In the Mail, Two Giveaways and Encouragement!

First order of business for the day is to let Joan know her JP is on the way!  Randi over at I Have To Say stocks an incredible Etsy store with all kinds of delicious and scrumptious eye candy for your consumption.  She is a real sweetheart and I highly recommend her for your online fabric needs!  When you read her profile, you'll walk away encouraged and impressed by all that she manages to get done in her day!

You can find her at

http://ihavetosay.typepad.com/randi/

Secondly, Quilt Dad is having a giveaway and today is the last day to sign up.

Visit him here

http://www.quiltdad.com/

for a chance to win a sweet and lovely pillow

and some awesomely cool puppets

This blog, and some other things, has encouraged me to teach the boys to sew.  They've shown interest, and my traditional upbringing is being overthrown by the tiny rebel that lives inside!  I'll share as we go along what the boyos come up with!

Thirdly, Jen over at Little Scraps of Happiness is having a super sweet giveaway.

http://littlescrapsofhappiness.blogspot.com/2009/10/how-about-giveaway.html

She has the cutest little girls and her blog is so much fun to read.  So, head on over for a chance to win and meet a new friend!

Fourthly,

we went to an incredible concert last night by Michael Card.  A Christian recording artist we've liked ever since hubby pumpkin and I started dating.  He spoke of the meaning of the word Master in the time of Christ.  It literally meant "one who owns" and how black slaves who were Christians during that dark time of history in the US took up the title for the Lord as a way of letting themselves (and their human owners) know exactly Who owned them.

The NT is full of references of believers being slaves to Christ.  A Biblical imagery of slavery as a metaphor for Christian discipleship.  Because when we who call ourselves Christians really think about it...get past our 21st century, Western thinking...He really does "own" us.  He bought and paid for us.  And He understood what it meant to be a slave as the Suffering Servant Savior.

To the point of exhaustion.  To the point of exasperation.  Total frustration.  Emotionally and physically draining Himself for those He love and loved Him...and even for those He loved, but didn't love Him.

I know, as a mom-daughter-friend-wife-sister-stranger to those around me exactly how He felt back then, and how He must feel now sometimes.  We are consistently pushed to the brink of our last breath.  The last handhold on our rope.  We are toe edged on the brink of walking away from it all...

but we don't.  And we won't because the same thing that held Him to the Cross when He could have simply stepped down and walked away, holds us to this life and the people we share it with.

Love.

Not the soap opera kind of love.  Not the "Oh, I just love your new sweater!" kind of love.

But a commitment to the very best for those around me no matter what the personal cost is to me.  And that is very hard to do friends.  Very hard.  Especially when we feel isolated and alone (alone as you can be with a house full of kids), neglected, forgotten and taken advantage of.

Aren't these things He felt too.  That He "chained" Himself to...not for His sake, but ours?

The early believers understood personal slavery as a way of understanding Christ.  Paul, Peter, Jude and James boasted about this form of existence.  Something I think we forget, I know I forget, is that we are all slaves.  To something.  The question we must ask ourselves is who or what we are we willing to choose as our Master?

The world?  Our careers?  Ourselves? 

A sister and I talked off and on yesterday.  I had no words of encouragment other than "It will be okay."  Which I know, it won't be.  Not much ever gets better, but our attitudes about situations can change and things end up regaining their balance and Life goes on.  Struggles are chances for us to shake off a little more of "us" and put on a little more of Him.  It's hard.  And depressing.  And frustrating, exhausting, maddening and enraging.

But, so very worth it if you call the One Who suffered willingly, lovingly, completely, and totally "Master".  So, pull up your bootstraps sisters and brothers.  The road is rocky and muddy in spots.  But it's one we've been called to walk.  And one that was walked for us.  For Love, because of Love.

Hang in there.  It really won't get better, but you will.  Better at understanding Who Christ is, was, and will be.  The Savior Who took on the form of a slave so that all we suffer here does have purpose, meaning and hope.

blessings...