Who do you Trust?

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.  Proverbs 3:5-6 NKJV
These two verses are so easy to understand, comforting, and straight forward.  Trust God not your own understanding, acknowledge HIM always and He will show you the way.  It seems so simple and easy to do yet why do I struggle with this?  Every morning I get up, do my devotional, read scripture and recommit to this.  Each day great things are happening and I feel amazingly powerful and jubilant.  It is a fabulous state of being and then throughout the day I tend to let little doubts chip away at my trust in the LORD and remember old ways or baggage from my past and I start to lean on my own understanding instead of HIS.  This is when other doubts, fears, anger, worry, etc. start to creep in to steal my joy.  What I have started to do, that is really helping me, is to STOP as soon as I am aware of what I am doing and recite this verse back to myself and give my "issue" back to God and pray for Him to handle it.  I will admit that there are days when this is much harder to do than others; especially depending on if the issue involves someone close to me like one of my children or grandchildren.  I do know this:  every time I allow God to handle the situation, trust in Him and get out of His way the outcome is great.  It brings me a peace and comfort that I cannot express with words.  My prayer today is for all of us to put our Trust in the Lord and when we feel the need to try and do it alone we will STOP, PRAY for God to handle it and then Trust Him to take care of it for us.  Please let me know in the comments what happens when you apply this method or if you already have please offer encouragement to others by commenting today.
God Bless,
Nena 

Stop holding yourself back!

Many of us struggle to let go of the past.  Even when we are doing great, life is good, and we are enjoying our friends and family little doubts from the past start to creep in and chip away at our confidence.  I have been reflecting on this for a while now and something is speaking to me that I need to write on this subject; not sure if it is because someone else is also struggling and needs the encouragement or if it is that I need to make a public accounting to be able to move on or both!  I know it is Satan who is bringing in the doubt and I know it is God that is moving me to write. 
     This morning after my daily devotion time I was led to 1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (NIV)  This tells me that God has already forgiven me my sins but yet I let Satan come in and cast doubt in that area of my life.  I cannot change the past, I cannot reap any benefit from dwelling on it but it can be a huge anchor holding me back from being who I am in Christ.  He forgave me when I confessed my sins to HIM so this is me doing this to myself (with Satan's help of course).  As I reflect on the past few days I realize I am letting someone else's journey and issues effect me and my walk.  And I wonder how many times we do that... Someone has an issue in their life and they lash out at me and because of the old insecurities I am quick to take it on and make it my own when in reality it has nothing to do with me.  Especially when they attack my character or someone I love and I want to show them that I am trustworthy, honest, caring, dependable, etc. (you name it) and I make their issues my own when in reality I had nothing to do with it.  God is telling me to stand strong in Him and know that He is with me.  Let it go and move on.  So today I am choosing to let go, give it over to God and let Him work on the other person's heart.  I may not know the outcome ever but I do know my heart, my intentions and that God has forgiven me of my past and I don't have to keep living in the past every time someone tries to throw their issues onto me.  I choose to hold on to 2 Corinthians 5:17 Anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person.  The old life is gone; a new life has begun! (NLT)
What in your past are you holding onto that is preventing you from moving forward with your life?  I urge you to ask God and then to forgive yourself or someone else and move on.  What's waiting for you is a million times better than what you left behind.
God Bless,
Nena
#getoffthescale #freedom #Godisgreat #2Corinthians #1John #Christ

Surviving the hurt of childhood.

