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This is Bets-he. No. Not Betsy. It WAS Betsy until I realized Betsy is a HE. Therefore, He is now Bets-He.

Bets-he here has a problem. A very obvious problem. He can try to act like nothing is wrong. He can talk like nothing is different. He can even wander around and hope that no other cow notices the awkward ladder clinging to his neck and leg.

Oh, you didn’t notice it? Just take a closer look. Hard to miss. Don’t tell him that though. He gets grumpy when you let him know that something is really wrong. He takes it “Personal” and gets really “Defensive”. He doesn’t even realize that people can’t get close to him even if they wanted too. He wards them off with the awkward ladder swinging at everyone in the near vicinity.

There is nothing Bets-He can do to help himself. And for that matter, there is nothing Bets-He’s friends can even do. They don’t have the skill, capacity, capabilities, or posable thumbs to be able to take this latter off of him. Someone much greater then the average cow needs to help out here. I think a farmer is needed in a very bad and undeniable way.

I am like this cow. No, not in the mean “You look like a Cow” sense. I have attitude problems. I need a few adjustments …. okay, I need a big overhaul sometimes and I need to be rescued from myself . There. I said it. My husband should be rejoicing that I admitted I have an attitude problem. haha

Seriously though: I was having a tough time this week with a personal issue. My personal issue involved other people who I didn’t feel were treating me right. Actually, I know they weren’t and aren’t treating me right. But it was affecting everything I did. It affected how I treated my husband, how I spoke to my girls, how I felt about myself, what I did or didn’t do. Ugh. I affected me. I admit it.

Steve, my husband, sort of “confronted” me about my problem and I pretty much (in a very nice and annoyed way) told him he was nuts. “I am fine. There is nothing wrong. Leave me alone. Back off. Mind your own business….” You get the gist of it. I was grumpy and it was obvious.

I was like this cow with a ladder around my neck. It was evident to everyone around me – I had a problem. It didn’t matter how much I tried to ignore it, deny it, cover it up or just flat-out pretend it wasn’t there — it WAS there. I needed to deal with it but I couldn’t deal with it. I needed someone bigger then me. I needed someone who could do what I couldn’t do. I couldn’t pretend anymore to be holy and have it all together. It wasn’t working and honestly, it was just making me look stupid.

I just needed God.

Sometimes we just need God. We need to give up trying to fix things ourselves and just let God get involved. I tried to fix it, I tried to make it go away, I tried to act like “they” don’t bother me. But “they” do. So… I need Him. My focus should be on God anyways. I needed my clarity back.

As soon as I refocused myself on God things changed. No, God didn’t strike “them” down by lightning, they aren’t in a season of obvious famine because of sin, they didn’t see the error of their ways…. “They” didn’t change. I did.

Let God change you. Don’t act like things don’t affect you and bother you. Don’t try to fix it yourself. You can’t, but He can. Let HIM do it. He’s so much better at being God then we are.

“Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him! Oh, fear the Lord, you His saints! There is no want to those who fear Him. The young lions lack and suffer hunger; but those who seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing.” Psalm 34:8-10

This is Quackers. He never had a real name until I just named him last night. He’s Sierra’s (my 24.8lb daughter) duck. She calls him “Ducka”… Now I call him Quackers.

Sierra’s had croup for the past couple days. Nights have been yuck around here. She has a hard time sleeping. Weird since she’s slept through the night since she was about 3 months old. It is nights like the last three where Steve and I make the comment that maybe kid #2 is nowhere in our plans. She barfed two nights so we were giving her a bath about 3 a.m. and cleaning the cribbage from the barfage. Plus, she has started to scream when we put her to bed – something she rarely does. I don’t mean just whine or cry – I mean all out war and tantrum. She’s good at it too. She can cry hard enough and long enough that she barfs. It’s pretty cool if it’s someone else’s kid, but not when it’s yours! haha

So, last night we put her to bed around 8:30p.m. She cried, then she screamed. Then she held her sippy cup while crying and screaming. We watched her in the baby monitor the whole time. She is stubborn (gets it from Steve). She’s got patience too (she gets that from me of course). I was thinking those two things until I saw her do something an immature person would do… she started throwing out all the things in her crib that she usually has when she goes to sleep. First it was the sippy cup that she chucked across the room. She screamed when she did it. Then it was the blanket. She sleeps with this blanket, but there it went … over the crib. Then it was Quackers. (formerly known as “Ducka”). Quackers went flying to the floor and apparently his wings were broken cause that’s where he landed. Sierra screamed again - Still standing of course.

