MidJanuary 2009

It’s All Gonna Be Ok! :)

I wrote this 1/21 as a “note” on Facebook. It clearly shows my heartbeat, and I wanted to share it with you.

So...sitting here, I just came to the realization that there are some people that were born into my life - people that are a part of my world, by genetics only. People that could care less whether I live or breathe. People that can go for years without talking to me - and when they do find that they have to talk to me, only skim the surface, never caring to ask real questions about my life, or what's happening.But it's all gonna be ok! :)

BECAUSE...

God has given us friends to make up for that! Friends that I have stronger bonds with than 90% of my family. Friends that have gotten to know me on a more intimate level in the past years, months or even weeks, than some of my family members will ever know about me. In a way, I guess that's sad. But on the other hand, coming to that realization has totally freed me.

Now I truly don't have to worry what they think about me: Am I too country? Am I too fat? Am I too "spiritual?" Am I too willing to hang out with the kids, and not have "grown up" conversation? Am I too unfashionable? Am I too me? And maybe I am all those things...but you know what? God made me to be exactly who I am - so I'm gonna be that person with every fiber of my being! And if it offends some people? Then they weren't meant to be a longstanding part of my life anyway. I'll still love them. I'll still bless them. And I'll still pray for them. But I'll do it "from afar."We absolutely CANNOT allow ourselves to get so wrapped up in trying to please everyone else, that we forget who we truly are - who God made us to be. Cause one day, all the "fun," money and status is going to fall away, and all we're going to be left with is the cold hard reality of who we really are. We won't be able to hide behind our popularity, our bank account, our well-stocked closets, or thousands of surface friends - we'll be held accountable for the lives we changed; the cashier at the store that we blessed by smiling; the child that sees love for the first time when you give them a hug after they've had a hard day; the man that has lost everything, that has been treated as a nobody by society for so long - you smile at him, give him a coat and invite him in for a meal; the woman who is raising her children alone, and has no one to look after them - you open your home to them, and social and racial walls are broken down - not to mention the deep hurts that are repaired.

I've learned a lot in the past 7 months. God has done an awesome work in my life, and I am praying that He continues to mold me and change me. I praise God that He has given me a chance to change! That He never gave up on me! That He allowed me to see the error of my ways while I'm still young so that I can be the change for my family! So that my future children will start day one with the knowledge that ALL people are children of God, and we should treat them as such! We are called to be the Hands and Feet of God on this earth! So let's walk out in it!!!

World Mandate Prayer Rally

So the church had three days of corporate prayer and fasting from Monday to Wednesday that culminated in a prayer rally that was held on Wednesday night. At least 1,500 people gathered last night at the church to seek the face of God, to experience corporate and individual breakthrough, as well as miraculous healing!

Oooooooooooooooh! God is good! :)

Sharon and I got to be a part of an awesome healing moment! :)

The service was set up in such a way that we worshiped and pray all throughout. We would have 3 or 4 songs, and then Jimmy (the pastor) would come up and present a prayer topic. And then we would pray. Sometimes we would pray in groups of two or three, other times we would pray individually, but my favorite was when we prayed with “one voice” – if you’ve never experienced this, and have the ability to get a group of people together, DO IT!!! :)

“One Voice”

It’s probably a pretty simple concept…and all of you probably already know what I’m talking about. But I had never heard of it before, nor have ever been a part of it until recently, so I’ll explain :)

Everyone is giving a topic to life up in prayer, and it is done in “one voice.” Meaning that EVERYONE prays OUT LOUD at the SAME TIME! The power of the Spirit is sooooo awesome in those moments – almost to the point of being totally overwhelming!!! The coolest part is that as you are praying, there is just a dome of prayer all around you and you know that the throne of Heaven is being flooded by the prayers of the Saints!!! :) How freeing is that?!?!?! :D

You know you wanna try it!!! :D So go for it!

Prayer Rally, Part II :)

So anyway, we were praying through different things in preparation for this weekend, but also individually seeking God’s face on things that we were expecting breakthrough in.

