"Upon reflection I........"

am discovering how God is using this blog to hit me over the head! I started reading past blogs after saving them to my hard drive (an idea mom gave me for posterity purposes) and was hit with the fact that the very things I write about and think that somehow I have dealt with, still tempt me and cause me to stumble! Growing pains.....

I guess I should explain the picture...Tim and I went to a pumpkin patch that not only grew pumpkins, but artichokes, too! Ya ever see an artichoke flower! They're purple!!! No kidding...this one is almost ready to burst forth with a beautiful flower, but notice the many layers? These veggies open VERY slowly, layer by layer and only at the very end of the blooming does the flower appear. Pretty amazing veggie! I often feel like God is opening me up layer by layer....and the more He opens me up, the closer I get to bearing fruit...or flower. The more I allow Him to pry open my petals, the prettier the Lord seems to become in me...on the inside...that's where the beauty lies. But so often I settle with the not-so-pretty-closed-tight outside because of fear or intimidation. But God still lovingly pries me open....to reveal more of Himself....His beauty within me. Whoa.

I think He is using this blogging thing to do that. Just today I was struggling with wondering how God was going to provide something very BIG and specific and then I read about Joseph from a previous blog and was humbled. Oh, I have come full circle! Again needing to trust God in the very same way I struggled with way back in March of this year....you'd think I'd GET it. But that is the very nature of life...we repeat things we don't wanna do over and over again, but God's grace is soooo sufficient and He gives us gentle reminders of how far we've come and yet, how much we need Him to take us further. Is God using a re-run episode of your life to help you bloom? He is me! Be blessed. The story of my life... Romans 7: 14-25:

14"We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing. 20Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

21So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God, —through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin."