I just couldn't love you any more than I already do.

„I just couldn't love you any more than I already do. Unless I could, in which case my heart might explode.“

You know the feeling when you really really care about someone and you realize that you actually LOVE that person?

Meaning that just the thought of making the other person happy, makes you happy. Or when your mind travels from one idea to another of how to let the person know HOW MUCH exactly do you care and love that person?

Liisu sent me the quote a while ago. She might’ve liked the quote or she wanted me to know this about her towards me.

It’s saved in my work inbox as a draft and time to time I go and read it. I’m tempted to delete the draft, since I don’t like something unfinished in my inbox. Yet I can’t. It’s a good reminder of something unreal.

I picture myself saying that to someone. There are few people I’d say that to all the time. But do I actually do it? A slight uncertainty falls on me if the people actually know how much I love them and how my heart might explode if I thought about it just a bit more?

Recently I took a love language test. The 12 is max and this is how I scored:

10 Quality Time
9 Acts of Service
6 Physical Touch

4 Words of Affirmation
1 Receiving Gifts

It was interesting to see those results and I started to think this is quite accurate. Then I thought that how easy it would be to love me if you knew this about me.

I went even further and started to think what would be the best way to show my love to my dearest ones. I got my mom do the test and I was surprised of the results. I’ve known my mom my whole life and yet I didn’t know this little thing how to make her feel loved.

Just yesterday I had to admit that just by thinking about someone, made me want to leave everything and be with the person and never let go.

Sometimes you do your best to love someone, doing the things you’d want someone else do to you but is it what the other one appreciates? Your heart almost explodes from the love you have for the special one, yet the other one thinks you don’t care at all. Cause you just don’t know.

Take time and get to know the person you love. And then really show some LOVE. You’re probably in their lives for a reason. YOU are the special person who’s love counts. Do it. Love. Now.

Clearly...

30 years of marriage.

My parents married THIRTY years ago. They were such beautiful people. And they still are – but you can see the 30 years on their face.

When I was a kid, I loved my mother’s soft hands. Mommy-hands. I could see the wrinkles on them, yet the hands were so soft. They still are – mommy’s stroke on my face is one of the best things in my life.

Now as we are both adult women, it happens rarely, but still does. Now we show our love through other things – through words, kind deeds, smiles.

Just yesterday someone told me that I walk like my mom. Clearly – I’m my mothers’ daughter.

When I was a kid, my dad used to take me in his hands and press his face against mine, even though my face was covered with scabs and it wasn’t that pretty. Dad said, he never cared and only saw how beautiful his daughter is.

Now he never does that. We hug only on special occasion. It makes them so much more valuable. Through the years, my respect towards my dad has grown to the skies. I’ve been told that I’m bold as my dad and that I’ve gotten the organizational and administrative talent as well as guts to perform from my dad. I couldn’t agree more. Clearly – I’m my fathers’ daughter.

As I’m older, I can see their marriage. They’ve had their struggles, as everyone does. Yet I can see how they both love each other to pieces.

One thing that they both have – this selfless serving of others. Doing the little and big things, either together or separately, without asking anything in return.

I love my parents. Clearly – I’m my parents’ child. As are other five wonderful people.

GOOD FRIDAY

How can I be sad on Good Friday when I know why He died for us? How can I be sad for the things He went through, when I know the end result is victorious?

The comic describe pretty well what people in general feel when Good Friday is near. We start to mourn and feel sorry for Jesus and for what He had to go through. I don’t think there’s one bit of regret, bitterness, sadness, anger or hurt in Him for doing what He did. Should we have any of those feelings in us when He doesn’t?

Of course it’s a good reminder of what Jesus did for us but I think it’s the time for a big celebration. We should remember His sacrifice and gift throughout the year. Even more, we should celebrate it throughout the year but we’re human, it’s unnatural to be happy and cheerful and on top of things the WHOLE time. Am I wrong? :P

God is on top and we should be on top with Him. Usually we want to be on top and that is never a good thing and we find ourselves on top of another mountain God didn't give us to conquer. Then we have to come down from that mountain and start climbing the mountain God had picked out for us. Anyways.

We often ask for His forgiveness for all the sin we’ve done. Which is a good thing. But how often do we remember to thank for the forgiveness and Grace we have received already? Do we believe in the freedom we received through Christ’s death?

We need to say it out and believe in it even if we don’t. Little by little we actually will. God will help us on the way.

Oh, Jesus, thank you so much for dying for me. I’m sorry for all the things I’ve done that are not bringing Glory to Your Name. I accept and receive Your Forgiveness and Grace and dwell in it. There’s no greater joy than in You! I love you!

“Shout it out and lift up one voice in worship
Sing it out until all the earth can hear it
Jesus is alive and He saves, He rescues and saves!”

