me something big every day. Every. Day. He gets me up each morning. He blesses me so abundantly that sometimes there are no words. But today I want to try and find those words. I want to talk about the things that weigh me down and the things that lift me up. I believe that if we continue to focus on the things that lift us up, the things that weigh us down won't seem so heavy.

I need to go back to May of last year. May is the month I have a routine mammogram. Since breast cancer, this day in May is a little stressful. I get the mammogram and then sit in the waiting area and wait for the radiologist to read it. If the doctor sees anything suspicious, I immediately have an ultrasound to check it further. Last May they saw something and I went to ultrasound. Those moments after the ultrasound when you're waiting in the room alone for the nurse to come back and tell you the results are pretty heavy moments. Those are the moments that you relive your entire cancer journey, asking yourself if you think you're strong enough to do it again; wondering, if it's cancer, if it will be worse than the time before. Yes, you pray...actually you beg. You beg God that what the doctor sees is nothing. You beg Him not to make you go down that road again. You beg Him to give you peace and to stop your hands from shaking because you can't seem to stop them on your own. All of these things go through your head in a matter of moments. The nurse is not usually gone for very long, but by the time she returns you've put yourself right back on the same path you thought you just finished. But last May the nurse returned to tell me that everything looked good, it was fine, to come back in six months instead of a year just to make sure. The relief floods all through my body as I begin to thank God for these results. I thank Him and I praise Him. 

Fast forward six months to November and that mammogram check was good. I was in and out and there was nothing to worry about. But...a few weeks ago I found a new lump on my own. It was in the same breast where I had breast cancer and it felt exactly like the lump I found the first time. I immediately called my doctor and she set me up for another mammogram and ultrasound. They said it was fine, that it looked like scar tissue, but it didn't feel right to me. I love my doctor because she knows me so well. She knew before I got to her office that even though it looked good on film, it felt like the first round, and she knew I would be looking for peace. She was right. I was looking for peace. But here's the thing - where was I looking to find it? Of course I had prayed. I had asked God to make the lump be nothing and He did, but the lump was still there. Was my peace coming when I had it removed? Should I have peace in the fact that it looked okay? I knew from past experience that things can look good, but actually be cancer. So with much prayer and my doctor's advice, we decided to remove the lump to be safe and to be sure. She removed it and it was, in fact, scar tissue. It was benign. It was nothing. I needn't have worried at all. But I had worried and I had been searching for peace, and I want to talk about the moment I found it.

I am a person that loves to Praise the Lord. I love to Praise Him through music. Sometimes I love to get in my car for a long drive so I can get my praise on! My car is where I do my loudest and best singing because no one else can here me. :) There's a song by the new Gaither Vocal Band called "You Amaze Me". It talks about ways that God is amazing. It talks about how He lights the morning sky each day and how He holds creation in His hands. It talks about how the oceans crash against the sand behind the boundary of His unseen hand. That is so true...the ocean just stops right at the sand because God's hand is there. In the chorus it talks about how God created the world from nothing - a void of darkness - and how He held dust in His hand, gave it breath and called it man. My favorite line in whole song is this, "the angels that stood by His side must have cried, You amaze me". Oh, I get such a visual of a band of angels standing at the side of God watching Him transform this world from darkness into this beautiful place He gives us. I see that He holds the sun and the moon up in the sky every day and every night for us. I could go on and on about all the ways God amazes me, but what amazes me most is His unfailing, unconditional love He has for us. He sent His son to die for us on a cross. He's created a heaven that is so beautiful we cannot fathom it in our minds. He amazes me.

I heard this song the week I knew I was having this lump removed. I kept playing it over and over and finally I knew what God was trying to tell me. As the verse I've shared above says, "The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still." (Exodus 14:14), He does fight for us. I knew He was fighting for me. I needed to be still and wait on Him. Zephaniah 3:17 says, "The LORD your God in your midst, the Mighty One, will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing". Wow! I love this verse! It says so much about our God, the Mighty One! He loves us. He rejoices over us. He quiets us with His love. This was it...this was my answer...this was my peace. I found it. I pulled into my garage that morning after listening to this song and I just knew - I was ready and prepared to take the journey again if the Lord wanted me to. I surrendered. I surrendered because He is fighting for me. He is by my side every moment of every day. I surrendered because I want to be in His will more than I want anything else, and I knew if that were true, I had to be prepared to walk through that cancer journey again if that was His will. I sat there in the car for a while thanking Him for the ways He loves me. I knew that no matter what, whether another journey through cancer or a cancer free diagnosis, God had it under His wings. Psalm 91:4 is a favorite verse of mine and it says, "He will cover you with his feathers, and under His wings you will find refuge; His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart." His faithfulness! He is faithful and His ways are higher than my ways and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if God chose to send me on another cancer journey He would equip me with what I needed to travel it. And there was my peace. That was the moment I felt His presence and the moment joy flooded through me. I got my peace and my joy back because God is bigger than anything else. He is Jesus Messiah, Name above all Names, Blessed Redeemer, Emmanuel. This surgery was the most peaceful surgery I've had thus far. I knew I was under the wings of God. 

I look at all the ways God amazes me every day. I see God in the smiles of my children because He made me their mom, but I see their daddy and their aunt and their grandparents in them at times. That's God. I see God in the love of my husband. I see His hand upon my life in little ways like putting someone in my path to make me smile. I see God in big ways like being able to look at a situation and literally see His hand resting upon it. I see Him in the sunshine and in the birds singing. I see how He changes flowers into snow and back again time after time. There are countless ways every single day that God can amaze us. We need only to be still and look for them. 

I hope you know the Lord as your Savior. I don't want you to miss all the bountiful blessings He gives us. I want you to be amazed. I want you to find your peace in knowing that He fights for you because He does. He shines down on us and He loves us and He fights for us. He adores us and His will is perfect. I am thankful and I am grateful for the results I got, that cancer has not returned. I praise Him for this. I rejoice in this news. But I also find myself so very grateful for the way He helped me find my peace. I will follow Him anywhere because He knows best. He's radiant and mighty and quiet and loving and I love Him with all that I am. He amazes me!!

I love you all,
Kacey