Sunday, December 28, 2008

Time to go...

Well, the time has come for me to go back home.  I am super sad to leave my family.  I have been able to be with them for over a month and I am spoiled.  I still don't feel too hot and now I have a tooth ache that is really making me miserable.  Thank goodness for left over pain medicine!!  :-)  It has taken the edge off.  I always seem to have things like this happen to me on days when I can't get to the doctor.  Pray that it stays under control until I get back to Nashville on Thursday.  I don't even know of a dentist in Nashville...I'll have to ask around.  

So...time to pack all my things and get a few hours of sleep before my 6:45 flight in the morning.  We have a show in ATL and then a new year's eve show in LA...then it's home Nashville. 

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

I read this tonight and thought I'd share it with you guys.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE Elisabeth Elliot.  She is an author among many many other things...an incredible woman to say the least.  Many years ago someone gave me the book "Passion and Purity"...changed my view on dating and relationships completely!  Loved it!  

Anyway...here is what I read.

In C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, we see with startling clarity the cleverness of the enemy in deceiving human
 beings.  selfishness has a thousand forms, most of which we are slow to recognize for what they are.  I was thinking about the fear of loss and what a stranglehold it can have on me.  As I listed some of the things I dreaded to lose, it occurred to me that this fear is a deadly form of selfishness.  Selfishness does terrible things to us, but it does not stop there.  It does terrible things to others.  "Saving our own skin" usually results in skinning somebody else.  Think, for example, of the fear of losing reputation, opportunity for advancement, credit, recognition, position, beauty, youth, health, money, the love of friends or children, compliments, popularity, security, privacy, rights, people you love, job, home, dreams, and power.
As I considered each of these separately, I began to think what sort of sin each king of loss tempts me to commit.  Then I thought about what kind of faith is required to enable me to commit those fears to God.  Has He, in fact, made provision for these things?  The list is not a list of sins----make no mistake about that.  It is a list of blessings, of gifts from God.  But to grasp them selfishly and greedily, to hang on to them fiercely and allow myself to be enslaved by the fear of losing them, is to deny Christ.  "Do not fear," He says to us, "for I am with you." (Isaiah 41:10)
 

Never thought of it quite like that before.

And...just another little blessing for you...


This....is just about as good as it gets!  Look at that smile! -->


Gage at 6 months old with my mom(or Lolly as the GK's call her)  

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Going home...

It's been a really long time since I posted...I suck, I know!  :-)  

I am currently in the DFW airport.   I have been in Africa since December 4th...left the US on the 3rd.  First we were in Lagos, Nigeria...then Calibar, Nigeria.  Our first show in Lagos was cancelled because of torrential rains.  I know it sounds dramatic and it was!  The tents we were supposed to wait in literally flooded and the sound system stopped working because of the water.  It was really bad.  Luckily we didn't ever have to leave the hotel and get out in all that water but some of the artists did and they came back telling us how horrible it was.  Plus, I would've ruined my new awesome shoes and that would've hurt me bad...even if it was for ministry.  Don't mess with my shoes!  :-)  I am Alice Ruth Faulk Guilbert's granddaughter!  

BUT... they also came back telling us about the 300,000+ people who stood out in that rain to hear about Jesus and the music that all the artists had prepared to share with them.  They had to be soaked thru and thru but they stood out there anyway.  I really wanted to see that...even if I had to go barefoot.  Oh well...sometimes things work out that way. 

 The concert in Calibar was great!  Those precious people were singing their hearts out to Jesus!  It was beautiful!!!  

I'm so blessed to do what I do.  I try not to be negative about anything but right now I just want to be at home!!!  I have been on 3 planes...one for an hour...then spent a few hours at a hotel in Lagos...another flight to Frankfurt, Germany...6 hours...had a whole row to myself, which made me so so so happy, then another to DFW...11 hours...no one sitting beside me...slept on and off the whole time...can't believe it!  I am coming to the end of a 5 hour layover in Dallas.  I paid too much money to get a cab to the mall close by just to get away from the airport for a few hours...otherwise I might have gone insane. :-)    SOOOOO ready to get on this plane...my 4th...and see my daddy at the airport so he can take me to his house with the rest of my family...minus Heith, Jess, and Harper.  :-(  I am so ready to see Gage!  My sister just told me he's doing things he wasn't doing when I left a week ago.  He'll probably be asleep but I'm going to go in and look at him...it will get me through until the morning.  :-)

Almost time to leave Dallas so I'll wrap it up.  

Thank you Lord...even though the flying for days really stinks...for allowing me to have this life.  I am so grateful that you have chosen me to do this for a living!  I hope I make you proud!