Listen and sing along:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUuVsuxBoqc&feature=relmfu

God's favor on us

So today I woke up to the sound of raindrops. The thought of having my feet wet when going to work, wasn’t very pleasant. I had my coffee in the morning and read a scripture God had given me many months ago and it goes like this:

Psalm 37
New International Version (NIV)

7 Be still before the LORD
and wait patiently for him;
do not fret when people succeed in their ways,
when they carry out their wicked schemes.
8 Refrain from anger and turn from wrath;
do not fret—it leads only to evil.
9 For those who are evil will be destroyed,
but those who hope in the LORD will inherit the land.

Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him. This is exactly what has been growing in me. I’ve heard the same thought through different people, through different songs and through the scripture I’ve heard or read myself.

So when I started to go to work the rain had turned into crazy white wet blizzard. Nono, I did not want to go out but I had to.

So when I stepped into the bus I saw an empty chair right under the window and I sat myself down looking out the window. Looking at the white stupid thing coming down the heavens.

When suddenly I remembered Avatar and the white little floating thingies near the tree of life.

The white thingies landed on people that the tree or the higher power showed favor to or if they were pure or righteous people or something like that, can’t remember and that’s not the point I’m making. Anyways…

I was looking at these huge white snowflakes coming down on people and their faces just like the dudes face on the picture, scared and thinking what is going on?!? Then I thought that this snow is like God telling that He has favored us. He has chosen us, we’re good enough to carry out His plan for this nation or to whom ever.

Just yesterday I watched a sermon by Bill Johnson and he said that he feels that this year, 2012, is a year of promises. This year is different.

My friends – God is favoring us! If we are faithful, He will just give us promise after promise, blessing after blessing and our lives will change for the better as well as the people’s lives we have contact with.

I’m so totally excited of what God will do!

I can win my struggles

So I feel like God is really talking to me a lot these past few months. I think He wanted to talk to me long time ago but I had built a wall of bitterness, sorrow, anger, disappointment, hurt, unfaithfulness, lack of trust between us. I didn’t feel like I had to deal with it because I was still ministering, I had a whole religious life going on. God had to break me to pieces in order to get through to me. He had to break me away from that wall so I could see from a distance that such a wall existed and it is keeping me from my promises and blessings. I didn’t have a bad life before and God still blessed me with everyday needs but the relationship was still broken between us.

God let me go through my worst allergy reaction in my whole life in a foreign country. Just half a year before that people prayed for me in England to be healed. I really wanted to believe that He will heal me, even if it takes time. And then this crazy thing happened.

I was angry, disappointed, hurt by the whole incident. Why, God, why can’t you just heal me, so I could be free from it? Don’t you love me? Don’t you care for me at all? Do you want me to suffer? Can’t you hear the prayers? Don’t I deserve all the promises of healing you have given us? – These were the questions I had in my heart throughout the years of my life. Let’s say at least for the past 13 years. After a while I stopped asking those questions. I stopped asking anything. I stopped. There was no faith, trust or patience to believe in my healing. Well realistically – how long time do you ask for something without getting any response and often see matters to just get worse? You stop.

Yet I was this active religious “Christian” who knew exactly what to do or say not to get caught of what’s really going on. And I managed to fool others and myself. But God can’t be fooled. He sees and knows everything. He can see beneath the surface and He can see the plan for us.

Since I wasn’t strong enough to face my thoughts and feelings, He just did it for me. I’m sure it wasn’t very awesome to see me suffer through the reaction and then finally say all the disappointing thoughts out to Him. At the same time what I see know is that He knew very well what He was doing and how through different people and different ways He started to heal the brokenness in me. You don’t know to fix anything if you can’t see it’s broken, right?

God showed me my brokenness. He showed me the lack of faith I had. He showed me that I had no trust in Him. He showed me how hurt I was that I couldn’t get healed. He also showed me that I had equalized all the negative things in my life with how much God loves me. I’m sure you understand where I’m coming from but you also see that I’m pretty stupid for a 26 year old who has been in the church her whole life and had Jesus living in her heart for 14 years.

So God sent me different people as His ambassadors to “argue” with me and remind me the basic things of God’s unconditional never ending love, His amazing Grace and Forgiveness. God told me through these wonderful people that I know in my mind what these things are, but I don’t know them in my heart.

For many years I tried to earn the love and healing through Bible reading and doing other “religious chores” and got disappointed in myself and in God when I failed in doing the chores I’ve set for myself. I was thinking that how come God doesn’t hear my prayers if I’m so active in church and I have so many responsibilities and I’m helping out at different projects and all. If I’m that active and good person, why weren’t my prayers answered?