One of the prayer topics was on healing – physical, emotional and spiritual. They invited those that had had physical problems for many years, and especially those that had terminal diseases to come to the front to be prayed over by the healing team. Those of us not on the prayer time and not seeking physical healing were asked to gather with 2-3 people and pray for the healing to come in those at the front physically, but then to lift up the emotional and spiritual needs as well. Sharon and I had just turned to one another to begin praying when the lady in front of us (the lady is Donna. She is an older lady that we all first connected with this summer when we all went to The Feast together. Then come to find out, she is also in Elevate PM with Sharon and David. She is an absolutely precious woman that was dealt a pretty rough hand – but she has persevered and overcome! And she is constantly giving ALL glory to the only One that could have turned her situation around! :) - turned around, grabbed Sharon and said I want you to pray for me. Apparently she has had arthritis for many years, and it has pained her greatly – especially in her knees. This summer she went on a mission trip and when she left the states, she was hurting so badly that she had to rely on a cane to help her get around. By the time she got back, due to the prayers of the people on the team with her, she no longer needed the cane, but the pain wasn’t completely gone. Through the ensuing months, she’s had several people pray healing over her, and her right knee has been completely healed, but her left knee is causing her major pain, and hinders her ability to just full out run with everything God has put in her heart! So, she wanted prayer last night, and wanted us to pray that the left knee would be completely healed! She had faith it was going to happen, and so did we, so we got down to business!

Sharon and I put our hands on her swollen knee, and began praying. Commanding healing and asking that God would touch Donna in new and miraculous ways. The first time we prayed, Donna was standing up with her left leg propped up in the chair, and Sharon and I were kneeling around it. While we were praying, all of a sudden, she yanked her leg down started jerking it up and down, and said, “It bends! I can bend it! It doesn’t hurt so bad any more!!!” She was ecstatic and so were we! :) But the healing wasn’t complete!

What I’ve Learned Regarding Praying for Healing

1. Never close your eyes. Always be watchful of the person’s overall well being and the specific site you are praying for. Major things happen sometimes, and you surely don’t want to miss out on what God has to show you! :) And while healing is going on, the Holy Spirit is in the person in an extremely powerful way, and you never know how He will manifest Himself! So you have to be ready to ease the person down if they start getting unstable.

2. It’s ok to stop your prayer! :) The Holy Spirit understands that we are not perfect, and therefore do not have a perfect line of communication between here and Heaven. So, we need to frequently stop praying and ask the person what they are feeling, if the pain has moved or changed, lessened or worsened, etc. The more information we get, the more pointed and effective our prayers can be! :)

3. If change is occurring, keep praying! If you pray for a few minutes, stop and ask the person what they are feeling, and the pain has changed in any way, you know for sure that the Spirit is moving, so pray again! We go through this cycle until healing is complete, or there is no change occurring!

4. It’s good to ask the pain to go away, but it’s also ok to command it to get gone! “In the name of Jesus, we command this pain to be gone!” How powerful is that? :) And He wants us to do that! Because it takes a ton of faith to say it, and He wants us to be continually building our faith!
Prayer Rally, Part III

So, she sat down on the chair, and Sharon and I once again knelt around her and had our hands on her knee. In this new position, it wound up that one of my fingers was crossed across one of Sharon’s. We began praying, thanking God for what He’d already done, but asking that He come more. Petitioning Him to not only minister to Donna’s knee, but to minister to her heart and mind as well! And it was incredible! We looked up at her, and she was in another world with her savior! You could see it all over her face! She was positively glowing! We didn’t feel overwhelmed to keep using words, so we simply sat and held her knee, while watching her bask in the glory of God, and keeping an eye on her knee. When we started, her knee was absolutely huge, fiercely swollen! As we say there watching it, the coolest thing happened: it started to deflate! :D It wasn’t some fast thing that went “whoosh!” Instead, it was extremely slow, like someone was pulling apart the opening of a balloon that had been blown up but not tied off yet! It slowly began to go down, and as we watched, the finger of mine that had just barely been on Sharon’s went further and further onto it! :) It was incredible! God is gooooooooooooooood! :D

Healing in the House!

