Hello again!

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Just a quick little blurb.  As I supposed you noticed, I've kinda suspended the New Beginnings study; I'm going to pick back up with that in January.  I'm going to do a little Advent Exploration that occurred to me, in honor of the season, and I'll be doing that on Sundays.

We are very, very slowly getting things moved around. There's just too much that needs doing and not enough hours in a day.  I am absolutely loving our new space, but there's still a lot of 'What are we going to do with this?' left in the rooms that we had to move everything in to.  We are not traveling for Christmas this year;  My Sweet Babboo doesn't have enough vacation days left, so we're going to get a fresh Christmas tree, which means we've got another week before we put it up.  But I"ve still got to get on with the internal moving party...

I've already put our little trees up in the new rooms...this is the first year to put up the vintage aluminum tree that found its way to my house a few years back.  It's glittering away in the sunroom and makes me smile every time I see it from the kitchen window. My grandmother had a similar...although I remember it being much nicer...tree.

Thought it would be fun to take the annual Christmas Card photo around it.  Ha ha and ha.  There are goofy people in the family who just didn't get the whole sentimental retro cool vibe.   Sigh.    We did eventually get a usable one...

I've laughed at the number of folks who've left comments on FB and the sewing blog along the lines of 'Love that tree!  My grandma had one!'

Makes me wonder if they only sold the trees to grandmas...lol...

So have a blessed Advent and I'll try to get by here a little more often now! :-)

Good intentions and all...

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Y'all.  This home renovation stuff is not fun.

We're not even doing any work yet...just writing checks to the contractor.  Our turn will come when the rooms are ready to paint and finish out the electrical.

Which is probably still a week off.

Meantime, we have two rooms of stuff crammed, stacked, stuffed and piled around the rest of the house.  It's almost claustrophobic.

I missed the SSMT verse for Oct 15, and I missed last week's New Beginnings post. While I have been thinking a good deal about that next post, I don't think I'm going to get to it tomorrow.  My computer desk is piled as high as anything else and, well, it's not at all conducive to creative thinking.

So I've pretty much decided I'm going to take a little blogging break until we get things straightened out somewhat.

I will have pictures. :-)

'With Brave Wings, She Flies'

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

The first night of the women's conference, I was given a little appreciation gift. It was a bracelet, with a charm that reads, 'With Brave Wings, She Flies'.

That was a God-kiss on several levels...but here's one that made a difference to me today:

Last summer, when I was going to the sanctuary every day and writing in my journal, just trying to keep myself together for the girls and wondering what on earth I would do when that assignment was over, I heard something in my spirit and wrote it down:

You will be out of your comfort zone, but you will be flying in Mine.

When I left the DIVE school last fall, I knew there was a songwriter's conference coming this fall.  I made myself a deal:  If I could write one song a month in 2015, I would go to the conference.

Not finished out songs, mind you.  Just completed thoughts.  Seeds of songs, more like.

I wasn't sure I could do it.

But I have a notebook with a song for each month of the year in it.  One or two actually have some potential, I think.

But...it's a chunk of money.   The Rocket City has the dubious distinction of being the MOST EXPENSIVE airport to fly in and out of in the country.  And we're about to embark on Part Two of the porch upgrade...the one that we started when we found rotting structures in it back in 2011, and has been sitting half finished waiting on funding since it was stabilized in 2012.

I waffled when I was on the websites to register and then to book my flights.  I didn't have frequent flyer miles available this time.

I got cold feet.

But I had met my requirement.  My hubby gave his blessing.  Why was I hesitant?

It's outside of my comfort zone.

I don't think it's a coincidence that I just got the message, 'With brave wings, she flies.'

I gulped and booked the conference and the flights.

Here we go.

Any Nehustans hanging around?

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

[Hezekiah] removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles.  He broke into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it (it was called Nehustan). -- 2 Kings 18:4 (NIV 84)

Wow.  The actual serpent that Moses had made in the desert...the one that represented Christ, that brought healing to those who looked at it. 

That relic was roughly 677 years old, if my math is right.

In its time, it was a powerful symbol of the grace and goodness of God.

Out of its time, it was an idol and a distraction from the worship of the One God.