You know those silly surveys that pop up on facebook?  What decade should you live in?  What kind of animal were you in a previous life? etc...  I just took one and it came up that I am Unbelievably loving!  It was an eye opener to me because that's the way I feel on the inside but I wonder how many people who know me would say that because I have built up so many walls around my heart to keep from getting hurt.  My earliest memories are when I was 4, my parents separated, my dad was packing his things into the trunk of his car and I was standing out front by the car crying and begging him please don't leave, please don't go and him responding I have to go I don't have a choice.  Then, of course, the divorce wasn't friendly and my mom was constantly telling me how bad my father was and then when she was mad at me she would tell me "You're just like your father".  The message to me as a child, I'm sure my mother didn't mean it, but as a 4 year old child the message I got was that I wasn't loveable, I wasn't good enough, and so I started building walls around my heart to protect myself from the hurt.  As I grew up we moved every couple of years and it seemed every time I would get close to someone and let my guard down and think okay it's safe now and begin to love someone or care about them we would have to leave again.  When I was nine we left on a two week vacation from Texas to go with my mom and grandparents to California.  My mom was visiting a friend, my grandparents were visiting their siblings, and my brother, sister, and I were visiting our dad.  While we were in California my grandparents called my dad to tell him my mom had flown home to TX to get married, pack up all of our things and move to CA.  My grandparents came back and picked us up so that they could spend time with us before they had to go back to TX without us.  To say that leaving my grandparents was devastating would be an understatement. I had never lived away from my grandparents since I was old enough to remember and they took care of us everyday while my mom worked.  My grandparents, siblings, and I were all crying.  (My grandma told me years later that her and grandpa were so physically ill they had to keep stopping the entire way back to TX.)   We were going to live with my mom and her new husband that we had only met one time, on a Sunday afternoon for about 30 minutes at a bar where he was in a fist fight with another man.  We also never got to go back home and tell our friends, Aunts, Uncles, cousins or anyone else goodbye.  This was a life altering event in my life.  After only five months in CA there was a major earthquake that shook all of the dishes out of the cupboards and they broke all over the floor, the water erupted out of the diving pool, all the street lights were out, roads were cracked and the dam cracked.  As soon as my step father arrived home he said he was tired of the earth shaking and we were leaving.  We drove to Phoenix and he was able to get a job the next morning so we stayed.  I always cared very deeply for people but I stopped letting it show because I didn't want to be hurt.  I started hiding on the inside and used a tough exterior to keep people away and not let them get close enough to hurt me.  I developed a very sarcastic, judgmental, hard exterior just to cover up the hurt and the pain to keep myself from being hurt anymore than I already was.  Of course, having a boy I loved and cared very deeply about not love me back or feel the same way in return was what I had come to expect and figure that's how life is and that's the way it's always going to be.  Even after getting married and my husband not being capable of loving me the way I felt I needed to be loved wasn't a surprise.  But what I found and what I'm finding through my journey over the past two years while trying to come to terms with who I am because I've never felt on the inside the way people portray me on the outside is that I do care very deeply for people, I do love people, I do want them to succeed and I get my greatest joy in helping others and in lifting them up and showing them their true potential and that they really can do it.  Even at times when I don't believe in myself I do believe in others and their abilities.  Through this journey I am discovering the more I let go and the more I let God I am able to love others and I can actually tell them and it's not so much a reflection on me if they don't love me in return as it is on them. It is a very freeing feeling and I'm not completely there yet but I am getting closer and I feel that the true me is beginning to surface.  I have had periods of time in my life where someone has asked me what would you do if you won the lottery? Or what would make you happy?  And I honestly couldn't answer them because I had no idea.  I have spent so much time covering up who I really am and trying to be someone that people would want to love that I had no idea who I am.  I never thought about what would make me happy.  Now I'm starting to think about that and while I'm far from there yet I am to the point where I am more comfortable telling people that I care about them and what happens to them.  I'm trying to let all the hurt and ideas I learned along the way, that is now being called limiting beliefs, leave me so that I will be able to love people, care for them, and be able to tell them without fear of what they will think about me. So if I have hurt or offended you while trying to protect my heart I am truly sorry!  I didn't do it on purpose.  I will take unbelievably loving and be proud to share it with you.  I am no longer going to put a hard coating around my heart to protect it because I find I am very happy being authentic. 
Praise God,
Nena
#getoffthescale #weightloss #loseweight #childhood #weightlossjourney