So…in the midst of telling all about my airport adventure at the beginning of the month, I totally forgot to tell about the excitement I got to experience in Georgia!

December 27th was a Saturday and Marcia’s birthday. Mama and I were going to take her out to dinner that evening, but that day I was craving a lazy, post-holiday, do absolutely nothing that you do not absolutely have to do kind of day! :) So we watched a Christmas movie I had taped off LMN, read, and then took a nap! :) When I woke up, Mama had already gotten up, gotten ready and was getting ready to iron her clothes. I jumped in the shower, and as I came out of the bathroom, Mama was making pain-filled noises, and was all hunched over the ironing board. I asked her what in the world was wrong, and she said that her side/stomach had been killing her since she had woken up, and at this point it was causing so much pain, she told me that Marcia and I were just going to have to go by ourselves.

***If you know Mama at all, you know that it was completely out of character for her to even be acknowledging that she was in pain, but for her to say that she was going to stay home! Why that was just too much!

By this time, she was sitting on my toy box, doubled over, and kind of rocking back and forth. I held my hand out to her and told her to put it where the pain was. She told me she wouldn’t be able to stretch out until she was lying down, so she hobbled, doubled over across the house and got on her bed. She put my hand on the pain, and was pressing it pretty hard, so I just kept the pressure there after she let go. I prayed that God would heal her, but then prayed that if it was something that truly needed medical attention, that He would make it even more unbearable, so that my stubborn mama would know beyond the shadow of a doubt that she needed to get to the hospital.

I stopped and asked her how it felt, and she said she wouldn’t know without walking. So she got up and started walking around the room, pressing on her side, but not saying anything. I finally started probing, and she said that she didn’t know if it was still hurting a little because there was still pain there or if it was all the pressure that had been applied to that spot causing soreness. She started to leave the room to go back and iron her clothes and I quickly stopped her in her tracks explaining about our “if God’s moving, keep praying” motto. So I got her back and prayed thankfulness over what He had already done but that He would even remove the soreness if that was what was causing the left over pain, and that He would complete the healing!

I stopped again and said, “Well…?” She wasn’t saying anything, but was pushing on her side, and walking around the room, and the she headed across the house. I jum’ped off the bed and followed her and said, “Well?!?” again. She turned and said, “It is completely gone! It doesn’t hurt AT ALL!”

How exciting!!! :)

Part II

On Saturday, 1/10, we had company over. It was Sharon’s cashier from WalMart, her husband and her daughter. After dinner, the kids and I played Monopoly in Davis’ bedroom, and the adults talked in the living room. They stayed until almost 9, so when they left, I was getting the kids ready for bed (Davis normally goes to bed at 7:30, and Samantha goes to bed at 8:00 – so this was really late for them!), as Sharon and David were cleaning up in the kitchen. I had gone into the bathroom to take out my contacts, wash my face, and brush my teeth, when Samantha is at my door doing a play-by-play telling me how Sharon just popped a blood vessel. Then she tells me what it looks like and that apparently it hurts a lot cause Sharon keeps “squinching up” her face and saying, “This really hurts!” By the time I got out, everyone was gathered in Davis’ room for bedtime prayer, but also to take a gander at the burst blood vessel. :) (Yes. We ARE easily amused! lol) She just kept repeating over and over that it really hurt, and how she didn’t know a burst blood vessel could hurt so much! (by the way, it was on the palm of her hand – can’t remember which one now… - in that fleshy area right below her thumb. I finally got it and asked why we weren’t praying healing for it. She jumped on the wagon, and the kids and I laid our hands on it and began petitioning! Davis prayed, then Samantha, then Davis again and then Sharon. We stopped and I said, “Well…?”