God told me to rest. God told me to let go of everything I was doing. I understand that now why He wants me to quit doing all the things I do. He wants to be the one I thank when I’m healed. Otherwise I would just think to myself that yes, I managed to read the Bible enough or pray enough or do this or that enough that it was just something I finally deserved to have. But it doesn’t go like that.

I might me ill for the rest of my life but I need to understand that God still loves me and that this is just one of those things that is in my life that I won’t understand until I go to heaven and get to ask God about it.

The problem here is that do I get to even go to heaven, if I will not trust God to have the perfect life for me? If I stop talking to Him or trusting Him or believing in Him when I don’t get what I want?

I think one of the problems with me is that since the prayer time for me was just sending off the “wish-list” or “to-do-list” and never waiting for the answer if the “lists” are correctly formed. I never took time to just be in His presence sense I didn’t know how to be silent without complaining about my “sad” life. You know?
So now that I have finally started to let my fists drop down and stop fighting for my “promised rights”, I’m ready to start listening of what God has for me. Little by little I see some love filling up my heart. Some new found trust, faith and hope.
What made me write this blog post was this psalm:

Psalm 123

Good News Translation (GNT)

A Prayer for Mercy

Lord, I look up to you,
up to heaven, where you rule.
2 As a servant depends on his master,
as a maid depends on her mistress,
so we will keep looking to you, O Lord our God,
until you have mercy on us.

3 Be merciful to us, Lord, be merciful;
we have been treated with so much contempt.
4 We have been mocked too long by the rich
and scorned by proud oppressors.

I understood that I wanted these words to be mine but they haven’t been. I want to look up to Him until He has His mercy on me but I never looked up long enough. I got distracted and started looking down at the things that were in my life now and instead of looking right at Him, I started to worry about the current situation.
There shouldn’t be any worry if we keep our eyes on the Lord where all good comes from. One thought that hit me today at my church: “Worrying should lit up a warning sign that we don’t have enough faith and trust in God and that we should hurry to go in His presence to get some!”

Ahh, this sums up everything I have to do. The warning sign has been up for many years that I’ve just come accustomed to it and started to live in that constant worry. Has anything gotten any better because of it? Nope – just the worrying bit in my life has increased.

Since I want to be rightful and strong woman of God, I need to take some big steps in changing my current life so that God could build me up and take away everything that would let me go back to my old self that wasn’t any good. I’m sure you’ll hear about it soon. Anyways.

God is good. He loves me. He wants the best for me. I’m just too stupid to let Him love me and bless me. It’s hard to grasp the idea that I don’t have to do anything than just open my heart and receive.

I thank God for His love and His patience to take care of me. To change me, even if it hurts both of us at times.

It took me years of disappointment to get me in that bad place and I’m sure it doesn’t get fixed with a click. I need to learn how to love God and how to let myself to be loved. I need to trust God cause I know it’s the best choice I can make in my life.

This is what I need to grasp and understand with everything I am:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1wZf5trI84&feature=related

The man begged to go with Him.

Today I read the verses Mark 5:18-20, where Jesus heals the guy that had a legion of demons in him. The fact that he was healed was not what got to me. I was more touched by the passages where the guy asked Jesus to stay with Him and Jesus said no and told him to go home and tell his story of what had happened to him.

I found myself in that story. I too often feel that I stay inside the church doors and at home where it's comfortable and everyone speaks the religious language. But God wants us to go out and share what God is doing in our lives. No time to feel comfortable. If we don't share, nothing will happen to us, sure. But that's the point - what's the use of the miracle then? Yes, we'll be well but how much more would it do if we shared it with others and to story itself about God's mercy and power would start living it's own life and affect people I don't even know that hear about it?

This astounds me. Totally awesome that the guy listened to Jesus and went back and told everything Jesus had done ..."and all the people were amazed". :D

Do we even notice the stories in our lives that are to share with others?

Kõrged ootused

Minu suurim „avastus“ viimase poole aasta jooksul – (sõprus)suhe on kahepoolne. Suvest alates olen olnud pahane paari oma sõbra peale, et me üldse ei suhtle ja siis lõpuks veel armukade inimeste peale, kellega nad suhtlevad MINU ASEMEL. Egoist täielik.

Sügisel otsustasin selle probleemiga tegeleda ja suurest ignorantsusest hakkasin süüdistama oma kallist sõpra, et miks Sa üldse aega mu jaoks ei ole võtnud, sõber või asi. Ja siis sain veel pahasemaks, kui selgus, et mu sõber ei saa aru, millest nii suur probleem.

