Hello Blogging World

As you know, I am a sucker for causes especially with little kids and for justice. My heart has been so broken this summer for people and humanity and I saw this post over at one of my "followers" blog's and thought I would share it with you. If you comment on this post, I am going to do a little giveaway and give one of these shirts away through a random selection... It's a good cause and something I am passionate about! So take your chances. I will post who I am getting the shirt for in exactly one week on July 15th. In addition to buying the shirt for one person, I will give $.25 for every comment that I get on this post!

God Bless!

Victoria

UPDATE:

The following rules and regulations apply: YOU can only comment once, However, you may share this post with friends or family and have them comment as well. In order to win the t-shirt, I will need you to provide your e-mail address so I can get your address to mail your t-shirt to you. So please check back on July 15th in order to get back if you don't have a blogger account that displays your e-mail address. If no one claims the shirt within 48 hours I will draw a new name granted, they have not supplied an e-mail address. If I have an e-mail address obviously they will just be directly contacted. If you don't want to win the shirt, you CAN post as anonymous. There will be no anonymous winners. So remember to post your name and I would prefer last initial, or some sort of identifying feature to your comment... So I am able to know it's you! This is all on the honors system, and I am very excited about donating. The reason I did $.25 is because I am hoping that it goes over really well. However, I do have a minimum donation set already if it does not get a ton of comments! I am willing to give my whole paycheck if it comes to that! :] God bless!

Blessed.

All I can say, is that God truly has blessed me with an incredible support system and amazing friends and family. Tonight my heart and life is overwhelmed with love! Sometimes it just takes a little opening of the eyes to remember how truly great life is... Happy Fourth of July! May you all remember the little freedoms and love that you have been given!

Healing

I have been reading a lot and just totally enthralled by God's goodness and I think it's about time I write a post of a mini testimony of what has gone on in my life over the past year or so...

Last year in April, I became deathly ill with sepsis a blood infection that harbored within my port. It was during that time I decided that I would never be healed and God just didn't have that within his plan for me. I was okay with that because it seemed like every prayer service I had gone to I went with the hope of being healed and had nothing in return. I had fallen into a rut that I deserved this healing after being sick for so long.

Then after I got out of the hospital, I was walking with my walker and I had still been struggling with blue/purple legs and difficulty walking. It was during that time I found myself completely submitted to God and just realizing I would live out my life in submission if it was God's will for me. A few days of being out of the hospital, I was invited to a BBQ at a Pastor's house with a worship leader. We all sat around the table and talked about God, and what is going on in our lives and the worship leader talked about his life of not going to college and serving the Lord. I was impressed by his testimony of God's faithfulness. He took interest in my story as a 18 year old young girl, looking pretty healthy on the outside but walking with a walker... I told him as little as possible and tried to dismiss the questions. Truth be known, I was getting uncomfortable and wanted to leave.

Well, as we moved to the living room the boys pulled out their guitars and we went into a time of acoustic worship. I sat on the sidelines of worshipping God and feeling confused. After I had posted this post a few months earlier, and had been in belief that God could and had healed me I felt totally lost and confused when I got sick again in April and I felt as though something had been robbed of me. My confusion was great and I felt as though I was serving what might have been a powerless God. Then the man came over to me and said I would really like to pray for you would that be alright?

I shrugged saying yes, because I felt as though I could take any prayer I could get even though in my heart I didn't think God would even think of healing a girl like myself anymore. I felt unworthy and unloved. Robbed of a miracle... And just at my most desperate time when I had totally sunk into whatever God would have for me and whatever He wanted to do in my life... He showed me that when I submit to Him He does provide. The man laid hands on my legs right where the coldness started and heat returned to my legs! He prayed and prayed like I had never seen before and soon my legs felt more normal than ever. Then when he quit praying he looked up to me and took both of my hands in his. He said, lets see what God can do! With a little hesitation as if to think, God, I do not want to look foolish or make you look bad if I should stumble and fall and am not healed...

I was nervous as to what this could mean. In just a few moments, I took steps with little to no assistance and then I was walking! I was walking without anything at all! As I walked, I knew something was different and I didn't know what it could possibly be. I kept walking around and thinking something is different. That's when I realized, I was walking without any pain at all. It felt heavenly, or the most heavenly I had felt on earth. My body felt like it was brand new and I couldn't believe it. I had been healed by the great and powerful God that we all talk about but don't expect to do miracles. We say God can do these incredible things, yet we do not show others what He can do and we fear actually expecting a miracle. I was healed by the Everlasting God.