I have come face to face with some Nehustans in my life this afternoon.  In their time and place...wonderful.  Now, not so much.  No...incense is not being burned, but they are taking up space physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Do I have the courage to do what Hezekiah did...break them into pieces, get rid of them?  Now that their purpose has been served?

Not gonna lie, it won't be easy and it won't be painless.  But if I'm going forward...it is necessary.

All Things New: New Study

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Last week I had a dream; kind of a variation on the school dream...y'know, the one in which you suddenly realize that you are a week from finals and you forgot to go to class for the entire semester.

Only this dream wasn't about school, per se, it was about a Bible study at church that was to be taught online.  It had been publicized and had folks signed up.  And it wouldn't have been a big deal that I forgot...only I was the teacher.  The day after the first class was to have happened, I suddenly realized that I had missed the introductory live chat scheduled for the night before with all the folks who were signed up for the study.

I woke up pondering that.  Aside from the look at Holy Week, which was just a short daily deal, I haven't done a study since last fall's look at the Hebrew words for praise, largely because I was neck-deep in our prayer ministry school.

But one of the main reasons I started Beer Lahai Roi was to put a demand on the teaching anointing.   When I wrote that first post in April of 2008, I was just a helper/filler-inner in the Friends Club...I didn't see the lead teacher position that was waiting on me in just a couple of months.  When the fall came, I was solidly in that position and had plenty demand on the teacher in me.

But now I am back at the place I was in the spring of '08.  Maybe even farther back, as I was at least filling in as a teacher then.  Now...for this immediate season...there is nothing.

So last week, I dreamed that I had neglected my online study.

It's time to get it cranked up here.

I've been pondering all week what I should do for a study...pick a book of the Bible?  A character?  A theme?

It was the idea of a theme that resonated...2015 is a year of new beginnings...and I suddenly thought about a look at new beginnings in Scripture.  How many folks experienced transition from something to something...and how did they handle it?

I thought of several immediately.

So.  This is probably  not going to be heavy on the revvy or deep in any way, but I'm going to use the next however many Fridays to take a stroll through Scripture and look at folks who found themselves in a place of new beginnings, where the old paradigms were out the window and new, unexplored territory lay before them.

I haven't done a syllabus...it's going to be something of an unplanned journey.  We'll start in Genesis and see what we encounter along the way.

Join me for 'All Things New'...

Waiting is a Test

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Have you ever had an offhand comment buzz around in your head...trying to get you to see something, understand something, put some pieces together...until you just have to sit down and figure out what is going on?

Last week, a post on facebook quoted my friend Melinda, who had been the featured speaker at the morning ladies' Bible study at church...that I don't attend, as I'm working away on the other end of the building.

But that quote got under my skin...and I finally had to spend 20 minutes scrolling through the past week's posts on Facebook until I found it again so I could record it.

'If you have an issue and you don't deal with it, it goes from being your shadow to being your introduction. ' 

 Last week, I read it, thought, 'Oh, that's good.'  and went on about the day's business.

But that thought kept nagging at me.

Your issue will become your introduction.  Your issue will become your introduction.  Your issue will become the first thing people notice about you and it will become your identity.  Do you want your issue to become your identity?

And so on.

Sunday morning, our worship set included the song 'Nothing Compares'...the bridge of which is a single lyric, repeated several times:

All my past is gone.

Of course, the context for that is all the yucky stuff, all the bad decisions and relationships and whatever that is in the past is covered by the blood once we come to Christ...we're new creatures, all things are new.

However, as I was singing that Sunday morning, I suddenly realized that also applied to past ministry positions, things I did for a season but are now in the past.  Good stuff, not yucky stuff.  But it's done now.

All my past is gone.

And I can carry that around...the 'I used to' , the 'I was' until the 'I used to' becomes my identity.  And if the 'I used  to' is my identity, how can I ever move into the new 'I am'?

Mix into that an epiphany yesterday morning...I have completed the course I felt I needed to take in the interim and, as is normal, I was chomping at the bit to get myself launched into the Next Thing.
Suddenly, I heard a question in my spirit...How many of those past ministry areas did you get involved with because that's what you wanted to do?

