Today’s scripture is Psalm 139:13-16

13 For you created my inmost being;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

your works are wonderful,

I know that full well.

15 My frame was not hidden from you

when I was made in the secret place.

When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,

16 your eyes saw my unformed body.

All the days ordained for me

were written in your book

before one of them came to be.

The question for today is: What specifically is wonderful about you?

This little section of scripture makes me nervous to post, because it has been used and misused in countless different ways. But what I’m going to take out of it today, is that very first line: “you created my inmost being”.

Look what I found in the King James: “For thou hast possessed my reins”. Now, don’t you think that if God “hast possessed my reins”, that means that at one point, God controlled my life? But somehow, I’ve been doing dumb things and screwing up and hurting people and causing problems. It doesn’t sound like God is possessing my reins anymore, does it? So, somewhere in there, God let go? God gave up control over my life, sometime after he finished creating my inmost being?

Wow. I’m not sure how I feel about where this is going. If God gave up control over my life, but he still has all of my days written down, what does that say about God? What does that say about me?

Okay, I’m still thinking out loud, so go with me here……If God created me and had “possessed my reins”, and then gave up control, then who has control? Anyone? Karma? Destiny? Fate? Or worst of all, me? Okay, so God gave up control of my life; He gave me Free Will. So when I choose to do the dumb things that hurt people – do you think that sometimes God would want to reach back in and say “Nope, sorry you’re done. Slide over, it’s my turn to drive.” ? But God doesn’t do that. He lets us continue to grip the reins even as things are spiraling out of control.

So, when we decide on our own to come back to God and voluntarily turn over the reins, isn’t that a bigger statement of faith, of trust, of love than if God had just kept control to begin with?

Okay, wow…I’m still processing this stuff, but I’m going to bed right now. If I come up with something else to add, I’ll put it in.

Today’s scripture is Psalm 139:1-4.

1 O Lord, you have searched me

and you know me.

2 You know when I sit and when I rise;

you perceive my thoughts from afar.

3 You discern my going out and my lying down;

you are familiar with all my ways.

4 Before a word is on my tongue

you know it completely, O Lord.

The question for today is: How do you feel about God knowing everything about you?

Reading these verses I am first of all embarrassed that God knows all my thoughts. I feel like my thoughts are acceptable (not good, but not sinful) about half the time, then about 2/3 of the next half is okay, but unorganized, disheveled, and too fast. That last part of my thoughts is enough in itself to get me thrown into hell. So my first reaction is embarrassed that God sees all of that.

My next reaction is gratitude. I am so thankful that God loves me and keeps me inspite of everything I do as a human. I can’t even begin to explain how grateful I am to be a daughter of God. I do not deserve any of the blessings He has placed in my life, but I am thankful that God knows all about me – that He knows what I need most and in His mercy blesses me inspite of myself.

I think the only other strong reaction I had was comfort. Comfort that God knows me better than I know myself, so that even when I can’t understand what’s going on in my brain or why I do things I don’t want to do, God Knows. The comfort that my each and every day is wrapped in the Holy Spirit and tucked into the palm of God’s hand.

You want to know something? God knows you too. God knows everything about you, he loves you, he wants you to be His child. God knows everything you have done, are doing and will do. And He wants you to know Him too.

I’m going to take this really slow, jumping back into this blog, but I thought this might be something interesting to some of you.

So, one of my personal goals for this year is to complete two Bible studies. Complete, as in start to finish, no skipping or quitting. And not just one, but two! I also want to allow myself more time to just create.

Which leads me to the point of this post. I’m going to start a Scrapbooking Bible Study called “God’s Good Gifts”. There are daily readings and journaling questions for 6 of 7 days each week. And each week we complete a two page scrapbook layout about each week’s theme.

My plan for this is to blog my daily readings and post my layouts here at the end of the week. Hopefully this will give me some encouragement to continue and finish this study. I believe it’s twelve weeks long…I’ll have to check.

Anyway…I just wanted to post a short introduction before I started posting.

So what are your goals for 2010? What’s your plan to achieve them? Are you asking God for His help?

Love begins by taking care of the closest ones – the ones at home.
–Mother Teresa

I’m going to be taking a break from this blog for a while.

Some of you know that I struggle with bipolar II and the last couple of months have been very difficult with mood issues set off by the smallest thing.  Lots of inconsistent sleep and just daily life stress caused me to get pretty depressed.

I was struggling with things like my purpose in life, what are my skills, what have I accomplished with my life?  And I still struggle with those things, but when I’m depressed, it consumes me.

So, I’ve made conscious effort to recover from this low spot lately and I can feel myself improving.

But one thing I think would take some self-imposed pressure off is to officially take a break from this blog.  I always want to stamp, but I haven’t stamped in probably 3 weeks.  So obviously I don’t have anything to share.  And, I want to be able to recover and get my moods stable again without extra pressure.

So I will not be posting on this blog regularly.  I’m not sure how long I’ll be, but I need to take time for myself and spend the rest of the summer with my kids (my oldest starts kindergarten in 3 wks).

If you’re interested in how things are going, you can always check in on my personal/family blog over at:  www.fishbowlmama.com

Thanks to everyone who has been reading and following – I appreciate every one of you.

And don’t forget to take time for yourself.

Happy Stamping,

Jen

Finally got around to taking a picture of the third punch person for you.  This one used the tutorial from Sophia Landry directly and I only changed the colors.

I’m really looking forward to posting again.  See you soon!

This one is a Christmas ornament, but I had a little help from my 3 year old son towards the end of the video. He loves anything artsy & is fascinated with my stamp desk.

Thanks for watching!

I love how this one turned out. She looks so elegant in her summer Sunday best. I was really glad I had the “grace” stamp to go with her. If I was naming her, I would definitely name her Grace.

Thanks for visiting me & have a great July 4th weekend!

I was so excited to try out this tutorial by Sophia Landry that I just had to share what I came up with!

I made three separate girls following the same basic tutorial. Here’s the first one:

She’s my least favorite of the three. So, hopefully you’ll come back to see the others that I think turned out better.

Happy Stamping!

As fellow Stampin’ Up! demonstrator Ann Clemmer would say, “You Betcha!”

This ornament uses the retired DSP from the last Holiday mini catalog.

There are lots of tutorials out there for these ornaments.  Here’s one:

http://stampingstarlette.blogspot.com/2007/12/pinecone-ornament-tutorial.html

I think it would awesome to try one of these and add some of the Pretties kit to the bottom of the ornament.  Has anyone tried this yet? Please leave me a comment if you have a link – I’d love to see them!