As I went to the doctors they started noticing that I was doing better un-explainable amount better. My specialist told me, never have I met a girl in all of my practice who went to death's door: knocked at it, opened it up a little and peered inside, then slammed it shut and walked away as though nothing happened. My heart was beating regularly, my body was functioning at all of the ways it was intended to... And to be honest no one knew why or could explain what had happened.

Then I began to be fearful of sharing my testimony of healing in fear of being mocked or misunderstood and I fell silent. However, a year later, I have lived the life of a healed girl. The more I have discerned God's will for my life and prayed the more I believe God is at an awesome work within my life. There have been times when I have fallen or struggled but today, more than ever, I believe, and know within my heart that I am Lyme disease free! This summer, I have finished taking all of my medicine and went from a girl who was taking 50-60 pills a day and doing IV's to IV free with an empty pill box. My IV antibiotics went off to a third world country this past week to send healing to the people there... I am truly blessed and astounded by the work God has done within my life and in the lives of those around me.

I have found that sometimes we put God in a box, and we make the God we serve a reflection of man instead of us being a reflection of God. I am starting to realize that it's not about having a fallen earth while we're here but it's about bringing God's kingdom to earth. It's about realizing that we're built to expect the supernatural and to begin praying and seeing the supernatural happen here on earth. What is in heaven can be, and should be here on earth. I am a blessed daughter of an incredible King! And I intend to continue living out a testimony of that because most of all, I long to reflect God and his goodness.

Today my life looks pretty average to most... I am working full time and I am running on our college Cross Country team. I am striving to get good grades and do everything I can to glorify God in my every action. However, inside me and those who know my whole story from day one, I can say that God has done an incredible work in my life and the only reason my life looks pretty average today is because God did something pretty supernatural in my life a little over a year ago. And that to me, has been the best gift I could have ever been given.

I felt it was about time that I posted my true and honest testimony on here.

"And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God" Romans 12:2. May we truly be transformed in our lives to pray for the supernatural and live knowing that we serve a God that is greater and His will is powerful and healing.

And when we speak life, life happens, and when we speak healing, healing happens, and when we speak truth, truth happens.

And when we take what we have found to a dead world, we’ll see it come to life again, and when we take what we found to a hopeless world, we’ll see hope come back.

Just a quote to ponder.

It's going to happen.

Tonight after a long day at work I realized, there are going to be things at work that happen that I cannot control... Mostly it was the fact that when people die on our floor it just seems like it is a system and stuff. I realized that once my shift is over my association with the people on the floor is also over. And pretty much every night I come home I forget about half of the connections and communication that has been exchanged that day. I answer hundreds of call lights a shift, each with their own interaction:

Will you silence my IV pole?
Can I have more pain medicine?
Where is my doctor?
What time is my echo?
Would you mind taking me for a walk when you get a chance?
Can you help me on the comode?

Like I said... Each exchange is something individual to the patient's needs... After being a patient many times, I can honestly say I remember my nurses and CA's and I remember the interactions we had. However, as a CA now, I realized once the shift is over unless you were overly combative or extremely ill, or just very obnoxious with the use of your call light, I don't really remember much of the exchanges that happend. Life goes on and soon that person is just a blip in the screen.

It's crazy to think as the world seems to stop for some of my patients, they face surgery in the OR alone or recieve diagnosis of intense diseases... At the end of my shift all of the day slips into a little pocket and will be reached back into when I return to the unit the next work day. For some people, life seems to stop abruptly, they lose a loved one or fear the health of them. People recieve news that their insurance is no longer covering their stay and they will be paying $1,000 a day if they cannot get a safe place to move within the next 24 hours.

People are faced with intense things in the hospital, and we as their care providers are expected to give them compassion but not too much. Show them that they matter- even if it is a false sense of identity as everyone rolls their eyes walking to the patient's room to answer the light...

I guess for me it was a wake up call- I can't do anything about these situations other than be a glimpse of hope and light in the lives of those arond me... However, it's just weird to think- tonight for many of those patients the world came to an abrupt stop they are trapped within the walls of the hospital room. Confined there with the loss of identity and freedom. While for the first time it seems, I am garenteed an exit at the end of my shift... I pray that the patients I come in contact with are able to find hope in the coming days... Most of all, I pray for peace in the rooms I enter no matter what the outcome may be.