***If you haven’t noticed, that’s my question of choice when praying for people I know. Cause they know what I’m asking, instead of me having to try and probe it out of them! :D

She just smiled and said, “No more pain.”

I took the prayer of thanksgiving, and then Samantha and Davis began to tell us how the color had moved out of her hand and disappeared as they sat there and watched it – Sharon and I openly admitted that we had shut our eyes – force of habit – and so we missed it! But it was truly awesome!

See! God wants to meet us in ALL areas of our lives! Not just in the HUGE things, but in the little things as well! He wants us to be completely dependent on Him! He wants us to cry out to Him when we go to the doctor and he tells us we have cancer, or when we try to walk through the dark house and stub our toe! He wants to meet us in EVERY situation! Nothing is too trivial with God! It blesses His heart to bless ours! Don’t rob either of you of that blessing!

Walk out in the faith! And if you don’t feel like you have much! He’ll meet you in that too! He will restore the faith you’ve lost! And He’ll give you more! All you have to do is be truly open, and ask!

World Mandate 2009

This weekend (1/23-1/25), Sharon, David, Samantha, Davis and I – along with 3,000 others will be gathering at the Ferrell Center – it’s where they have their basketball games - here on the Baylor campus. We are expecting God to show up in MIGHTY ways! We have expectant hearts, that we will all have clarity for the future spoken over us. We’re ready, broken, hungry and waiting, but most of all we’re expectant!

Join us in that prayer! If you happen to think about us anytime in the next 4 days, please just ask that God will bring us to a place where all we hear is Him. Where He is constantly speaking to and through us! Praying for our openness and receptiveness!

Speaking of Clarity…

At LifeGroup each Wednesday, they pass around a clipboard that we put our name, any prayer or praise requests we have, and our VIP – which is a person we are praying salvation for. This list is emailed to all of us so we can lift one another up through the week. My prayer request last week was “Clarity” – plain and simple.

As we stood up and began to worship, Ashley came over and spoke into me. When she left I knew that I needed to journal what she said, so I sat down to do that. While I was writing, I heard “42:9.” I didn’t know what it meant, so I just jotted it down in the margin, and kept on writing. In a few more minutes I heard “Isaiah,” and added it to my note. I finished journaling, and looked it up. Here’s my verse:

“See the former things have taken place, and new things I declare; before they spring into being I announce them to you.”

In the moment I read that verse, I felt peace. Because what God said to me through this verse was this: Vanessa, don’t be anxious. Look at all I have already done in you. Look how far you’ve come! More is coming! Good stuff is coming! The future that I have planned for you is coming! I won’t just spring it on you, you’ll know ahead of time! You will have time to prepare and adjust! :)

Yeah, I know…my God is good! :D

So I shared it with Ashley that night, and had planned on sharing with Sharon on Thursday. Unfortunately, my plans were derailed when instead of sitting down to a heart to heart when I went out of my room to find her that afternoon, we went and gathered around my car as she asked me what had happened to it. I had not noticed it Wednesday night, because it was the passenger side, and it was 11p when I had gotten home that night. The insurance adjuster said it looks like a truck backed into it with the corner of their bumper. And of course they didn’t bother to come tell me they hit it. That’s why insurance is important! The repairs are estimated at $1,100! It’s ridiculous! In good news, the headlight still works, so I have time to find a good place. Amanda’s father has a friend in Dallas that does things like this, so she’s trying to find out if he’d be able to do it for me.

I went to breakfast with Amanda on Saturday and shared my verse with her, and when I got home for our time, the family was at the table eating lunch. After lunch, the kids were playing in Davis’ room and Sharon, David and I were sitting around the table while Sharon was beginning to catch me up on Elevate. As she was talking, we all began to talk about how expectant we were for this week, and how we were just so excited to find out what God has in store for each of us! As she was talking, I was reminded that I had never shared my verse with her! I happened to have my Bible in my hand from my time with Amanda, so I pulled it out and told them the story of Wednesday night, and then read them the verse. About halfway through it, Sharon started quietly chuckling. I was quite shocked, and if I’m being completely honest, quite upset that she was laughing at me. David had just been nodding his head the whole time and said, “That’s great!” when I finished. I looked over at her and asked her why she was laughing, and she said, “Flip over to 43 and read verses 18 and 19.” I did, and as I was reading them, I began to chuckle. By this time, David was completely confused, and so Sharon asked me to read them aloud.
“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.”

