It has been about nine months since Katie started
school away from home.

And well.

The empty nest thing has just hit me.

What thing is that, you ask?

It's that feeling of loneliness and loss of value.

I was busying myself with volunteering at school and photography and blogging.

There is value in those things, right?

But, I have gotten off track with my thinking.

True worth and value isn't found in things I do, it is found in the fact that I am precious to God.

Even tho I thought I knew this. I don't think I really did. I was homeschooling. I was doing something worthy with my time, something of value.

But now that is gone, I have been trying to find something worthy and of value to do with my time.

And while that is not a bad thing to do. I mean, it's better than trying something unworthy and horrid with my time.

The focus is still on me, me, me.
And that kind of focus is always precarious.

If I succeed I am loving myself.
If I am mediocre, I am despising myself.

It's not suppose to be all about me.




I seem to have lost grasp of the lesson I learned about fourteen years ago, when I read Stepping Heavenward.

Katy keeps a journal. She is bed ridden at the end of the book. She has to depend on others and can not 'do' anymore.
But it doesn't matter. She has never been filled with more joy.

"Yes, I love everybody! That crowning joy has come to me at last. Christ is in my soul; He is mine; I am as conscious of it as that my husband and children are mine; and His Spirit flows from mine in the calm peace of a river whose banks are green with grass and glad with flowers. If I die it will be to leave a wearied and worn body, and a sinful soul to go joyfully to be with Christ, to weary and to sin no more. If I live, I shall find much blessed work to do for Him. So living or dying I shall be the Lord's.
... But not till I was shut up to prayer and to the study of God's word by the loss of earthy joys, sickness destroying the flavor of them all, did I penetrate the mystery that is learned under the cross. And wondrous as it is, how simple is this mystery!

To love Christ and to know that I love Him-this is all!"

Eyes off of self.
Eyes on Christ.

Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord, if you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.
D. Schutte

Encourage one another,
Donna