I pondered that.  And the only thing I could come up with was our attempts at being small group leaders.  Tried several kinds of small groups...and they just never got going.  There was a little good stuff from those efforts, but just a little, and then each fell apart in turn.  But all the other areas I've worked in...Sunday School teacher, youth group leader, Christian Women' Job Corps Bible teacher, Girls Ministry sponsor...came to me.  Some of them I even resisted doing for a bit.  None of them were positions I pursued at all.

And I got it.

I carried my Bible and journal to the sanctuary for lunch yesterday and had a contemplative quite time.  I ended up pulling all the mementos from the pocket on the back cover of my journal...my DIVE cards, plus a number of other odd notes and such.  One of them was from an exercise we did in the leader's session of the 2008 Women's conference...a prophetic writing that I wrote and then found I was writing for myself:

Blessed is the one who waits on Me, who doesn't run ahead.  
Waiting is a test.
I will take you all the way to the journey's end in an instant if you wait on Me before you start.
If you start without Me, you will be toiling when you could be resting and you will not get there any sooner.
So wait at the start -- rest and worship.  Deepen yourself in Me,  drink from the well there, and in due season I will come and take you Myself to the destiny you have before you.

Is. 46:4  - 'Even to your old age and gray hairs, I am he, I am he who will sustain you.  I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.'  

For the first time in quite a while, I suddenly had peace about the NOW.  Because I don't have to figure out what is next...it will come at the time it is supposed to come.  I don't have to go find it or create it or push my way into it.

What a relief. ;-)

Reading for Growth

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

When I read for recreation, I pick up a book and find a spot and read it.  Unless it's really long...I'll usually finish it all in one go.

Case in point:  I decided to re-read The Hobbit last Friday night, so I did.  Pulled it off the book shelf sometime around 7 and finished at 10:30.  Granted, I'm VERY familiar with the story, but I did pay attention as I read and actually verified one point that was mentioned in the 3rd movie that I had not noticed on my previous readings.  So I didn't just skim through.

Anyway.  If I'm reading a book slowly over time, it's because I'm trying to learn something.

Right now, I'm involved in two classes that each have required reading.  One is deliberately taking one chapter at a time, but the other just requires the book to be read before we hit the lesson with the pertinent discussion.  The books are Choosing Forgiveness, by John and Paula Sandford (and Lee Bowman), and Administrative Excellence, by Erin O'Hara Meyer.

Interesting side note on my copy of Administrative Excellence -- I bought it at a discount from one of Amazon's affiliates, and it was brand spanking new...except that it had been autographed by the author, inscribed to  someone named 'Sarah'.  Wondering if the name was misspelled or some such thing, so it had to be relegated to a reseller....

I'm reading that one-chapter-a-month for a professional development group I'm in through work; a group facilitated by the company that provides our data base software.  It's a once-a-month online discussion meeting for church administrative assistants/ data base admins at large churches around the country. It's interesting; I'm the only one in the group that is solely the DBA.  Others are typically admin assistants as well as DBAs...but then, I'm part-time, so it's probably about the same commitment to the DBA position.  It's a challenging group; we are inspecting what we do and how we relate to others in our offices, looking for ways to better interface with others to do what we do.  I am not really comfortable there at all... I am being stretched and having to evaluate my time and the way I relate to others in ways that, well, are showing me that I have LOTS of room to grow and mature.

It's an ouchie sometimes.  A good ouchie, but still an  ouchie.

The book is written for administrative admins in a secular office, so the emphasis is somewhat different than admins working in a church environment.  For instance, Erin lists two different ways to view one's position...either as a job that I do or as a career in which I am investing.   But I believe there is a third one...as ministry in which I am participating.  And that has a WHOLE 'nuther aspect to it.  So I'm rather struggling at times to apply the book to my particular position, although I will say that this month's chapter, 'Progess', has a discussion of fear that has been really good and translates to my life very well.

 Choosing Forgiveness is the required outside reading for my Elijah House class.  If you've been around Beer Lahai Roi very long, you'll know that I really believe forgiveness is the key to Christian living...because I think unforgiveness, in addition to being pretty much the root of most of our relational problems, in some fashion and to some degree, also keeps us from receiving the forgiveness God has for us. So I am mostly nodding and agreeing with what I'm reading.    Nonetheless, I'm being challenged to move beyond forgiveness to blessing...that is a step I had already determined I needed to make in regard to recent hurts, specifically, but it is another level to apply it to old wounds.  Can I really bless those folks whom I believed I have forgiven?  And if I can't bless them....did I really forgive them?