Are you chuckling with us yet? If not, you should be! :) The verses are almost identical. She went on to explain that she had gotten her verse during her quiet time on Monday. We all quickly decided that God is definitely moving, and preparing us for the path He has made for us! And we’re all obviously on the same page (in a manner of speaking ;) ), so whatever He has coming for all of us, there will be peace in the decision.

Excitement Abounds!

Ed is proposing to Amanda next Saturday, January 31st! And we get to be there for it! :) He’s proposing at the tennis courts at Baylor (the love to play tennis, and God told him that was where he was to propose), and all of us – LifeGroup members, friends and family – are going to come out of the shadows with those candles they use during candlelight services at church with the little paper wax-catcher thing on them. When she sees us coming out with the candles, in his mind’s eye, she’s going to look at us, asking what’s going on, and he is going to drop to one knee, so that when she turns back to him, he has the ring out and proposes!!! :D

Needless to say, I’m pretty stoked about that! :D I don’t know if I could be much happier if it was my own fairy tale! :) Sometime I will have to write their story for you! :) It’s great!

One More Thing…

Right before we left for Christmas in Georgia, Davis had Samantha help him rearrange his room one afternoon, and they put his bed against the wall that he and I share. I thought he was doing it just to open his room up and have more space, but soon found out differently.

The first night, I was awakened ALL NIGHT LONG as he thrashed and flailed about the bed – I’ve always known he’s a rough sleeper, but I’ve never shared a wall with him before! – and would crash into the wall! The first time it happened, I thought someone was trying to break into the house and I about had heart failure. I soon got used to him smacking into the wall as he is sleeping, and now when it wakes me – the 4 or 5 times a night it happens - I just roll over and quickly go back to sleep.

Came back from Georgia, and had to readjust myself to the crashing.

The second night back, I was sound asleep when I heard knocking. I quickly reached for my phone and saw that it was 1:37a. I couldn’t figure out who would be here at that hour, and then became paranoid that someone was outside my bedroom trying to get in before I realized that if they were going to harm me, they probably wouldn’t be knocking… (yes, I know you’re probably shaking your head and laughing at me right now! :P But you have to remember that I had been awoken from a sound sleep, to knocking!) I got up the nerve to answer my door, and when I did, there was no one there. So I laid back down. I had gotten to the point where I was almost back asleep and it happened again. Three consecutive knocks. I opened my door, only to find that, once again, no one was there. By this time I thought I had lost my mind, and was just having a horrible dream. The third time it happened, I was on a mission. I went slowly walking down the hall, and as I got to the end, saw all kinds of light streaming out from under Davis’ door. I opened it to find him sitting up in the middle of his bed, with the overhead light on. I asked him if he had been knocking, and he informed me that three knocks meant, “Get In Here!” Of course I had no prior knowledge of this, so I had been delayed in my response.

This happened 5 nights in the first two weeks I was back. He said that he was having awful nightmares. I would go in, turn the overhead light off, tuck him back into bed, lay hands on him and pray. I never asked what the nightmares were, because I didn’t want him reliving them.

So far, this week it hasn’t happened at all. He has slept soundly and only crashed into the wall 2-3 times each night versus the 4-5 it had been. So we’re making improvement! :) When I go to pray over him, part of my prayer is always that God will put His angels shoulder to shoulder in a circle all around the bed. When I pray that, that is when he starts to relax, and he’s out a very few seconds later.

So, if you think about Davis, just lift him up, We’re going on one week! Let’s go on to two! Then a month! And then a forever! :)

God can do it! :) We just have to trust Him for it! :)

I love you all!