God Speaks

It is amazing to me that we now have already completed two months of 2008. As a busy mother, wife, daughter, sister, cousin, granddaughter, niece, friend, project manager, and woman, I cannot believe how fast time seems to be slipping by.

These past months, I feel that God has been speaking to me through so many different channels. I am not really sure how to explain what I mean other than saying that in those quite moments or even the not so quiet moments all of a sudden something will spark me to reflect about where I am at and what I am doing. I feel so incredibly blessed to be right where I am at, doing exactly what I am doing. Yes, life is busy and yes I get crabby but I can honestly say that right now I just feel happy about myself and about my life. However, I do have feel that I am struggling with a few things and that may be why God is speaking so loudly to me right now.

Here are some of the things that have sparked my reflection:

The other day I was driving somewhere by myself and I decided to turn on the radio and I was not paying much attention to what was on until this song came on titled Amazing Grace by Chris Tomlin. This song holds a special place in my heart as I sang this at my Grandma's funeral a few years back with my late cousin Michael. Now I am not sure why the radio was on the Christian Music station as I have never listened to that station before but it was and it was an incredible 4.5 minutes of Amazing Grace and reflection about life.

At church last week we had a guest Priest in who was running a retreat at our church. He has an incredible message about forgiveness and letting things go in our life. He talked about a woman who had come in for confession and spilled out that she lost two small children 4o + years prior to the present time. At that time her family forced her to "move on" without letting her have the time she needed to grieve her late children. This woman had been carrying around this anger towards her living children and husband for 40+ years because she did not want to forgive. What a lesson this was to not hold onto anger but to let it go and forgive.

Recently, a very good friend of mine (another mother of triplets) sent me an email about a devotion she had just done in her bible study. It was titled "The Real Me" by Renee Swope ( http://reneeswope.blogspot.com/ ) Here is a little of what this devotion said:

"...Who was I? What did I like to do? Unfortunately, I’d never taken time to answer those questions. Instead, I had tried to be who others wanted or needed me to be. But honestly, I wasn’t very good at it. I often had this uneasy feeling in my heart and a sense of just not being happy. I was also a constant candidate for burn out...

...Isn’t it easy to completely neglect ourselves to meet the needs of everyone around us, and call it self-sacrifice? It sounds godly, but in doing so we risk shutting down a place in our soul where God’s dreams and gifts are waiting to be revealed. It’s not self-seeking but God-seeking to intentionally get to know and become the woman He created you to be."

This devotion really hit home because as a mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend, it is so easy to get "busy" with life. I tend to be a people pleaser because I try and avoid confrontation at all costs. I am starting to realize that this is not always the right or healthy thing to do because in avoiding upsetting someone else, I upset myself. As the devotion said, I don't want to risk shutting down that place in my soul where God's dreams and gifts are waiting to be revealed. One of my biggest challenges in life has always been self confidence. I am not sure why this is a challenge but lately I have really been noticing it.

Just last week at work the Project Manager that I am working with just looked at me and said "No More Nicole...we now proceed with CONFIDENCE"! Wow, what a truly revealing moment for me. I am a highly educated, smart woman. I am the mother of three amazing children that happen to be all the same age. I have a husband who loves me and has the utmost confidence in me, I have parents who have always believed in me, I have many friends from all aspects of life. I have the biggest support system around me. WHERE IS MY CONFIDENCE? Just the other day I was cleaning out my junk drawer. I found a note from one of my friends that said this "Nik...you have always been marked for greatness, but you can't get there until you can make peace with yourself" WOW! This was another one of those moments where I felt like God was speaking to me again. This note was at least 8 years old.

One of my friends who happens to be 11 years older than me told me last week that confidence will come with experience. She said that she remembers feeling exactly the same way in her early thirties. This was great comfort to me. I know I won't gain all of this confidence in just one day but now that I am working on it I hope it will start to come.

God is speaking and I am listening. I want to be the woman, mother, wife, friend, etc. that he put me on this earth to be.

“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together
in my mother's womb.” Psalm 139:13 (NIV)