Mul on tark sõber. Selle asemel, et mind vastu sõimata ja minu peale kurjaks saada, ta kutsus mind külla, pärast seda, kui olin öelnud, et me üldse ei suhtle. Selleks aga, et see kutse jõustuks, pidin mina omakorda ütlema aja, millal talle külla minna saan. Jäin vastuse võlgu. Ma ei teadnud, millal mul see aeg on. Seda on vaja teha ja seal on vaja käia ja selle inimesega olen lubanud kokku saada jne jne jne.

Sain aru, et ma ei saa vinguda ja mängida solvunut, kui ma ei ole ise kõik teinud selleks, et olukorda parandada. Ma pean ise ka näitama üles hoolivust ja huvi oma kalli sõbra vastu, mitte eeldama, et kõik tuleb mulle kätte ja kõik tehakse minu eest ära nii nagu tahan ja millal tahan. Egoist olen olnud.

Lisaks suutsin ühele sõbrale haiget teha sellega, et ma kritiseerisin teda koguaeg. Arvasin, et teen talle teene ja aitan teda, kui ütlen talle otse välja, mis ta valesti teeb või mis on tal tegemata või olemata, mähkides selle kriitika „sest-Sa-oled-mu-hea-sõber-ja-ma-tahan-Sulle-parimat“ linasse.

Lõpuks kui sellest rääkisime, sain aru, et olen olnud uskumatult raske inimene, kellega suhelda. Ma olen tahtnud, et mu sõbrad oleksid ideaalsed. Samas kui nad on sellele väga lähedal, satun ise kompleksi, et miks mina nii hea inimene ei ole.

Ise arvan, et lõpuks taandub kõik selleni, et ma pole endaga rahul. Ma sean endale meeletud ootused – mul on peas ideaalne Kristel, keda ma peeglisse vaadates ei näe. See Kristel on kombinatsioon erinevate inimeste parimatest omadustest+ideaalne välimus, mis minu puhul võimalik saaks olla (saledam figuur, pehme ja sile nägu, valgemad hambad, pikemad ja tumedamad ripsmed – nimekiri on pikk).

Mu suurim probleem on aga see, et ma ei ole lasknud Jumalal end armastada. Ma ei ole lasknud seda suurt armastust enda sisse. Ma olen pannud Jumala armastusele mõõdupuu ja selged raamid, kuidas Ta saab oma armastust mulle näidata – anda mulle mees, võtta ära mu allergiad ja muud terviseprobleemid, teha mind imeväel saledamaks, anda hunniku raha jne. Ja kuna ma olen juba proovinud ja läbikukkunud ära teenimast Jumala soosingut palve ja Piiblilugemisega, siis on mul käed ristis rinnal ja ootan lihtsalt ühte suurt pauku, mis mind uskuma paneks ja laseks mul Tema armastust ja armu kogeda.

Heh, Jumalale seda võimalust nii kergesti ei kipu andma, mida sõpradele. Et kui ise astun sammu lähemale, siis sõber astub ka ja suhe aina tugevneb ja paraneb. Ma tean, et Jumal räägib minuga, kui ma olen avatud. Aga millegipärast tahan ma ikka, et kuna Ta on nii Kõikvõimas, et Ta lihtsalt rabaks mind jalust ja teeks mingeid imetrikke, et mu usaldus ja armastus tagasi võita.

Igatahes. Ma ise olen enda jaoks mõelnud, et selleks, et Jumal saaks minuga rääkida ja mu suhe Temaga jälle korda, pean lugema nii ja nii palju Piiblit, palvetama koguaeg, tegema head sinna ja tänna ja veel sada asja. Olen pannud enda ja Jumala suhtele nii kõrged ootused, mida ise pean tegema ja mida Jumal „peaks“ mulle tegema, et ma ei suuda enda osa üldse kättegi võtta. Pettun endas ja siis omakorda Jumalas, et Ta ei tule ikkagist oma imetrikkidega.

Kuulsin kuskilt jutlusest kunagi, et Jumal ei ole trikimees. Ta ei tegele maagiaga. Ta on Kõikvõimas Jumal, kes tahab väga isiklikku suhet iga oma lapsega. Ja nagu Kogujas ütleb – igal asjal on oma aeg ja koht.

Õpin. Olen pidevas liikumises – ikka üles-alla, üles-alla. Samas ka edasi, tahaks loota. Vähemalt ma ei taha paigal olla. Tahan muuta ennast, tahan muuta olukorda, kus olen. Aga selles võibki olla minu probleem – tahan ise muuta, selle asemel, et lasta Jumalal oma tööd teha minu sees ja minu ümber.

Aga õpin. Harjutan. Äkki vähehaaval saan aru, et ma ise ei ole kõikvõimas ja mul läheb vaja Jumala abi, et asjad reaalselt muutuma hakkaks.

Õpin. Harjutan. Vähehaaval usaldan. Vähehaaval lasen armastada.