Living a life of radical love, and holding up patinets while we clean them and spending an extra few moments at the bedside... I pray for transformation where it can be obtained.

A New Kind of Love

I wanted to write a post about something that I recently experienced that showed me that sometimes our brokenness can create our most beautiful praise.

Recently, I experienced something that changed my heart and physically brought me to tears- something I don't think our "Christian Culture" experiences enough of. That was the out of tune and heartfelt praise that was offered from a small back room of a little church in a small town. The girl's name was Elizabeth. Her praise was apparent and there were only two beings in that room that night as far as I am concerned. The girl's spirit of worship, and our all mighty God receiving her praise.

She sang into a microphone hooked up to what most would consider low class but tonight, was the most high tech karaoke machine around and she belted out the words to The Revelation Song. All of a sudden as she sang out her passion nothing really mattered any more. The only thing that mattered was the place of her heart, and that was a beautiful thing. At first it seemed a little different and then I saw this beautiful woman before me, pure, blameless, and totally wonderful. She was incredible her testimony through song left me speechless. She was in total adoration of a father in heaven.

It's a different kind of love that Elizabeth has for her father in heaven. It's a new kind of worship- it's a worship and love that I can certainly learn from.

As I continue on my journey ministering to the people of our small "city" that we have here in my area I continue to see that maybe it's not so much me opening doors and ministering to them, as it is them ministering to me. May we all continue to be open vessels for the Lord to use.

Reading & Running

Seems like my days have been full of two things lately, reading and running. Which has reminded me that I really love both of them a lot. I have read multiple textbooks start to finish along with other supplemental reading and then reading just for the fun of it. It seems like my brain is about to expand beyond limits!!

Anyways, as I was eating breakfast this morning I found myself digging into a new book: The Notebook of Elbert Hubbard. It's an old book however, it has timeless advice and thoughts within it. It starts out with "Emerson loved the good more than he abhorred evil- Carlyle abhorred evil more than he loved good."

It made me stop a bit as I thought about how that's something I think sometimes we need to work on as a society. We need to remember what is evil and really let ourselves be convicted by the evil that we are faced with but we also need to remember that there is so much good that can be attested to and enjoyed. Then the excerpt goes on to say: "If you should by chance find anything in this book you do not especially like, it is not at all wise to focus your memory on that"

I once read an illustration of how we are to write the bad memories or hurtful ones in the sand and then write the good ones upon rocks. So then as we look back we remember and live with only the good memories and the bad ones are washed away with high tides. However, I think that sometimes we fall into this pit especially myself, where I am writing things on the sand that is practically to the beach houses... As if to say, well God, I will forgive this person when you get water all the way up to the beach houses. However, what I think I must not forget is that it's not really all about when the water hits the message- but why I am holding a grudge. Ephesians 4:32 states: And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God also in Christ forgave you. It makes me wonder how directly I fulfill this on a daily basis... I have found especially in the work setting I am letting some of the biggest annoyances I have found in my co- workers define who they are... I get frustrated and angry and I am not truly reflecting God.

I have really thought about what it looks like to not only be a Christ follower, but someone who is consumed by Christ. If we are truly and fully consumed by Christ, what does that look like? How can we achieve that?

In closing:

"The supreme prayer of my heart is not to be learned, rich, famous, powerful or even good, but simply to be radiant. I desire to radiate health, cheerfulness, calm courage and good- will. I wish to live without hate, whim, jealousy, envy, or fear. I wish to be simple, honest, frank, natural, clean in mind and clean in body, unaddected- to say "I do not know," if it be so, and to meet all men on an absolute equality, to face any obstacle and meet every difficulty unabashed and unafraid. I wish others to live their lives, too, up to their highest, fullest and best. To that end I pray that I may never meddle, interefere, dictate, give advice that is not wanted, or assist when my services are not needed. If I can help people, I'll do it by giving them a chance to help themselves; and if I can uplift or inspire, let it be by example, inference and suggestion, rather than by injunction and dictation. That is to say I desire to be Radiant- to Radiate Life!" -Elbert Hubbard

"Whatever You're Doing" by Sanctus Real - Lyrics

Another song that just hit me really hard... Giving in to something heavenly...