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Can you ask your enemies to be your Facebook Friends?

The sea of faces flashed before me.  Old faces, young faces.  Black faces, white faces, Hispanic, and Asian faces.  Male and female.  Adults and teens.  Some I knew well,  some I didn’t know at all.  Some had been faithful friends.  Some had deserted me.  And some had turned on me and stabbed me in the back.

They were all potential Facebook “Friends.”

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Run to danger! Finding courage to face fears & phobias

I don’t know how I developed the phobia, but for the first 30 years of my life, I was deathly afraid of stinging insects, especially wasps.   When I was a teenager, I would like to “lay out” in the sun, but when a wasp would fly around the patio, I quickly gathered up my things and went back inside.  One time I was driving up  the interstate and a wasp got into my car.  In a panic, I went to the Highway Patrol station for them to get it out before I would continue my trip.  I was a crazy woman.

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“I’m sorry, God, but this is not what I ordered!”

I love good customer service.  Recently I was in Costco and I had left some ink cartridges for them to refill.  There was a miscommunication, and somehow my four ink cartridges were thrown away.  The technician insisted on “making it right.”  He sent me to the ink cartridge aisle and instructed me to choose new cartridges to replace the missing ones.  This was great customer service.

Customer ServiceImagine a customer service counter in heaven.  I’m sure that it is covered in gleaming gold, with nary a fingerprint to be seen on the counter.  Behind it stands glowing angels ready to assist customers.  And there are a lot of angels so we don’t have to stand in line for long!  There is soft praise music playing, candles for a welcoming ambiance, and an essential oil diffuser to perfume the room.  This customer service center wants to truly value and serve their customers.

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Four truths for when you’ve lost your hope and want to die

“I can’t live with this pain for the rest of my life,” I thought as I lay in the bed. I can do a lot of hard things, but live with this level of constant, chronic pain was not something that I believed that I could do.  I begged God to heal me of it.  I lambasted Him for not healing me of it.  I begged Jesus to take me now.  And then I began to consider how to take my situation into my own hands.  A few days later, I left a desperate message with my neurologist, “I’m in so much pain that all I can do is think of how to kill myself.”

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Giving my little girl a goodbye hug…but it’s not the last

For years I have known that the day would come…the day that I would take my baby girl, my only daughter, to college.   I used to count how many years until the day, then months, and then weeks.  Now I’m counting days.  I wasn’t sure how I would handle it, but now that it is here, I’m finding that I’m handing it okay.  As long as I don’t think of “the lasts.”

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I’m working incessantly to make everyone happy

I’ve found a bench in the shade outside my hotel in the red clay state of Georgia.  My husband, two teens, and I have made the trip to the suburb of Atlanta to visit family.  We’ve had breakfast, and I’ve found a secluded, peaceful place to relax and enjoy the rest of my coffee.  The sounds of cars whizzing by on the interstate and the sweet sound of birds join the unanswered questions peppering my soul.

What must I do to make my family happy?
What are they expecting me to do?
Will I make them happy or not?

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What lies are you believing about yourself?

One of the keys to survival in this dog-eat-dog world is knowing when to get help.  When our back hurts, we go to the chiropractor.  When we are worried, we call a friend.  When we have had surgery, our neighbors and church family bring us meals.  There comes a time when we exhaust all that we can do on our own and we have to call on someone to come to our aid.  It is humbling and difficult to admit defeat but it is an important skill for health and growth.

There are lingering wounds in my heart that time and prayer alone have been unable to heal.  There are battle scars from raising children and leading a ministry and family relationships that I need help with.  I admit defeat.  I need help.  I can’t overcome them on my own, try as I might. So today, August 1st, beginning at 10 am, I’m getting some help from one of my pastors and a wise Christian woman.

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The 6 steps of surrendering to God’s will

Celebrating Weakness was not the name I would have chosen for my first blog.  I mean, come on, have you heard of any important blogs with a name like that?  Surely God was kidding me.  I brainstormed powerful words and tested out combinations. My personal favorite was “TotallyWeakPerfectlyStong.com.”  Catchy and cute, huh?  But in the end, God won, and I surrendered to God’s will for my blog and gave up my own.  CelebratingWeakness.com was born.   Surrendering to God’s will was hard, and this is how I did it.

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Does our doubt and unbelief disqualify us?

Head hanging low like a guilty child, I slowly make my way into God’s presence.  There have been times when I have run boldly into His presence, but today is not one of those days.  Today is one of those days that I am struggling to believe that God’s cares about me.  I feel guilty for not believing in and standing on His Word.  I’m not convinced that God is going to move on my behalf.  And as I come before Him,  I sadly have little faith that He is going to “fix” my problems.   If the currency of heaven is faith, then I am surely broke.

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Together, can we pray a little braver and bolder?

This is a guest post by my friend Tara Hackney about how God met her in her posture of weakness.  Enjoy. 

I just wanted my friend to nod her head and agree with my rant about the direction our nation was headed. I was, after all, quite eloquent as I bemoaned my list of grievances: ISIS and other looming terror threats, our egregious national debt, deteriorating race relations, the downward spiral of American morality, and of course the coming election that seemed more like a circus sideshow than anything I could take seriously…

“I mean, can you even imagine the kind of future our children are going to inherit?!”

But she didn’t nod. Instead, she suggested that I be a part of the solution and gave me a challenge: “Why don’t you commit to praying on your knees for our nation every day for 40 days?”

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