Why Mother’s Day is Hard for a Single

Now, I know that Mother’s Day shouldn’t be a hard holiday for me.

I’m not married and I’m not trying to have a baby.

But it is.

Because on Mother’s Day, the ugly, green-eyed monster called, Jealousy, rears it’s nasty head. And as I smile and say, “Happy Mother’s Day” to my friends with kids, I put on my “church face.”

I nearly lost it, though, on Sunday. I said, “Happy Mother’s Day” to my bestie, who is pregnant with her first and due any day now, and she in turn said, “Happy Mother’s Day” back to me. My auto-response was, “But I’m not a mother yet.” To which she replied, “No, but there is life in you.”

There is life in me. The life I have in me because of Christ, because I chose His Life. This is what the Scriptures say:

For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority. In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. {Colossians 2:9-12, NIV}

We were buried with Him through baptism only to be raised with Him again, putting off our old, Adam life and putting on our new, Christ life! He has given us LIFE so that we may reproduce that life in another.

That could be our children, another family member, a friend or even a stranger. We are to take the seed of faith that has been planted in us, watered and nourished and then plant it in another.

This past Mother’s Day was a reminder that I will have to wait a little while longer to give life to a child whether it be biologically or through adoption. Maybe right now I’m meant to take my faith and plant the seed in the children around me until I become a mother.

If you’re single, how did Mother’s Day affect you, if it did? And who are you planting the seeds of faith in?

National Day of Prayer

Today, May 6th, is the National Day of Prayer here in the United States. It is the 59th annual National Day of Prayer. On the National Day of Prayer website, you can watch a live webcast from Washington, D.C. from 9 a.m. to noon.

If you have DirecTV or cable or satellite provider that has the GodTV channel, you can watch from your home television.

Today, my prayer is for our leadership regardless of whether or not I agree with who is in charge or how they govern my city/county/state/nation. God placed them in a position of power for a reason. I pray that they will find a relationship with God and good Godly counsel. That they will go to God for counsel on the hard things. That they will use Godly discernment in the people they place around them and that if there are those who need to be replaced, that God will bring in the right people.

Lord, I thank You for this nation. Thank You for blessing this nation as You have. Lord, I pray that this nation will again turn to You. That we will turn from our wicked ways, repent and seek Your face and that You will heal this land (2Chronicles 7:14). Lord, I pray that I will continue to seek Your desire for my life. Lord, lead me, guide me. I am not worthy of Your love but you still chose to love me and I thank You for taking me out of the pit of hell that you found me in. In the Mighty name of Jesus, Amen.

What is your prayer today?

Out of sorts

That’s how I’ve been feeling today and yesterday.

Not sure what it’s from but today I missed a meeting that I never miss. And rarely forget for that matter. And if I do forget about, I usually remember in time to make it or be a few minutes late.

I almost feel like I did when I came home from China.

I’m changing in a way that is different from other people in my sphere of influence. And that isn’t always bad. But it is awkward.

It’s uncomfortable. But that’s when God does His best work in us. On Sunday during church service, that’s exactly what I got out of it. That is what I believe God is doing with me now.

With Tread on Trafficking. With my relationship with Him. My relationships with others.

I have to take the awkward, allow God to use it to work in me and then pour out what He has given me into the lives of others. Because when I pour God into someone else’s life, He will give me fresh oil, new revelation.

I pray that what I write here pours His goodness into the lives of others. That what I go through helps someone else to seek Him. To pour out their revelation of God into the life of another.

That is my prayer for me and for you.

Tread on Trafficking has begun!

Saturday was the first day of Tread on Trafficking. I wasn’t feeling very well so I didn’t get to do too much walking and I’ve decided to keep Sunday not only my Sabbath for spiritual reasons but also my Sabbath during Tread on Trafficking. (I need a day of rest from exercise I guess.)

During the next two months, I am going to bring some light to this situation. I know that not many people know about modern day slavery, or for some, they don’t even realize that they are affected by it. (There are, of course, those who know it is happening around them but choose to look the other way.)

This is a worldwide issue. It isn’t just something that happens in Africa or Western Europe or China or anywhere else in the world.

This issue affects the United States, too. Children are sent here from other countries to be housekeepers or cooks or sex slaves. Trafficked children are also children that are adopted from good families who choose not to go through “legitimate” adoption channels.

Americans also touch this by being perpetrators in other countries.

But I will touch on all of these aspects during the next eight weeks. Today I will share with you a definition of child sex trafficking from Love146.

The United Nations ODCCP Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons gives the following for a definition of child trafficking:

the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of deception, of the abuse of power or of position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.

Most children who are at risk of becoming trafficking victims are those who are from poor countries. One scenario that happens frequently is that a parent is approached by a trafficker who will “help” that family out of trouble. The cost is one daughter or son. The family doesn’t always feel like they have a choice. There are other children to take care of, other mouths to feed. I am not a parent and I am not condoning this but only trying to give some insight as to why a parent would choose this for their child.

If you would like to get more information on this issue, a great place to start is Love146.org. In the right hand corner there is the “Learn” button. Click on it and it will bring you to an online booklet that gives more information. If you scroll to the bottom of the page, there are links to more resources on their site. They have extensive film and book lists. There are a couple of books on their list that I would also recommend. In the next few days I will have a Human Trafficking tab with links to other sites of organizations that are doing their part to combat this issue.