More ouchie.

One way or another, I am coming out of this season different than I went in. ;-)

I am Not Witty Enough to Name this Post

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

I almost feel in over my head.

I have been putting out one fire after another since Christmas in my data base world at work; part of that included handling registration for our leadership conference a week and a half ago.

It was paradigm-shifting and I'm still processing THAT.

(The Saturday sessions have been uploaded to vimeo...session 1 is HERE, session 2 is HERE.  I confess I linked that mostly for my mother, but I have to say that, in all the Promise Keeper messages I've heard Wellington Boone speak, the messages he has brought to our church in the past, the messages I've heard him speak at his women's conference...nothing matches the burden he was speaking this weekend.  It was...it was...well, you just have to watch the video.)

But.

I'm also doing the Elijah House School of Prayer Ministry.   Two of six Saturday sessions are down; it involves reading, listening to CD's , doing homework...attending classes...  I've done similar classes in the past, albeit not at such an intensity.  Not sure how I feel about this one; I'm finding myself bristling over some of the terminology they use.  But I'm trying hard to  let that go by and get what is behind the word choice.

Plus I'm doing a class through work aimed at making me a better admin...work better with folks,  be more confident in the role I have, etc.   That's a stretch, too.

 I have been managing to sew a little...while I listed to the Elijah House CD's, lol...and I have given myself a post-DIVE assignment to write one song a month this year.

So... bottom line...I've got nothing leftover for blogging deep insightful posts at the moment.

Hang with me, though.  It'll all change with the spring. ;-)

New Beginnings - A Testimony of Provision

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

When My Sweet Babboo got his layoff notice, I immediately heard in my spirit, 'Now you will see what I will do.'  He wasn't the least bit worried...he truly believed it was all going to be ok.  Many folks told me they were praying for us, and assured us that it was all going to be ok.  I believed that myself...but I knew there were two ways it could be ok...either he would get a new job in a miraculous fashion and step right from one to the other, or we would see how God would provide one need at a time. And I didn't know which way it would be.

Well, he had some minor surgery around Thanksgiving, The Actor had his wisdom teeth removed and MSB did the  job of sitting with him, as he had medical leave to burn...but that all boiled down to the fact that he had time to polish up his resume' and cruise the web for opportunities.

And he found several local companies who were hiring...companies that employed one or two individuals he knew from work or the professional society.  He sent his resume' to several folks, and one of his former co-workers who is now working at one of those companies forwarded the resume' to a manager in the company who was looking for a senior engineer.

The next day, MSB got an email from that manager, saying he had the exact skill set the manager was looking for...with a link to the online application.  That particular job posting happened to close that very day, and they were on the brink of offering the job to another person. But they wanted to talk to my hubby.

He interviewed, and got the call from the HR department as we were driving to Indiana for Christmas.  They wanted him ASAP, so he was able to actually accelerate his layoff by about 10 days.  Monday last week was his final day with his former company...and today was his first day of employment with the new folks.

And he will get the severance package...six month's worth of salary...from the former company.

Did I mention his new salary is a couple of percentage points above his previous salary as well?

And...he's working on the same program, albeit a different aspect (one he will enjoy more, actually), that he was working on before?

And the new office is about half the commute from our house as the previous one?

Stepping from one to another.  Just like that.

I shouldn't be amazed.  But...I'm amazed.  God is good.

Verse 2 - Isaiah 43:18 - 19 ...New Beginnings...

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

I knew what verse number two in the Siesta Scritpure Memory Team would be about 8 hours after I posted verse number one.

Now, granted, it was Jan.1, and lotsa folks were posting verses for the New Year on Facebook and blog posts and such, and this verse is definitely an 'it's a new year' kinda verse.

But for me, it jumped off the page every time I encountered it.  Especially since I have heard over and over in my spirit that 2015 is a year of new beginnings.

I think I wrote it down in my spiral on January 2 or 3.  This may actually be The Verse of the Year for me.

Forget the former things, do not dwell on the past.  See, I am doing a new thing!  Now it springs up, do you not perceive it?  I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.  - Is.43: 18-19 NIV84

I am claiming that verse for 2015...and I can't wait to see what the new thing is...