I watched her in the monitor. She was still standing and still screaming. I guess she thought that if she chucked all her stuff overboard that we’d come to the rescue and save her and the stuff. But we didn’t. I just watched and sorta chuckled to myself at the irony of getting rid of stuff that normally makes her happy.

Then I noticed that instead of screaming just for the sake of screaming she started pointing and screaming at her stuff on the floor. Sorta like she couldn’t believe her stuff was on the floor and the “how did it get there?” look.

We eventually rescued her belongs and put her back to bed, but I realized that is what we do at times with God. We get really mad at something that is or isn’t going on in our lives and we start to boycott the things that normally made us happy and gave us comfort. Stuff like church, family, wise counsel… The stuff that normally we look at and know that God put before us to help us.

Haven’t you noticed that when things aren’t going great and we are mad that we start to shun the stuff, relationships, or situations that God has put around us to get us through things? God never leaves us, even though we may feel like it. In fact, God has put people and situations around us to let us know that He is still there.

I pictured Him last night doing what I did with Sierra. Watching me throw a tantrum and sort of chuckling to Himself that I am so immature and just don’t understand the big picture. We’re all just quacks. =0)

I had a conversation today with someone I always thought had a lot of faith. We were talking about God and healing in a circumstance. Instead of believing that Gods Word overrides a doctors word, a tests word, and even the opinion of an ordinary man or woman, they believe that you should basically go with what the world says until God steps in. I’m of the contrary belief that you have faith first. We should not ignore sound advise such as doctors or professionals but you should always error on the side of faith. There is no balancing of the world and God. We either live according to Gods rules or we live according to the world!

I wrote this article last year. I have found in the last few days that it is really applying to my faith right now so I thought a repost of it is necessary.

For all of us who are believing in faith for the healing of Noel Miller, this is for us. For those that are believing in faith for something else that is big and seems impossible… Well, this is for you.

Ever felt like you were in a balancing act? I do sometimes. I think this bird is pretty good at it – by the looks of it at least. Sometimes I think I am too.

I wonder what is on the end of that string that he is pulling…? Is it a weight that weighs him down so he will keep balance? Is it another bird doing some other weird trick? Maybe a HUGE elephant and that is why “LIFE” decided this bird was so extraordinary and took its picture! Who knows…

What I DO know is that we all play a balancing act. On one end of our lives is our flesh, doing what it does best – be fleshly. On the other end is our Spirit, doing what IT does best – help us to be Christ centered.

When our body (flesh) outweighs our Spirit, our lives fall apart. The “load” we are carrying tumbles to the ground in a heap and we often become frustrated, angry, depressed, mad at the world or worse: mad at God.

I realize more as I write this that the “balancing act” isn’t even Biblical. I don’t believe I can find anywhere in the Bible that God tells us to “eveneth outeth thy flesh and thy Spirit until they are in unity.” Nope. It doesn’t say that. We aren’t suppose to “balance” our flesh and our Spirit. Our Spirit should ALWAYS outweigh our flesh. Our Spirit should be the mind of Christ and we should live our lives, we should walk our walk, we should run our race (whatever you want to call it!) in such a way that you can’t tell that we have the world in us because our flesh is subject to our Spirit and the Spirit of God.

So – no more will I say that I have to have a more balanced life between my flesh and my spirit. I can’t live my life like this bird on a wire. I have to allow my spirit to be subjected to the Spirit of God.

“Since Jesus went through everything you’re going through and more, learn to think like him. Think of your sufferings as a weaning from that old sinful habit of always expecting to get your own way. Then you’ll be able to live out your days free to pursue what God wants instead of being tyrannzied by what you want.” 1 Peter 4:1-2 (MSG)